what are you waiting for?

“The ‘perfect’ time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.”

never bow to societal pressure

My red joystick

The first bite of the apple made eve smart

The second bite taught her how to break men's hearts

The third bite taught her how to strut her stuff

But she never got to the fourth bite

That says “enough is enough”

Enough is enough, baby, I've had enough of you

You can keep your dresses, you can keep your jewels

You can keep the color tv, those soaps just make me sick

All I'm asking you leave me is my little red joystick

Safety is no place to live

Any day now the sky could fall

And I'm not one to complain

                   But this don't feel like no paradise at all

                        Down on the corner in the rain

Too much whiskey make me tumble home

                 Too much Jesus make me pray

                                 Too much love and Lord I feel so all alone

But that’s all right mama, that’s okay

In Sleep by Lissie

I lay awake at night and pray

Not to see the light of day

I wonder how to behave right

He has left me such a mess

Counting to protest

My mind can't get no rest

Fast asleep where I keep my memories

Calling me out in dreams

He visits me

What will be

Will I see him again soon?

Oh oh oh oh

Why am I so terrified of waking?

He's gone and I feel I've been forsaken

In sleep is the only place I get to see him, get to love him

The scene, a city after dawn

Becomes a field of corn

And I've had this one before

Fast asleep where I keep my memories

Calling me out in dreams

He visits me

What will be

Will I see him again soon?

Oh oh oh oh

Why am I so terrified of waking?

He's gone and I feel I've been forsaken

In sleep is the only place I get to see him, get to love him

I know that when the story ends

The one that's in my head

Well, I'll be alone again

Why am I so terrified of waking?

He's gone and I feel I've been forsaken

In sleep is the only place I get to see him, get to love him

Be with him

I love him, I love him, I love him

put your pen down

Eagerly anticipating his return home. . .

she had the perfect surprise waiting for him.

Censorship is the Act of Cowards

A woman named Clare Booth Luce said, “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.”

We live in an age where censorship is striving to take root. Certain factions of Islam try to quash cartoons, television media play “live” events with a delay for fear of a conservative Christian might see a nipple (as if there’s no difference between nudity and pornography), or a dissident might rally the people against an unjust law.

 For only when free men write and speak truth will the exercise of arbitrary power be exposed and opposed."

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

by Mark Twain

The word "nigger," which appears many times in the novel, was the cause for the removal of this classic from an eighth-grade reading list. In the 1950s, the NAACP objected to the book's perceived racist tone. In 1984, the book was removed from a public high school reading list in Waukegan, Illinois, because a black alderman found the book's language offensive.

American Heritage Dictionary (1969)

In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And, in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."

Andersonville (1955)

by MacKinlay Kantor

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, this story of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War, was viciously attacked throughout the U.S. It was banned in Amarillo, TX.

Annie on My Mind

The Olathe, Kansas school system ordered all copies of this book removed from high school library shelves. It is a story of two women who meet and fall in love and struggle with declaring their homosexuality to family and friends.

As I Lay Dying (1932)

by William Faulkner

In 1986, Graves County, Kentucky, the school board banned this book about a poor white family in the midst of crisis, from its high school English reading list because of 7 passages which made reference to God or abortion and used curse words such as "bastard," "goddam," and "son of a bitch." None of the board members had actually read the book.

Atkol Video Catalog

WIRED magazine (Feb. 1996) reported that AOL censored Atkol Video's catalog from its virtual shopping mall for carrying gay titles. AOL gave no censoring criteria when it "cut some titles and retained others."

The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read (1995)

by Tim C. Leedom, Editor

The book traces astrological and mythical origins of modern day western religions. A Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Diego refused to stock this book because of its content.

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1971)

by Mike Royko

A Ridgefield, CT school board in 1972 banned this book from the high school reading list, claiming it "dowgrades police departments."

Catch 22

by Joseph Heller

This book was banned and/or challenged more than once. It was banned in Srongsville, Ohio in 1972 and that decision was overturned in 1976. It was also challenged in Dallas, Texas (1974) and again in Snoqualmie, Washington (1979).

Catcher in the Rye (1951)

by J. D. Salinger

This is a perennial favorite of censors and has been banned in the U.S. and Australia. In 1960, a Tulsa, OK teacher was fired for putting the book on the 11th grade reading list. The teacher was reinstated, but the book was permanently removed from teaching programs. A Minnesota high school administration was attacked for allowing the book in the school library.

The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)

by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks

The CIA obtained a court injunction against this book's publication stating the author, a former CIA employee, violated his contract which states that he cannot write about the CIA without the agency's approval. First amendment activists opposed this ruling, "raising the question of whether a citizen can sign away his First Amendment rights." After prolonged litigation, the CIA succeeded in having 168 passages deleted.

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
Beauty's Punishment
Beauty's Release

by Anne Rice (under the pseudonym, A.N. Roquelaure, written in the early 1980s)

April 28, 1996, the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch reported that following a complaint from a patron in the Columbus Metropolitan Library removed the trilogy of Rice's Sleeping Beauty books and their audio tapes after determining the books were pornographic. These same books were also removed from the Lake Lanier Regional Library system in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 1992.

Daddy's Roommate

by Michael Willhoite

A favorite of censors, this children's book about gay parenting was the subject of a challenge in the public library. In an all-too-familiar request, a parent complained about references to homosexuality in material for children. The library board voted to uphold basic library principles by retaining the book on its appropriate shelf in the children's section.

Deadly Deceits (My 25 Years in the CIA) (1983)

by Ralph McGheehee

The CIA delayed the publication of this book for three years, objecting to 397 passages, even though much of what the author wrote about was already public knowledge.

Decamerone

by Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375)

In Cincinnati, an "expurgated" version of Boccacio's Decamerone is confiscated in 1922. In 1926, there is an import ban of the book by the Treasury Department. In 1927, U.S. Customs removes parts of text from the "Ashendene edition" and ships the mutilated copy back to me British publisher in London. In 1932, import ban lifted in Minnesota. In 1934, the New England Watch and Ward Society still bans the book. In 1954, it is still on the black lis tof the "National Organization of Decent Literature."

Dictionary of American Slang

by T.Y. Crowell, publisher

Max Rafferty, California superintendent of public instruction in 1963, and his supporters found over 150 "dirty" passages in the book.

Don't Call Me Brother

by Austin Miles

In 1992, former Christian fundamentalist minister, Austin Miles, was sued; charges were that his book, Don't Call Me Brother, was "...a vitriolic attack upon organized Christianity." The $4 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also screamed "libel" and "slander." After a lengthy and costly process, the court ruled that the book was not defamatory.

1-The Drowning of Stephan Jones

by Bette Greene

2-The Education of Harriet Hatfield

by May Sarton

3-Maurice

by E. M. Forster

All three of these books, which treat homosexuality in various ways, were removed from a regional high school. The novels' purchase was financed by a grant that teacher Penny Culliton received and was approved by the school superintendent and principal. However, shortly after a local newspaper reported that Culliton was involved with a lesbian and gay support group for young people, the books were found unsuitable and were banned. Maurice and The Education of Harriet Hatfield were seized from the students while they were reading the novels in class. Personal attacks on the teacher and demands for her dismissal have been so vehement that her job is now in jeopardy.

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.

Families

by Meredith Tax

A young children's book that creatively describes different family structures, was finally removed by the Fairfax County school board. Meredith Tax's beloved book had been under attack for a long time, during which many individuals and organizations rose to its defense. What's more, Families was praised by the board's own review committees.

Flowers in the Attic

by V.C. Andrews

The county's board of education decided to remove all school curriculum materials and library books containing any and all "profanity" and "pornography," both concepts ill-defined. The tremendous public outcry made the board backtrack and resolve to review its selection policy. However, after this conciliatory decision, and while the review process still inches along, most of the books in Andrews's popular series Flowers in the Attic were removed from the high-school library for "pornographic" content.

Forever

by Judy Blume

Forever censored, this wildly popular teen novel was attacked once again for its frank treatment of adolescent sexuality and was removed from an eighth-grade optional reading list. In Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a school district principal had the book removed from the library after confiscating a copy from a student in the lunchroom, finding "graphic descriptions of sex acts."

Freedom and Order

by Henry Steele Commager

The U.S. Information Agency had this book banned from its overseas libraries because of its condemnation of American policies in Vietnam.

From Here to Eternity

by James Jones

This book was censored in 1951in Holyoke, Springfield, Massachusetts and in 1953 in Jersey City, New Jersey; blacklisted by National Organization of Decent Literature in 1954.

The Glass Teat (1970)

by Harlan Ellison

The Glass Teat is a collection of essays which appeared as columns in the Los Angeles Free Press and Rolling Stone during the 1960s. They were critical essay on the subject of television broadcasting; and essays critical of the president and vice-president. The publisher, Ace Pub. Corp. consequently recalled his book and had it removed from bookstores. Years later it was later re-released.

Grapes of Wrath (1939)

by John Steinbeck

Several months after the book's publication, a St. Louis, MO library ordered 3 copies to be burned for the vulgar words used by its characters. It was also banned in Kansas City and in Oklahoma.

Howl

by Allen Ginsberg

Officials of the Cold War era saw only willful destruction of American values in a poet's grief over suffocating 1950s convention.

Alone

My baby’s gone with the wind

Memory fading seeking to mend

When this train ends

Somehow I’ve got to carry on. . . .

Kiss, Laugh, Dream

Music is a window to your soul

It should move you. . .

To tears, to love, closer to you.

Music defines you

Listen and hear where it takes you.

When you kissed my lips with my mouth so full of questions

My worried mind that you quiet

Place your hands on my face

Close my eyes and say

That love is a poor man's food

Don't prophesize

I could hold you in my arms

I could hold you forever

And I could hold you in my arms

I could hold you forever

- -Ray LaMontagne

the function of music

The function of music . . .

is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought

Regrets

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are 'It might have been.'

- Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle

Protest Songs

Below is the list of 10 anthems that rage against racism, war, society and, of course, the machine.

10. Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Fortunate Son"

John Fogerty wrote the song in 1969 in protest of the Vietnam war and took inspiration from the partnership of David Eisenhower (the grandson of President Eisenhower) and Julie Nixon (the daughter of President Nixon). The premise is that, unlike the impoverished narrator of the song who is being conscripted, "fortunate son" David Eisenhower gets to miss Vietnam. Four decades later on his 2007 album "Revival", Fogerty penned the song "I Can't Take It No More" about the Iraq War in which he labels then President George W Bush as "a fortunate son." 

09. Edwin Starr: "War

One of the most popular protest songs ever committed to plastic, the 1970 Motown smash hit is buoyed by the chorus "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" and attacks the Vietnam War with general distaste and venom. Praised by that other great anti-war song writer John Lennon, the track shot straight to number one in the Billboard charts upon release and was duly adopted by the anti-Vietnam War movement in the early 1970s.

08. Buffalo Springfield: "For What It's Worth”

While many musicians were embracing the hedonistic love of the sixties Stephen Stills was dealing with much grittier subject matter. Essentially an ode to the violence, social paranoia and brutalities of the Vietnam War, what differentiates "For What It's Worth" from the vast majority of other protest songs is it's overtly positive chorus - "stop killing, what's that sound? everyone look what's going down." If only the leaders of the world would pay notice.

07. Bob Dylan: "Blowin In The Wind”

One of Dylan's many timeless protest songs, the 1963 anthem poses a series of questions about war, freedom and peace, yet never really answers them. The chorus' famous refrain of "The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind" is wholly ambiguous – either implying the answer is all around and obvious or as intangible as the wind. The track became a soundtrack of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and testament to its enduring legacy has been covered by everyone from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton.

06. U2: "Sunday Bloody Sunday”

Opening with a military drumbeat, U2's highly political 1983 anthem soon turns into a heady protest at The Troubles in Northern Ireland - most notably the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in January 1972 when British soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing 14 and injuring 29 more. Composed by The Edge, arguably the most hard-hitting moment of the song comes when Bono proclaims "I won't heed the battle call".

05. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: "Ohio”

This timeless song was written in response to the Kent State Shootings of May 4, 1970 when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on college students protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia which President Nixon had announced five days earlier. Four were killed and one left paralyzed. Just like its subject matter, "Ohio" is brutal lyrically, referring to "four dead in Ohio" throughout and opening with the line "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming." Named as the 385th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, really it should have been higher.

04. Barry McGuire: "Eve Of Destruction”

As the portentous title titillates, the song warns of an imminent apocalypse as it laments the ills of society. Almost Leonard Cohen-esque in the grave delivery, McGuire touches upon all of the political woes of the mid 1960s – the Cold War, Vietnam, the nuclear arms race, inequality and civil rights. Inspired lines such as "You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’" make this easily one of the greatest protest songs of all time.

03. Plastic Ono Band: "Give Peace A Chance”

The phrase "Give Peace A Chance" was originally said by John Lennon to a journalist in an interview during his famous "Bed-In" with Yoko Ono. He liked the line so much he eventually went on to write the song. The anti-war anthem then gained fame when it was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington at the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium Day. Alongside Lennon's other protest anthems "Imagine", "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and "Power To The People", "Give Peace A Chance" is a defining protest song.

02. Billie Holiday: "Strange Fruit"

Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high school teacher from the Bronx, wrote the haunting song in response to the lynching of two black men Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in August 1930. Condemning American racism and the lynching of blacks in Southern states, in her inimitable voice Holiday opens with the incredibly evocative lines: "Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

01. Marvin Gaye: "What's Going On?”

Not just the greatest protest song, Marvin Gaye's 1971 classic is one of the greatest songs ever written. Co-songwriter Obie Benson initially started writing "What's Going On?" after witnessing anti-war protesters being beaten by cops hence the "picket lines and picket signs, don't punish me with brutality" lyrics. However with Al Cleveland and Gaye's input it became an anthem meditating on the troubles of the world as a whole and, given the context of the release date, the Vietnam War. Gorgeous musically, Gaye sounds concerned with the bleak subject matter, yet somehow there is also a glimmer of hope in his voice. Considering the current world climate, "What's Going On?" is as relevant as ever today. 

American Poets – Gil-Scott Heron

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised 

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,

Skip out for beer during commercials,

Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox

In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon

blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John

Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat

hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the 

Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie

Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.

The revolution will not make you look five pounds

thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May

pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,

or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.

NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32

or report from 29 districts.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being

run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.

There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy

Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and

Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving

For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville

Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and

women will not care if Dick finally gets down with

Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people

will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock

news and no pictures of hairy armed women

liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom

Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message

bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your

bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.

The revolution will not go better with Coke.

The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.

The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,

will not be televised, will not be televised.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.

Jealousy

In jealousy there is more self-love than love.  

~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

Rejection is only an opinion

Most fans know that Stephen King’s big break came with Carrie, the story of a friendless, abused girl with secret telekinetic powers. A total of 30 publishing houses rejected his story for various reasons. One publishing house told him they were “not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”

In fact, he became so frustrated with the rejection that he dumped “Carrie” in the garbage. His wife, Tabitha, saw the manuscript and rescued it. After reading it she convinced him to keep trying. That was the start of King’s career (and lots of sleepless nights for many fortunate readers).

Doubleday picked up the paperback rights to the novel and sold more than a million copies in its first year.

Rejection is only an opinion.

Woman: the great multiplier

American Authors – Upton Sinclair

The Jungle (1906)

The line of the buildings stood clear-cut and black against the sky; here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys, with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world.

--Chapter 2

It was all so very business-like that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making reduced to mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the pigs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly and they were so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury as the thing was done here--swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense at apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and memory.

--Chapter 3

They use everything about the hog except the squeal.

--Chapter 3

To be tracked by bloodhounds and torn to pieces is most certainly a merciful fate compared to that which falls to thousands every year in Packingtown--to be hunted for life by bitter poverty, to be ill-clothed and badly housed, to be weakened by starvation, cold and exposure, to be laid low by sickness or accident--and then to lie and watch, while the gaunt wolf of hunger creeps in upon you and gnaws out the heart of you, and tears up the bodies and souls of your wife and babies.

--Chapter 7

He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago-after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms.

--Chapter 8

Jurgis had learned to think of the government as an affliction like the lightning and the hail, something that was there, and had been there and would be there forever, leaving a man nothing to do but to keep out of its way.

--Chapter 9

Here is a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances, immorality is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery.

--Chapter 10

This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat will be shoveled into carts and the man who did the shoveling will not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one.

--Chapter 12

They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink-why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside-why could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?

--Chapter 16

He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources-- he could not say that it was the thing men have called "the system" that was crushing him to the earth that it was the packers, his masters, who had bought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat of justice. He only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.

--Chapter 16

The young fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working-mule; he too had felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently he had struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time--there was war between him and society. He was a genial free-booter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame; he was not always victorious, but then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break his spirit.

--Chapter 17

Ah what agony is that, what despair, when the tomb of memory is rent open and the ghosts of his old life comes forth to scourge him!

--Chapter 22

All of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often than not they were one and the same person,--the police captain would own the brothel he pretended to raid, and the politician would open his headquarters in his saloon.

--Chapter 25

All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there are not merely rivers of hot blood and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering-vats and soup cauldrons, glue-factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell--there are also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry and dining rooms littered with food black with flies, and toilet rooms that are open sewers.

--Chapter 26

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where things are behind bars, and the man is outside.

--Chapter 27

In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.

--Chapter 31

Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The workingman was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in this one.

--Chapter 35

Upton Sinclair’s 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle  exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

 

More on Upton Sinclair

 

 

American Authors - Harper Lee

All of these quotes came from one of my all-time personal favorite books.

I did more growing up while reading this book than I ever did previously.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

--Chapter 2

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

--Chapter 3

As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.

--Chapter 3

You are too young to understand it ... but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of--oh, of your father.

--Chapter 5

There are some kind of men who--who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one.

--Chapter 5

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

--Chapter 9

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.

--Chapter 9

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

--Chapter 9

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

--Chapter 10

People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

--Chapter 10

Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.

--Chapter 11

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

--Chapter 11

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

--Chapter 11

Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.

--Chapter 12

So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.

--Chapter 16

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."

--Chapter 22

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it -- whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

--Chapter 23

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

--Chapter 23

Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.

--Chapter 31

Best known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Despite being Lee's only published book, it led to Lee being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007. Lee has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, but has always declined to make a speech.

More on Harper Lee

Dhoose Joy

This day is yours. . .

Make it anything you want.

                  If it rains. . .decide to enjoy getting wet.

                  When something beats you down. . . know that you can only go up

Attitude is everything. . . today is nothing yet. Fill it with laughter.

Goodnight Ken

I find it kind of funny

      And I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I’m dying

             Are the best I’ve ever had

It's all in the attitude

We know what you did

True Terror

We can dance if we want to

We can dance if we want to

                We can leave your friends behind

      ‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance

                            Well they’re no friends of mine

A Man is Dating Three Women

Home is wherever I’m with you

different drummer

Snow fall can sometimes reveal a great deal about our personalities. Fools, you may say, I say they are marching to a different dreamer. Can’t you hear it?

Keep Moving

via www.telegramme.co.uk

I’ll Stop the World

Moving forward using all my breath

    Making Love to you was never second best

             I saw the world thrashing all around your face

             Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

                      I’ll stop the world and melt with you

The futures open wide

Summertime

Summertime,

        And the livin' is easy

                                                 Fish are jumpin'

And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich

And your mamma's good lookin'

               So hush little baby

     Don't you cry