Bolkhov Quotes & Sayings

I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed. — Anne Lamott

Pay attention to the voice within ... Sometimes the voice of your conscience gets drowned out by crowd noise or by the pep rally of temptations. And your mind may put some selfish spin on the ball, rationalizing that it's okay to veer away from the ethical route. When we run into conflicts between ethical "shoulds" and our selfish "wants," we all argure out ways to con our conscience. But take pains to listen, because it has your best interests at heart. — Price Pritchett

Life is too short to be safe and sit still and do nothing. Unless of course that is what God has for you to do in a particular place in your life. — Mary Engelbreit

[My advice to a beginning photographer is] sit down with a pencil and paper and think about what your life is about. What you are about. Don't even take a camera into your hands before you figure that out. — Tina Barney

Daphne's thought in Nation:
This was no time to go totally mad. You had to maintain standards. — Terry Pratchett

May God deliver humankind from power of darkness into the wonderful light. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,
that they shall hear worse orators than themselves. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing, it seems to me, is a secret act - as secret as dreaming - and that was one aspect of this strange and dangerous craft I had never thought about much. — Stephen King

Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen. — Pierre Trudeau

This is who you are. You must be strong. You cannot fail us. If you fail then we all fail and the King of Chaos will rise once again. — Rae Karl

Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga. — Ivan Turgenev

There's no 'right or wrong' when we describe what is beautiful and what is not. — Fennel Hudson