People From Louisiana

"Some of the captured women killed themselves. I didn’t. others yielded and learned to love their captors. I wouldn’t do either one. I knew I would escape. Death is forever; to learn to love the hand that crushes you is a shame not to be borne. Pain and slavery will pass. I believed this and it kept me alive"

"One who forced another was beneath contempt. One who needed to was despised"

"Know you, boy, women are like cats and must explore any new place until they are satisfied. If they don’t they become weak and vain, fretful and ill"

"Its easier to forget a thing without a name. I’ve learned to guard my affections.” “I know, you’ve never asked mine.”"

"Women are weak, easily swayed by passion, driven by desire, lust. He lit a fire in her body, a fire that still burned, even in his absence"

"There’s no sense crying over what can’t be changed” “that’s what people cry over, things they can’t change”"

"The eyes were too intense, tortured almost. He was tall, but the body was wiry rather than powerful. Nature had gifted him with a cat’s grace and lethal swiftness, rather than the raw power of a bull"

"So easily can we destroy those things we love. Had his moment of wounded pride, his stupid frenzy, snuffed out that fragile courage? Would the strong spirit that survived so much anguish be ended as easily as this?"

"I was angry with you about him, furious that he so much as set eyes on you. I would rather kill you than see you lie in his arms.” “is that love then? A thing that leads to murder?” “I don’t know. In all honesty, I don’t know. You’re mine. What’s mine I keep, I rule, and give my body over to defend. I offer you my honor, and my life. That’s not an easy thing. Its within your power to break my pride, and take that life, insignificant though it is.” “you put it very simply.” “its not. Such a gift rouses strange passions, fears of treachery, and deep distrust. I’m not immune to them.” “no one told me it would be like this. Perhaps it won't go into words, what I feel for you. Its not desire, yet I love your touch, the warm softness of your flesh against mine.”"

"I like a man willing to pay the price of his pleasures"

"Elin wondered, sitting in the sweat bath, what that had to do with passion or desire, and decided – nothing. It was justification. They had murdered the men and must prove, on the helpless bodies of the women, that they were truly stronger. Prove it to exhaustion… not even pleasure was in it for them"

"Do you hate me so much?” “no, I can’t hate you. I wish I could, but I can’t”"

"She knew he was telling his soul what it needed to hear so that he could gather his courage to go and go what he must"

"He knew he should be furious, but he couldn’t sustain a decent rage around her. She had too much about her of the ferocious kitten. Something small and fuzzy, just learning it had claws and how to use them"

"Have I your word?” “yes, you have my word. But, you don’t believe me.” “no, men’s promises to women are easily made and even more easily broken.”"

"Love doesn’t go away because we want it to, but remains even when it becomes a searing pain, leaving the heart a desert of bitter remorse and grief for joy, a happiness that once has been and now never could return. There had been a time when simply to touch this little bit of linen he held now so casually brought every aching moment of that love back. The sense of desolate pain-drenched loss traveled up his arm, enclosing his heart like a set of icy fingers. A time when to look upon what it held was unbearable"

"It almost feels like a zombie at this point; it's the walking dead. It's such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race....Right now we're in this kind of dicey, do we have an event, what event is it, which one do we go to? I think we're in an uncomfortable transition zone when really the real E3 died a couple of years ago.""

"Somebody asked me what I thought next generation meant and what about the PlayStation 3 was next generation. The only next gen system I've seen is the Wii - the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement."

"In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space."

"And for anyone to think that murder can be resolved by murdering, it's ridiculous. I mean, we look at all of the wars that we have throughout other countries and other nations, and all it does is – this violence, all it does is engender violence. There seems to be no end, but a continuous cycle, an incessant process of blood and gore that doesn't end. And through violence, you can't possibly obtain peace. You can, in a sense, occupy a belief of peace; in other words, through this mechanism of violence, you – it appears that because there is a standing army or standing police that is used in brutality or violence or a system that uses brutality or violence that that is going to totally eliminate or stop criminous behavior or criminous minds or killings or what have you, but it doesn't."

"The death penalty, it's not a system of justice, it is a system of – a so-called system of justice that perpetuates a, shall I say, a vindictive type of response, a vigilante type of aura upon it. We’re talking about something that is barbaric. We’re talking about something that – it doesn't deter anything. I mean, if it did, then it wouldn't be so many – especially in California, we're talking about over 650 individuals on death row. And if it was a deterrent, this place wouldn't be filled like this. And it's an expensive ordeal that – the money, as you know, the monetary means comes out of the taxpayers' pocket."

"Well, the fact that a person such as me, of my ilk, who deemed the opposing gang as an eternal enemy, it wasn't hard for people to believe me, because they knew where I stood. There were no clandestine or latent messages. Everybody knew where I stood. And for me to come out and say that what we were doing was wrong, it was believable. That's why people didn't – or at least the gang members didn't discredit my propensity and my alacrity for peace. That's why I was embraced with sincerity by those who I knew and those I didn't know on both sides of the fence."

"And when you maintain this sense of peace and you live by truth, by integrity, these things don't bother me. It doesn't. I have been experiencing moribund type experiences most of my life. I could have died many a times. I could have died when I was shot. I could have died when I was shot at by the police and rival gang members. There were many opportunities for me to die. Of course, I don't want to die. I mean, after my redemption I have what I consider to be a joie de vivre, so, you know, I have an enjoyment, a love for life. So that’s why I can calmly sit here and speak to you or anyone else with peace in my heart and peace in my mind. I don't get rattled. Nothing can rattle me. Nothing will ever rattle me. I have been rattled the majority of my life."

"We started out — at least my intent was to, in a sense — address all of the so-called neighboring gangs in the area and to put, in a sense — I thought I can cleanse the neighborhood of all these, you know, marauding gangs. But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing."

"I’m talking to any youth who are considered to be or deemed to be at-risk or even hinting around being a thug or a criminal of any type of genre. I mostly propagate education and the need for it, because to me, that is the terra firma in which any human being must stand in order to survive in this country or to survive anywhere in the world, in dealing, you know, with every aspect of civilization, every aspect of surviving. Education is very important. It took me all of these years to discern that, and now I do."

"Between the years of 1988 to 1994, and it's a continuous — it's an incessant reality for me. My redemptive transition began in solitary confinement, and unlike other people who express their experiences of an epiphany or a satori, I never experienced anything of that ilk. Mine — that wouldn't have been enough. I often tell people that I didn't have a 360-degree turnaround; I had a 720-degree turnaround. It took me twice as much. Just one spin around wouldn't have done it. I was that messed up, that lost, that mentacided, brainwashed. So, I was able to gradually in a piecemeal fashion change my life slowly but surely through education, through edification, through spiritual cultivation, battling my demons. And eventually, that led to me embracing redemption."

"Working together, we can put an end to this cycle that creates deep pain in the hearts of our mothers, our fathers, and our people, who have lost loved ones to this senseless violence."

"Once I was in solitary confinement, it provided me with the isolated moments to reflect on my past and to dwell upon something greater, something better than involving myself in thuggery and criminality. It had to be more to life than that. It had to be more than the madness that was disseminating throughout this entire prison."

"It's 9:15 on 12/13 and another black king will be taken from the scene."

"What is certain is that since 1992, “Tookie” has been a voice reaching out to the voiceless. He has encouraged youth to lift themselves up so as not to end up locked up. His voice has reached impoverished and alienated youth in places police dare not tread. Through his personal transformation in prison, he has brought light to dark places because he knows where to look. He speaks truth to power with a sincere knowledge of what lies ahead for these youth and gives them a stark look at what their future could be if they don’t renounce gang life and all that it stands for. And they listen, because he was one of them."

"An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular."

"A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall."

"The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait."

"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn’t wait to leave."

"Sign on the wall in the 1992 Clinton campaign headquarters : The economy, stupid."

"James Carville was one person I was certain I’d dislike when I sat down to interview him in the early spring of 1996. Carville was a famous partisan. He ran Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and shamelessly shilled for the Democratic Party. Watching him from afar, Carville struck me as a transparent fraud. What I discovered in talking to him was that James Carville was indeed a fraud, but openly so, in the most honest and genuine way. Over time, Carville wound up one of my favorite people in the world, one of the few friends I’ve gone to repeatedly for serious life advice. I haven’t taken a new job in twenty years without calling him first. James Carville is a genuinely wise man. What a shock that was to discover. Life is full of happy surprises like that, thank God. They more than compensate for the rest."

"Why does a dog lick his dick? Because he can. Why does Congress spend money like that? Because it can."

"When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil."

"At the beginning of the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, adviser James Carville was stunned at the power the bond market had over the government. If he came back, Carville said: I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."

"Elections are about fucking your enemies. Winning is about fucking your friends."

"Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find."

"What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something, and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do."

"Look, if George W. Bush and his Republican cronies walked on water, I'd be the guy out there yelling that they couldn't swim. But don't take it from me: we've now heard it from the military commanders and our intelligence community: George Bush's actions in Iraq have not made us safer. They've done the opposite."

"Between Paoli and Penn Hills, Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn't film The Deer Hunter there for nothing -- the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas."

"Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops: it's easier to get away with murder."

"Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"

"Yeah, I graduated with a 4.0... blood alcohol level."

"I didn’t just experiment with marijuana — if you know what I mean."

"Hurricane [Katrina] hit the Gulf Coast and destroyed much of the Gulf Coast — that was an act of God … Now what happened to New Orleans, that was a complete failure of the federal government. Complete negligence by the feds."

"Washington is a dirty diaper. It's time for a change."