To Kill a Mockingbird

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11
They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
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. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
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. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus

The "Galaxy" Is Over

At the Bottom of the River

Goodfellas

Jimmy Conway: I'm not mad, I'm proud of you. You took your first pinch like a man and you learn two great things in your life. Look at me, never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.

Rabbit, Run

Apocalypse Now Redux

Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Turandot

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

From his "Letter from a Birmmingham Jail"

Memoria de mis putas tristes

La casa renacía de sus cenizas y yo navegaba en el amor de Delgadina con una intensidad y una dicha que nunca conocí en mi vida anterior. Gracias a ella me enfrenté por vez primera con mi ser natural mientras transcurrían mis noventa años. Descubrí que mi obsesión de que cada cosa estuviera en su puesto, cada asunto en su tiempo, cada palabra en su estilo, no era el premio merecido de una mente en orden, sino al contrario, todo un sistema de simulación inventado por mí para ocultar el desorden de mi naturaleza. Descubrí que no soy disciplinado por virtud, sino como reacción contra mi neglicencia; que parezco generoso por encubrir mi mezquinidad, que me paso de prudente por mal pensado, que soy conciliador para no sucumbir a mis cóleras reprimidas, que sólo soy puntual para que no se sepa cuán poco me importa el tiempo ajeno. Descubrí, en fin, que el amor no es un estado del alma sino un signo del zodíaco.
Gabriel García Márquez, pp. 63-64

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Tucker: How's momma?
Gilbert: She's fat.
Tucker: Come on man. She's not all that big, Gilbert.
Gilbert: What?
Tucker: Listen, I saw a guy at the state fair that was... a little bit bigger.
Gilbert: A little bit bigger?
Tucker: Look, all I'm sayin is that she's not the biggest I ever seen, okay?
Gilbert: Tucker, she's a whale!
Tucker: Well take her out for a walk once and while.
Gilbert: Take her out for a jog!
Arnie: She's a whale! Tucker, she's a whale!

2007 New Year Resolution

The $ continues going down, Sadam is dead (I still do not believe that), and the planet Earth is heating up. But my 2007 New Year Resolution is that I am not going to write my blog every single day, as I used to. I will write something when I have something to say. NTL. You can do it!