Food For Thought

I post things here that make me think, wonder, laugh and cry. I may also post my own writing.

[aslanic]

If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness.

-A phrase carved into a concentration camp cell by a Jewish prisoner

[aslanic]

It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

-Hugh Laurie

[aslanic]

We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

-Neil Gaiman

[aslanic]

Language ah now you have me. Night-time tongue, Please speak for me between the social beasts Which quick assail me. Here I am hiding in The jungle of mistakes of communication.

-W. S. Graham

[aslanic]

Books are the broadest-spectrum pharmaceuticals in the world: they can stimulate us when we are young, tranquilize us when we are old, sedate us when we are restless, sterilize us when we are infected with the virus of prejudice, fortify our intellectual anemia, and detoxify the emotional bloodstream by providing us with vicarious adventure and discovery.

-Sydney Harris

[aslanic]

The man who cannot live with doubts is a troubled person. For to have all the doubts settled is to have no mental pursuits taking place. And such a man, while of little trouble to himself, is also of little help to others. Doubts can be valuable if they force a man to search deeper and longer for answers. For to pursue the doubts is to come upon some exciting beliefs and truths.

-C. Neil Strait

[aslanic]

Life is pain. Anyone who says anything differently is selling something.

-William Goldman, The Princess Bride

[aslanic]

This project was important to me because of the integrity I wanted to bring to provocative difficult but ultimately timely and a truly important figure of our modern times. The idea of making a movie about someone who so far removed from my likeness or situation who brought about an ideal through personal sacrifice that has changed the way we view both social media, the power of the individual to have a voice in that space, and be able to question both the hypocrisies and wrongdoings of organizations and bodies of powerful people that rule our lives... This resonated deeply with my beliefs in civil liberty, a healthy democracy, and the human rights of both communities and individuals to question those in authority.

-Benedict Cumberbatch

[aslanic]

Antonius Block: I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me. Death: But He remains silent. Antonius Block: I call out to Him in the darkness. But it's as if no one was there. Death: Perhaps there isn't anyone. Antonius Block: Then life is a preposterous horror. No man can live faced with Death, knowing everything's nothingness. Death: Most people think neither of death nor nothingness. Antonius Block: But one day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness. Death: That day. Antonius Block: I understand what you mean.

Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

[aslanic]

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

[aslanic]

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

-Salvidor Dali

[aslanic]

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

-Audrey Hepburn

[aslanic]

Death: Don't you ever stop asking? Antonius Block: No. I never stop. Death: But you're not getting an answer.

Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

[aslanic]

At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.

Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

[aslanic]

I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.

-Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

[aslanic]

Raising wages would lift millions out of poverty, create an immediate economic stimulus, and adjust our economic trajectory to avoid self destruction...let's agree to break the wage structure holding too many American families in poverty.

-Paul Saginaw

[aslanic]

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

-Ansel Adams