Balkenhol Sunburst Quotes & Sayings

We in Congress need to support the American forces in every conceivable way, giving them the tools to continue to convert, capture or kill terrorists and the time to equip the Iraqi security forces. — Bob Inglis

If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it. — Robert Heller

A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet. — Rudyard Kipling

What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When I was a med student, the first patient I met with this sort of problem was a sixty-two-year-old man with a brain tumor. We strolled into his room on morning rounds, and the resident asked him, "Mr. Michaels, how are you feeling today?" "Four six one eight nineteen!" he replied, somewhat affably. The tumor had interrupted his speech circuitry, so he could speak only in streams of numbers, but he still had prosody, he could still emote: smile, scowl, sigh. He recited another series of numbers, this time with urgency. There was something he wanted to tell us, but the digits could communicate nothing other than his fear and fury. The team prepared to leave the room; for some reason, I lingered. "Fourteen one two eight," he pleaded with me, holding my hand. "Fourteen one two eight." "I'm sorry." "Fourteen one two eight," he said mournfully, staring into my eyes. And then I left to catch up to the team. He died a few months later, buried with whatever message he had for the world. — Paul Kalanithi

I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems. — Yusef Komunyakaa