"You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing."

Source : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.77, Canongate Books

Ben Fountain

#Struggle Quotes #Thinking Quotes #People Quotes

“An animal that embarks on forming states without greatly restricting egoism will perish.”
“I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.”
“The greatest barrier to own own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing.”

Source : Wayne Muller (1993). “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantage of a Painful Childhood”, p.62, Simon and Schuster
“Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.”

Source : Terry Tempest Williams (2008). “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”, p.76, Vintage
“Seeing the family is a very important part of my weekend.”

Source : "Susannah York, the gentle star of 1960s cinema, dies after battle against cancer" by Ben Quinn, www.theguardian.com. January 15, 2011.
“I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.”
“Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.”
“We're all working hard, but so far away from what we actually want to be doing. We're all peering in at the window of a party we aren't invited to yet, a party we wouldn't know how to dress for, or what kind of conversation to make, even if we came as someone's guest.”

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