"As writers, we learn most of what we know just by watching the pros, don't we?" ~John R. Trimble
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Rhetorical Question
18 comments:
Anonymous
said...
"With so many marginally qualified climbers flocking to Everest these days, a lot of people believed that a tragedy of this magnitude was overdue. But nobody imagined that an expedition led bt Rob Hall would be at the center of it. Hall ran the tightest, safest operation on the mountain, bar none. A compulsively methodical man, he had elaborate systems in place that were supposed to prevent such a catastrophe. So what happened? How can it be explained, not only to the loved ones left behind, but to a censorious public? (page 284)
" But I suppose that for the past year I'd been dead in a way too. And my sister . . .yes, she was gone; but I wasn't gone. I'm not sure this will make sense to you, but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction, so that I no longer faced backward toward the past, but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would that future be? "
I must confess it: after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared in me. I wander aimlessly around the washroom when I suddenly see Steinlauf, my friend aged almost fifty, with nude torso, scrub his neck and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. Steinlauf sees me and greets me, and without preamble asks me severely why I do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Would I please someone more? Would I live a day, an hour longer?...(page 40)
"I tried to remember how Mr. Tanaka had made me feel, but in the cold quiet of the house it had slipped away from me. Instead I felt a persistent, icy dread at the thought of my mother's illness. I found myself wondering how long it would be until she was buried out in the village graveyard along with my father's other family. What would become of me afterward?" (Golden, 18)
"How kin you set and see yo' wife all trompled on? You ain't no kinda man at all. You seen dat Tea Cake shove me down! Yes you did!" Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Page 152
"What can one think about? One cannot think anymore, it is like being already dead. Someone sits down on the ground. The time passes by drop by drop."(Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, page 22)
"If there's somebody loose around here that wants to cut my throat, I wish him luck. What difference does it make? It's all the same in eternity. Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only by the beginning of eternity. So blow your nose."(Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, page 69)
"Well, what's there to say about capital punishment? I'm not against it. Revenge is all it is, but what's wrong with revenge? It's very important."(Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, page 335)
"A car comes down the street and the headlights show up on the wall across the room. The light moves down the wall toward my head and disappears again. I wonder where light goes when it's not here. i mean, I know that darkness is the absence of light, but where does the light go when it's not here? and how do you know if it'll ever come back? (pg.198)
"'O Man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: why hast thou made me thus? or Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?'"
We agree that they can make us wash the glass instruments, sweep the floor, carry the hydrogen flasks, anything as to remain here, and so solve the problem of the winter for us. And then, on the second examination, even the problem of hunger should not be difficult to solve. Will they really want to search us at the exit every day? And even if they want to, will they do it every time that we ask to go to the latrine?
"Could we believe that he was not a monster but a man? That he was innocent of everything except his life? Could the truth be so simple? So terrible?" Tim O'Brien - In the Lake of the Woods (Page 306)
18 comments:
"With so many marginally qualified climbers flocking to Everest these days, a lot of people believed that a tragedy of this magnitude was overdue. But nobody imagined that an expedition led bt Rob Hall would be at the center of it. Hall ran the tightest, safest operation on the mountain, bar none. A compulsively methodical man, he had elaborate systems in place that were supposed to prevent such a catastrophe. So what happened? How can it be explained, not only to the loved ones left behind, but to a censorious public? (page 284)
~ Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air
" But I suppose that for the past year I'd been dead in a way too. And my sister . . .yes, she was gone; but I wasn't gone. I'm not sure this will make sense to you, but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction, so that I no longer faced backward toward the past, but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would that future be? "
( Memoirs of a Geisha, Page 108 )
I must confess it: after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared in me. I wander aimlessly around the washroom when I suddenly see Steinlauf, my friend aged almost fifty, with nude torso, scrub his neck and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. Steinlauf sees me and greets me, and without preamble asks me severely why I do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Would I please someone more? Would I live a day, an hour longer?...(page 40)
Survival in Auschwitz
Primo Levi
"I tried to remember how Mr. Tanaka had made me feel, but in the cold quiet of the house it had slipped away from me. Instead I felt a persistent, icy dread at the thought of my mother's illness. I found myself wondering how long it would be until she was buried out in the village graveyard along with my father's other family. What would become of me afterward?" (Golden, 18)
Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
Why didn't I ever see it before? Something has happened to my eyes and my head. I looked at my eyes and head in the mirror over the bathroom sink.
~ Chaim Potok My Name is Asher Lev
"How kin you set and see yo' wife all trompled on? You ain't no kinda man at all. You seen dat Tea Cake shove me down! Yes you did!"
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Page 152
"What can one think about? One cannot think anymore, it is like being already dead. Someone sits down on the ground. The time passes by drop by drop."(Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, page 22)
"If there's somebody loose around here that wants to cut my throat, I wish him luck. What difference does it make? It's all the same in eternity. Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only by the beginning of eternity. So blow your nose."(Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, page 69)
"Well, what's there to say about capital punishment? I'm not against it. Revenge is all it is, but what's wrong with revenge? It's very important."(Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, page 335)
" As always. Azadi means freedom in our language. But who speaks for Afghanistan?"( My forbidden Face 199)
"A car comes down the street and the headlights show up on the wall across the room. The light moves down the wall toward my head and disappears again. I wonder where light goes when it's not here. i mean, I know that darkness is the absence of light, but where does the light go when it's not here? and how do you know if it'll ever come back? (pg.198)
The Burn Journals
With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (9)
"'O Man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: why hast thou made me thus? or Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?'"
~ Sophie's World (pg137)
We agree that they can make us wash the glass instruments, sweep the floor, carry the hydrogen flasks, anything as to remain here, and so solve the problem of the winter for us. And then, on the second examination, even the problem of hunger should not be difficult to solve. Will they really want to search us at the exit every day? And even if they want to, will they do it every time that we ask to go to the latrine?
Page 121- Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
"Could we believe that he was not a monster but a man? That he was innocent of everything except his life? Could the truth be so simple? So terrible?"
Tim O'Brien - In the Lake of the Woods (Page 306)
"'What's going on here? What have we done to make this mountain so angry?'" pg.262
Jon Krakuer's Into thin Air
"The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction? ...Offering others what you have to give."
Tuesdays with Morrie
Mitch Albom
Pg. 126
How could things have gone so haywire? How could Andy and Rob and Scott and Doug and Yasuko really be dead?
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer pg. 264
Post a Comment