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Gabor Szilasi, Motorcyclists at Lake Balaton, 1954

indie

Tom laughed uneasily. "Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one, an' then." "Then what, Tom?" "Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where, wherever you look. Wher-ever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an', I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there, see?"

#the grapes of wrath #steinbeck #john steinbeck #quotes

globalwarmist

One day, the apolitical intellectuals of my country will be interrogated by the humblest of our people. They will be asked what they did when their country was slowly dying out, like a sweet campfire, small and abandoned. No one will ask them about their dress or their long siestas after lunch, or about their futile struggles against “nothingness,” or about their ontological way to make money, No, they won’t be questioned on Greek mythology, or about the self-disgust they felt when someone deep inside them was getting ready to die the coward’s death. They will be asked nothing about their absurd justifications nurtured in the shadow of a huge lie. On that day, the humble people will come, those who never had a place in the books and poems of the apolitical intellectuals but who daily delivered their bread and milk, their eggs and tortillas; those who mended their clothes, those who drove their cars, those who took care of their dogs and gardens, and worked for them, and they will ask: “What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life were dangerously burning out in them?” Apolitical intellectuals of my sweet country, you will have nothing to say. A vulture of silence will eat your gut. Your own misery will gnaw at your souls. And you will be mute in your shame.

Otto Rene Castillo, Apolitical Intellectuals

Translated from Spanish by Margaret Randall

(via globalwarmist)