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And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help — for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

 

Omar Khayyam

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Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench—the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.

 

Aravind Adiga

 

[About drunks.] So, now you've got to go. So you come into the bathroom, close the door; now, don't forget: you owe this to yourself. You've worked hard all week. It's come to this: [leans on his stage chair like a toilet] "Ooooohhhhhh...eeeeehhhhh.....ahh, Jesus... Oh, God... if You get me out of this, I'll never drink again as long as I live... " Now you are ready...to put your face...in a place...that was never built for your face. "Ohhhhh!" Now you feel it coming, so you say "holding on! Holding on! We're going for a ride, yes! Bring it on, yes! Here it comes, I'm ready to explode!" [Imitates someone vomiting into a toilet.] And your muscles lock, everything! And you would not be surprised...you would not be surprised...if you saw your SHOES come out of your mouth! Now that wave has stopped, you say "Oouough!" And you put your head on the side of the bowl...and you thank the toilet bowl! "Thank you, toilet bowl. Thank you for being so cool on the side. Only you understand me, toilet bowl. You're the only friend I have. My wonderful toilet bowl."

 

Bill Cosby

 

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

 

Richard Bach

 

I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.

 

Freeman Dyson

 

We weren't where we were in those times because we had been thrown or moved there. We didn't think so. We felt we had impelled ourselves, like the faring pioneers and immigrants driving their wagons or pushing their barrows who somewhere somehow along the way stopped and settled. [...] True, in some places we stayed on where our fathers and mothers and grandfathers had first settled, but even so we were caught up in that motion if our parents and grandparents had happened to settle in places that those on the move were now headed for or drawn to—seemingly blown to, you might think seeing them, as by those cosmic tornadoes that lift a boy on a bicycle or a chicken coop full of chickens or a ford car with Gramps and Gram inside and set it down unharmed somewhere else.

 

John Crowley