Immigrants To The United States

"No sooner does one rise a little above one's own petty joys and pains, than crystal clear wellsprings of new joy and new pain open up."

"If my idea is weak, it will flare up just for a moment, halting, fearful of every hurdle. I want to select the brightest and most beautiful ideas in generations, ideas which have until now only revealed themselves to a select few, and make them clear and comprehensible for thousands and tens of thousands of people. May those thousands, tens of thousands, warm themselves in the same sun that shines for me, may they enjoy the same happiness that has been lavished on me."

"even if he brought me the worst unhappiness, even if he should cause my soul to age terribly, there's one thing that he could never kill inside me-my striving for higher things, my ardent longing for the mountain peak."

"I am now old and weary. Life storms and seethes just as before, casting incandescent yearnings into human souls, summoning them to happiness and suffering, but life no longer knocks on my door: its waves do not reach as far as my threshold. I have already drained my glass to the very dregs. I am weary. My lonely days, my sleepless nights, pass in peaceful silence-without joy, without pain, without desire. With each new day and each passing night I creep one step closer to eternal peace and calm-to death. And the closer I get to death the more intently my gaze lingers on my tear-soaked, paper-garland-crowned youth. During sleepless nights I see, paraded before me, the shadows of those who bore light or shade in my soul, causing it to quake out of love or hatred."

"Reality and dreams are weaving together, flowing into each other and I don't know where one ends and the other begins."

"I'm young and strong and not afraid to stare my sorrow in the eyes, drinking it down to the dregs. And because I am young and strong the work draws me in, just as life does, the joy of life. Lately I find myself pausing in wonder when faced with the creations of the long-gone, half-forgotten peoples. The past is becoming as familiar and dear to me as the present, as the advance fulfillment of tomorrow. I sometimes feel as though I'm bathing in the light of those stars, long dead, which continue to send us their bright, shining light. We are bound to them by thin threads, spun from gold."

"I have no desire for rhetoric, for platitudes, and cannot find the words as deep and great as my awe for mankind, as my awe for its creation. Not with words-I will prove it with my life."

"I think that that meltdown reflects just like a general hostility they have towards people who are upholding actual progressive values and upholding actual journalism standards. The reason why they slandered me at that time is because I was in Syria and Syria is a, you know, touchy subject for many people on the left... So I’ve been pretty much alone in the U.S. media in covering it and so The Young Turks, instead of covering this story, have ignored it. And then when I went to Syria and I put a short video talking about it, that helped trigger this meltdown."

"I sit with my books all day. But then the evening comes, quiet, nostalgic and sad and, unnoticed, the work slips away out of my hands. I suddenly get the urge to see wide, open skies and dark earth, the urge to breathe freely and not suffocates under heavy stones. Here in the long, narrow streets between high walls, you won't find wonders such as these. I throw myself down on the bed, close my eyes and my fantasy takes me away to where the sky is broad and wide and the earth is free to breathe-to my"

"What was she trying to tell me? Did she want to say that life was empty and grey, pitiless in its ordinariness? Like a wicked serpent life wraps its coils around your airy dreams and winged desires, smothering them with its venomous breath, killing them on the spot before they have a chance to bloom. Your struggles will be in vain, your attempts to free yourself from the ordinary, to rise above-life will ridicule and crush you without mercy. Is that what she wanted to say? Or did she want to say that love is small and ephemeral?-A pale spark against the dark back-drop of life; flashing but for a moment, only to vanish in the thick darkness? It cannot open up cloudless, starlit skies; cannot pour blue light over the cloudy paths of life. It is easily extinguished with only a little water; even its purist flame does not burn eternal. Is that what she wanted to say? Or perhaps she wanted to remind me that however beautiful and jubilant life can be, however brightly the sun of love can shimmer, embracing you with its gentle rays, there will always be, standing behind your shoulder, a merciless enemy as old as life itself-death. It stands behind you as you stretch out your hand toward the happiness calling out to you nearby; as you lie in the arms of your ardent beloved and dream of eternity; as you begin a great project and in passionate desires see it through to its end-it is always there behind you, with a cold smile on its bony face, ready to steal away your life, your love, your creative accomplishments-What was she trying to tell me?"

"The authentic artist carries within himself another world to which the ordinary person has no access. The great value of the poet is that he enriches us with new, thoroughly experienced feelings, with unseen or differently seen landscapes."

"There are other ways as well from a linguistic or literary aspect, where you could see how Jewish tradition was being reinvented with a kind of radical lens. For example, Anna Margolin, a Yiddish modernist writer, described herself in a letter where she says, “I've always been an anarchist. I've never been able to be an atheist. Indeed, in times of trouble, I spoke to God and I gave God hell.” And that's one way of modeling the psychological straddling of having grown up with a religious background and then reinventing it in some way towards anarchism."

"Aaron Maté received the Izzy Award for his persistence toward finding out the truth behind the “Russia election collusion” story, primarily during his reporting for “The Nation.” During his acceptance speech, he discussed the importance of relying on factual evidence in journalism. “Journalism is about following the facts — drawing conclusions and inferences based on the available evidence,” Maté said. Maté also spoke about the President Donald Trump and Russia conspiracy. He said he believes the mainstream media has been promulgating a false narrative that Trump colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. “In short, I think Mueller’s pro show that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced by the U.S. media political establishment is largely a work of fiction,” Maté said. Maté said he believes journalists need to be more skeptical of claims from the intelligence community. “Whatever allegation is made, there must be concrete evidence,” Maté said."

"The Yiddish poet Reuven Ayzland kept her informed about how her poems were being received in the New York cafes where the Yiddish literary intelligentsia gathered. About the reception of her poem "To Be a Beggarwoman," which had just appeared in the weekly newspaper, Di Fraye Arbeter Shtime (The Liberated Workers' Voice), he wrote: "Last night, Anna Margolin was the main topic among the literati. A thousand hypotheses were offered about who might be hiding behind the name, and the general opinion is that it must certainly be a man." Later, he wrote her again: "Why people want Anna Margolin to be a man is beyond me. The general opinion, however, is that these poems are written by an experienced hand. And a woman can't write like that." These clearly prejudiced responses indicate how widespread such attitudes were at that time and perhaps cast some light on the reception her book was to receive."

"Long and sorrowful stretched out those days."

"My books, my great friends, gaze down on me with quiet resentment, calling me to them."

"I want, angry and tender one,"

"Aaron Maté, reporter for The Grayzone and host of the “Pushback” podcast, on Monday shot back at accusations from the hosts of The Young Turks (TYT) that he was paid by the Russian government and denied the killing of Syrian children. Maté said the criticism stemmed from his acknowledgement of the U.S. and its allies have “waged a multi-billion dollar dirty war that left Syria in ruins,” as well as his reporting that suggested a 2018 chemical attack in Syria had been staged. Matè’s reporting has suggested that the intergovernmental chemical weapons watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence of a chemical attack in Syria that triggered retaliatory actions from the U.S. and its allies."

"Even though Anna Margolin was far from typical, her life and her writing tell us something about the restlessness and dislocation that marked her and many other Jewish women of her time...Margolin wrote around what Tillie Olsen calls "hidden silences" or "one book silences," publishing journalism for years, then editing a volume of the poetry of others (Dos yidishe lid in amerike (The Yiddish Poem in America), 1923). Her own poetic voice emerged in the single volume Lider, published when she was 42, and even here the images tell of enforced silence, muffled cries, women mute as statues, "madness closing tenderly over [the] throat". Margolin actually felt the silence, writing desperately in letters of pressure in her throat, obstruction; imagining growths, tumors."

"Above is a patch of sky, but this has already turned grey, cold and deeply calm. Slowly, slowly, as though embarrassed, long, soft, dark shadows crawl in through the open window, stealing their way into the room, growing bold, and making themselves comfortable in every corner."

""A man over forty is in his prime. When can one live if not now? When does one know how to live if not in these years? It's not with twenty, but with forty that one comes into one's true youth. In France they understand these things."

"This is how it always goes: when my life becomes dismal and sombre, I delve into my past and select sparks of pure joy, of untainted happiness and use them to light up my blackened soul. And here it is, my beautiful dream: A quiet, trembling night spread its wings over the blooming valley, shrouding it in starless obscurity."

"Yearning conquers fear."

"My face burns with shame."

"Although Anna Margolin was neglected by male critics of her time, who dismissed her as a "woman writer," and her reputation suffered during the general decline of interest in Yiddish writing, now after more than half a century of obscurity, her work has been rediscovered. A new generation of feminist scholars-Adrienne Cooper, Marcia Falk, Kathryn Hellerstein, Norma Fein Pratt, Sheva Zucker, and others are reappraising Margolin's achievement. Her poetry, reissued in a Yiddish edition, speaks to us across the generations with perhaps even greater strength today than it had in her lifetime. Anna Margolin dreamed of immortality. In the last of her three poems titled "Autumn," she wrote: “Heavy autumn, heavy step, I am old./Dark heart of mine, don't curse, believe in miracles:/somewhere in the world, in a city/I am flowering like a lily.”"

"Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey."

"My stepping away from acting was not an easy decision to make. I had to be realistic: There were not a lot of opportunities for an Asian actor at that time. I had no choice but to do something else, so I went to film school, graduated, and started working behind the camera."

"When I walk on a movie set, knowing how difficult it is to get to have this opportunity, I’m always grateful. I didn’t think I would have this amazing second act as an actor in my early 50s, and I hope my story inspires someone to not give up on their dreams."

"I noticed Asian actors were getting more opportunities, and I began to harbour this dream of getting back into acting, but it took a lot of courage to give voice to that dream. One day I decided: if I don’t do this, I will regret it."

"When I got back into acting, I decided I was going to go back to my birth name – that was really important to me."

"For the longest time, all I wanted was just a job. Just an opportunity to act, to show people what I can do. This movie, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ has given me so much beyond anything I could have ever asked for."

"There are so many people out there who doubt themselves, who have dreams they’ve given up or didn’t think would ever come true. To those people, I hope my story inspires them."

"I grew up with very traditional Chinese family values. Since I was a little kid, my parents taught me to internalize the emotions that we have instead of projecting them outward. It’s very contradicting to what an actor is. With all these internalized emotions, I just needed to spend a long time with myself and bring all of that out."

"Everything happens for a reason. For the longest time I was so insecure and always felt like I wasn’t good enough. Every time I lost a job to somebody else, I thought: ‘That man deserves the job better than I did.’ Now I understand that everything needed to happen the way it did. Just don’t give up."

"The irony, like I said, is that I didn't pursue acting when I was a little kid. But as I got older, in my late teens and early 20s, I really took it seriously. That’s what I wanted to do, what I wanted my profession to be. But when I started pursuing it, there were just not a lot of opportunities for me. It was extremely difficult for an Asian actor at that time. In Hollywood, very, very few child actors make smooth and successful transitions into adult acting. It's very difficult for many, but I think it's a hundred times—a thousand times—more difficult when you are an Asian actor. I found myself at a crossroads at a very early age. Do I want to continue down a path where I just didn't see many opportunities for myself? Or do I want to go down a path, an unknown path, where I really don't know what I want to do? And I struggled for a long, long time. And at the same time, I was just hoping that phone would ring with an amazing offer to be in a movie like Indiana Jones or The Goonies, or a great role for an Asian actor, and it never came. I was so dispirited and disheartened."

"I was raised to never forget where I came from and to always remember who gave me my first opportunity."

"This time last year, all I was hoping for was just a job. And just when I think that it can’t get any better, it does. What an incredible honor."

"As I grew older, I started to wonder if that was it, if that was just luck. For so many years, I was afraid I had nothing more to offer. No matter what I did, I would never surpass what I achieved as a kid."

"When you have a dream and you kind of bury it because you think it won’t come true, to see it finally come true is incredible."

"When I stepped away, that dream, all the dreams that I had of, you know, imagining one day of walking down the red carpet at the Oscars, those scenes dissipated and they were so distant that I didn't think they would ever come back. And so for me to be here today, to be nominated, it is so surreal. And it goes to show that, you know, if you stick with it, dreams do come true no matter how long it takes."

"But I think I’ve cried more in the last six months than I cried in the previous 20 years. Hearing all these wonderful comments from people about how much they’ve missed me on the screen and their warm embrace of my return has made me very emotional."

"On this night, Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease, and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance and asks it perhaps for the last time."

"I just wanted to watch the book come to life."

"She was a dear person, a very funny lady, wonderful heart, was always trying to do things for people."

"She loved it. It really stimulated the last years of her life, because she got thousands of emails from fans, She was in great demand."

"My life has reached the point where I'm now 'camp'."

"I've been to location shoots in Mexico before, and everyone ends up getting sick. And me, playing someone who's 101-years-old? I'm not there yet!"

"One thing I can say about this glorious business that we’ve been privileged to be a part of. Some people’s past rises to haunt them. Our past has risen to bless us, and to bring us to places like this, to dear, warm people such as you. As far as I’m concerned, this business has been a passport to the world, for all of us. No matter where we go, there is some soul lurking who will come up and say, “Aren’t you …? And didn’t you used to be …? And you say yes, and you’ve found a friend. And this can happen anywhere, thanks to the late, late show on television! And to wonderful people with very long memories. We bless you all!"

"Our obituary will say we were in Gone With the Wind and we'll be proud of it."

"One day my English teacher criticized me, and I was furious. I thought, I wouldn't have to listen to Miss So-and-So if I were an actress."