It makes me itchy, this wry fatalism, but it doesn't make me itch nearly as much as the heroes of so many other modern novels for whom stalking the savage libido is more fun than kinship or community; who will leave town either to find their callow selves, as if they'd lost anything important, or, more transgressively, to kill a bear, a bull, a whale, a unicorn, a hippogriff, a signifier or, preferably, their fathers.
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"The Accidental Matriarch", The New York Times (20 May 2001)John Leonard
It is universally held that the unicorn is a supernatural being and of auspicious omen; so say the odes, the annals, the biographies of worthies, and other texts whose authority is unimpeachable. Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification. Nor is it like the horse or bull, the wolf or deer. In such circumstances we may be face to face with a unicorn and not know for sure that we are. We know that a certain animal with a mane is a horse and that a certain animal with horns is a bull. We do not know what the unicorn looks like.
Jorge Luis Borges
I love the fact that I grew up in Sterling, I really do. Because when you're growing up in a nondescript, soulless, boring town, you've been given a present from God. And the present is: The Test of the Small Town. And you pass that test when you go, "I'm leaving before I kill everyone and then myself." That's when you pass. You have passed. You fail when you go, "I'll get a job at the Citgo and fill my truck up for free!" Ooops, you f**ked up. And the person who administers your test, year after year, until you can't take it any more until you can't take it and you leave, is the movie critic on the local news. That's the guy whose job it is to keep everything relevant and cool and important away from you. You have to get off your ass and go find it on your own initiative.
Patton Oswalt
What is the White man? What does he do?
The White man is like a human being, but he crushes all other living things under his feet.
Then why, O Ta-Kumsaw, when I look into your heart, why is it that you do not wish to hurt the White man, that you do not wish to kill the White man?
The White man doesn’t know the evil that he does. The White man doesn’t feel the peace of the land, so how can he tell the little deaths he makes? I can’t blame the White man. But I can’t let him stay. So when I make him leave this land, I won’t hate him.Orson Scott Card
Isn't it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it's our unborn children who make our flesh itch.
Thomas Edward (T. E.) Lawrence
In the little town of Princeton where I live, we have more than twenty churches and at least one synagogue, providing different forms of worship and belief for different kinds of people. They do more than any other organizations in the town to hold the community together. Within this community of people, held together by religious traditions of human brotherhood and sharing of burdens, a smaller community of professional scientists also flourishes.
Freeman Dyson
Leonard, John
Leonard, Sugar Ray
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