Clean Read Quotes & Sayings

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.' — Ann Richards

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose, she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, here
the sonnet.
But she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all. He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him, if that were possible, to increase. — Virginia Woolf

Finding her first smile since she read the telegram, Isabelle let out a soft sigh. "I sometimes wonder if you're even real, Mr. Gallagher."
He smiled in reply. "Oh, I'm real Isabelle. I promise you that."
-Gabriel and Isabelle in GALLAGHER'S HOPE — MK McClintock

Clean code can be read, and enhanced by a developer other than its original author. It has unit and acceptance tests. It has meaningful names. It provides one way rather than many
ways for doing one thing. It has minimal dependencies, which are explicitly defined, and provides a clear and minimal API. Code should be
literate since depending on the language, not all necessary information can be expressed clearly in code alone.

-Dave Thomas, founder
of OTI, godfather of the
Eclipse strategy — Robert C. Martin

I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count! — Zoe Kazan

When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl
not Frances, not anyone I've ever known
and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me
that one about being chartless
and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me
that one about the little lamb that made thee
and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door. — J.D. Salinger

So many gay jokes tonight about (James) Franco. Apparently if you're clean, well dressed and mildly cultured, you're super gay now. Is that why the rest of you guys are so aggressively fat and dirty? You think if you read one book and take a shower, dicks are going to just fly into your face. — Aziz Ansari

I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own - hard for me, at least. — Gene Wolfe

A Book I Can Put Down

I'm halfway through
and I've gotten used
to the way it wants
to be read. This writer
wants to spoon it up,
wants to watch me
swallow it. This writer
makes a point of good
deeds, clean living,
god and country,
when what I want
is sin and shame,
the rusty metal edge
of cruelty, varieties
of pain, his mother
still crying years later,
just like mine. I want
a writer who's given up
on the moral of the story,
one who'll hand me
a knife and sit back
to see what I do with it.

(Published in Anderbo) — Antonia Clark

I try to eat super clean: No processed sugars, no corn syrups, nothing frozen in a box that you can microwave. If I read the ingredient label and I don't know what something is, I assume it's bad. — Kacy Catanzaro

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. "
"Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry."
"Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."
Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.
"But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics. — Maud Hart Lovelace

He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Lass, I have never lied to you. I adore you and there have never been any other women from the future here. And these"- he flung a tampon in the air- "cleaning swabs, I cannot fathom why they upset you so greatly, but I assure you I have never let the maids use them."
Lisa's brow furrowed. No man could be so stupid. "Cleaning Swabs?"
He snatched up a gun and jerked the barrel in her direction, and an unwrapped tampon shot out. It was coated with black from the slow corrosion of the steel. She eyed it for a moment, bent, and plucked it from the floor. "You clean your guns with these?"
He lowered the gun. "Is that not the purpose for which they were designed? I vow I could not conceive of another."
Didn't you read the box?"
There were too many words I didn't understand! — Karen Marie Moning

If I read the newspaper I come out dirtier than I went in. If I read my Bible, I come out cleaner than I went in, and I like being clean! — Smith Wigglesworth

Hale looked at Macey, who added, "Seven minutes since shots fired."
"Kat what's the emergency response tie in Midtown Manhattan?"
"Not long enough if they want a clean exit," she told him.
Macey hadn't heard Kat's words, but she looked at Hale like she'd read his mind. — Ally Carter

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder — James Joyce

I'm out there to clean the plate. Once they've read what I've written on a subject, I want them to think, 'That's it!' I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they've written a story, nobody will ever try it again. — Richard Ben Cramer

In some literature, I've read, weather is used as a metaphor. The darker and stormier the weather outside the more diabolical the deeds done. When the clouds roll away, however, the rain has washed away all the blood in the streets and the world is clean and new again, as if all the violence and destruction of the storm served a divine purpose. — Benjamin R. Smith

Books were seen as a waste of time. What was the point, unless you were reading for information? To lose oneself in a book was to be slightly wacky, a little greedy and ultimately slothful. There was no value. You couldn't make money from reading a book. A book did not clean bathrooms and waxed floors. It did not put the garden in. You couldn't have a conversation while reading. It was arrogant and alienated others. In short, those who read were wasteful and haughty and incapable of living in the real world. They were dreamers. — David Bergen

The next "I will" is found in Luke, fifth chapter. We read of a leper who came to Christ, and said: "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." The Lord touched him, saying, "I will: be thou clean"; and immediately the leprosy left him. — D.L. Moody

Do not oversleep and miss the school bus-
you'll be late.
That's a habit teachers generally
don't appreciate.
Never tell your friends at school
that you still wet your bed.
They are sure to tease you,
and you'll wish that you were dead.

Never call your teacher a name
when she's not near you.
Teachers' ears are excellent,
so they can always hear you.

Do not read a textbook when your hands
aren't clean-it's tricky
to separate the pages when the pages
get real sticky.
When you go out for a team
it's always wise to practice.
When you are a substitute,
the bench can feel like cactus.

Do not copy homework from a friend
who is a dummy.
If you do, I'm sure that you
will get a grade that's crummy.

And if your report card's bad,
don't blame it on your buddy.
Kiss up to your parents quick,
or they might make you study. — Bruce Lansky

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

When you are first hurt, your anger is fresh and bright and clean. It is hot and eager to defeat injustice. It makes you sharp and keen and quick. so that you can outrace your hurt and leave it lying on some faraway ground where it happened. This is why children cry so bitterly and scream until their faces go read at the smallest hunger or loneliness. They must get terribly, piercingly angry so that they can get out in front of all the little hurts of being new, or else they will never get free of them. But anger can go off like milk in the icebox. It can go hard and rotting and turn everything around it rotting too. By the time you have made your peace, your anger has reeked up your whole heart, it's so gunked up with fuming. That's why you must wash your anger every now and again, or else you can't even move an inch. — Catherynne M Valente

[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive! — Megan Sweeney

I wasn't born to cook or clean,
but to read and write,
if you don't like me the way I am,
then go fly a kite. — Besa Kosova

Black-and-white thinking is the addict's mentality, which can be a bar to recovery when one is still active. But an addict who finds the willingness can then rely on the same trait to stay clean: "Just don't drink," they say in AA.
How's that going to work for an addicted eater? Food addicts have to take the tiger out of the cage three times a day. I've read that some drinkers have tried "controlled drinking," and it hasn't been very successful. Eaters don't just have to try it; they must practice it to survive.
Having a food plan is an attempt to address that, and having clear boundaries is a key to its working. But the comfort of all or nothing is just out of reach.
...
I'm saying that food addicts, unlike alcoholics and may others, have both to try for perfection and to accept that perfection is unattainable, and that the only tool left is a wholesome discipline.
The problem is, if we had any clue about wholesome discipline, we wouldn't be addicts. — Michael Prager

If congress refuses to obey its own rules. If congress refuses to pass a balanced budget. If congress refuses to read the Bills. Then I say, sweep the place clean, limit their terms, and send them HOME! — Rand Paul

I like a new clean book, freshly bound, particularly when I am the first to read it. I like dirty books - where other people have been before me, slipping fried eggs between the pages as markers - rather less. — Nancy Spain

I drink too much. I smoke too much. I eat like a college student, and I don't exercise enough. I do drugs and I give my love to boys who hate me a little bit and I don't always wash my hands after I clean the litterbox. But I'm absolutely certain the thing that will one day stop my heart for good is the inchoate rage I feel when I read over something I've published and discover a typo. — Julio Alexi Genao

It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. There is the study and practice of the craft in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body. The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted. The movement become clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life, the law which governs its outer aspects — Martha Graham

If she hadn't talked to the kids about death that day. If she hadn't read them "The Charge of the Light Brigade", and if they hadn't asked what being dead was like, then she wouldn't have stroked Melanie's hair and none of this would have happened. She wouldn't have made a promise she couldn't keep and couldn't walk away from. She could be as selfish as she's always been, and forgive herself the way everybody else does, and wake up every day as clean as if she'd just been born. — M.R. Carey

Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write. — Robert C. Martin

Mace, you never read Smoky the Cowhorse,did you?
No.
Well,ol' Smoky, he had somebad things happen to him,had the heart knocked clean out of him.But he hung on and came out of it okay.I've been bashed up pretty good,Mason, but I'm going to make it. — S.E. Hinton

Two solid weeks of beautiful weather. Clear sunny days, low humidity, temperature in the seventies, air so brisk and clean you could read E PLURIBUS UNUM on a dime across the street. Clear cloudless nights, temperature in the fifties, the sky a great soft raven's breast, an immense bowl of octopus ink salted with a million hard white crystalline stars and garnished with a huge moon pulsing with white light. It was disgusting. — Donald E. Westlake

What they don't realize is that I'm not in the business to make clothes. I'm not in the business to make more money for myself, for Christ's sake. This is the reason Patagonia exists - to put into action the recommendations I read about in books to avoid environmental collapse. That's the reason I'm in business - to try to clean up our own act, and try to influence other companies to do the right thing, and try to influence our customers to do the right thing. So we're not going to change. — Yvon Chouinard

I had read another book, called Chromophobia, by David Batchelor, around this time, and he described how the modernist design aesthetic - the white kitchen, white floors, white walls - is a denial of our humanity. The reason bathrooms are white, too, is not only so you know that they are clean, but also so you know that they are not what's inside of us. — Emily Spivack

The room had kept his secrets. It gave nothing away. Not in the disarray of rumpled sheets, nor the untidiness of a kicked off shoe, or a wet towel hung over the back of a chair. Or a half-read book. It was like a room in a hospital after the nurse had just been. The floor was clean, the walls white. The cupboard closed. Shoes arranged. The dustbin empty. — Arundhati Roy

She read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, here - the sonnet — Virginia Woolf

Yet above all this, she insists on vigilance. Gluten is hiding everywhere in everything, and even the tiniest crumb - the tiniest crumb of a crumb - could get me sick. It's more important than the mere stomach issues; failure to follow a gluten-free diet grossly increases one's chances of developing thyroid cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases. These, she taught me, are the real reasons to check and double-check. The reasons she uses separate pasta strainers and knives. I learned to read labels for hidden ingredients, to call the company and ask the source of the caramel color and the modified food starch. To avoid foods fried in the same oil that had fried breaded meat. To speak with chefs at restaurants and ask to use a clean part of the grill, a clean salad bowl, a flourless dressing. We were careful. We were the best. And at home I never, ever got sick. — Marina Keegan

I had not until then fully realized that I was odd, that there was anything strange about growing up with a single-parent genius. I thought all homes had equations scrawled with disc-marker across all the cabinets and walls, and clean laundry in the freezer, and defrosting chicken in the tool drawer. I thought everyone read a book a day and listened to hours of ancient music. — Spider Robinson

I never planned any of this, so I don't even think about getting acting jobs. If they call, they call. I sure don't sit on the sidelines waiting to be asked, like a nice little Catholic girl at the dance. I keep myself extremely busy. I've written 91 plays! I love to read. And I always have something to clean. — Robert Michael Morris

I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write. — Ken Thompson

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it ... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. — C.S. Lewis

Moses was good at his job. He was efficient. He was always busy making the room clean. But at the same time, he could read the family's emotions. He never made a medical diagnosis or overstepped the bounds of his position. But he shared a lot of practical, commonsense wisdom gleaned from helping hundreds of families make it through traumatic surgery. Moses reinforced the good: "You're sitting up today; that's a good boy." He offered encouragement: "You're brave. You're strong. You can do it." He gave practical advice: "You've been through a lot, but you're coming through it now. Your body knows what to do. Just rest and let it do it." Matt and Mindi looked forward to visits from Moses because as he made their hospital room clean, he also gave them hope. — David Sturt

This green place in which I stood with James turned slowly around us like a music box. All my memories returning, and all his. I could see and feel each of his days and he mine. Childhood songs, books read, hearts broken, arguments forgiven.The sweetness of these imperfections far outshining the regrets. Our lives overlapped as naturally as two blades of grass brushing together.
My pain forgotten, my clothes dry and clean, I pulled James close to me. As he lifted my chin, I felt no sensation of falling as when I had been Light touching one who is Quick. It wasn't the mere heat of a stolen moment in borrowed flesh. We touched now soul to soul, both of us Light. And when we kissed, the garden rocked, floating upstream. — Laura Whitcomb

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift. — Shauna Niequist

Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention! — Catherynne M Valente

What good is it if you read Plato and never clean your toilet? asked my mother, reverting to the values of Jubilee. — Alice Munro

When she was teaching us to garden, cook, read, clean, sew, she said she was preparing us for life. Well, life has changed a lot in the years since she was my age, but somehow the lessons haven't really changed. They've evolved. And I want to be part of that. — Robyn Carr

He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor's boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on. — Douglas Adams

Whenever I read stories of people doing huge pranks on set, all I think is, 'These people have too much time on their hands.' Besides, I don't want to make some poor assistant clean up someone's trailer after I've filled it with, say, Cadbury eggs. See? I can't even think of a good prank. — Amy Poehler

To Severine, his expression was blank. Spotless and clean. She wondered what it'd be like to create a mess in his eyes, to leave an imprint. — Calia Read

I read the miserable story of the play in which she was the one true loving soul. It obviously described the spread of an epidemic brain fever which, like typhoid, was perhaps caused by seepings from the palace graveyard into the Elsinore water supply. From an inconspicuous start among sentries on the battlements the infection spread through prince, king, prime minister and courtiers causing hallucinations, logomania and paranoia resulting in insane suspicions and murderous impulses. I imagined myself entering the palace quite early in the drama with all the executive powers of an efficient public health officer. The main carriers of the disease (Claudius, Polonius and the obviously incurable Hamlet) would he quarantined in separate wards. A fresh water supply and efficient modern plumbing would soon set the Danish state right and Ophelia, seeing this gruff Scottish doctor pointing her people toward a clean and healthy future, would be powerless to withhold her love. — Alasdair Gray

Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word. — Alice McDermott

Suicides - you read of it ... but you don't know the truth, if you were to see it you would go insane! Cut throats, cut wrists, hangings, suffocating, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, more shit. Suicides always shit themselves, did you know that! Life's final shit, the final act of madness; smell that you rats! Clean me up you pigs, zip me up in the bag you scum and get me out of here ... Get me the fuck out of here ... get me out! — Stephen Richards

I read somewhere that abs are made in the kitchen, and I'd like to agree. I like to think that I try to eat pretty clean, pretty good food. — Parker Young

I looked at our hands, caked and coated in red, but entwined. The pristine moment when they were clasped like that earlier in the day seemed weeks ago.
"Clean." Peter said.
"Can I get a water bottle or something to clean his hands?" I scanned the crowd. He drew my attention back to him with a pull of my hand.
"No," Peter said. "I'm ... clean."
I had missed who Peter was until that very moment.
I had called him names and treated him callously. I had read every micro expression in a vacuum of how it related to Austin Glass. And in return Peter had cared for my wounds, treated me tenderly and assured me that he was HIV negative while bleeding out in a hallway of strangers.
I broke. It wasn't a visible fracture. I didn't sob or explode into anguish. I didn't give in to my vomitus urge that came from the burst of self-loathing. But I shattered nonetheless. — Dani Alexander

She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamored, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realized that there was, after all, something godlike about him. He could control a horse. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I figured I could read more than five pages tonight since I'd been deprived for the last couple of days. When I finished the fifteenth, I discovered I was three pages from the next chapter. Might as well end with a clean break. After I was done, I sighed and leaned back, feeling decadent and spent. Pure bliss. Books were a lot less messy than orgasms. — Richelle Mead

Every word, every step, every action is irreversible. If we step in front of a moving car, if we sign a contract we haven't read, if we betray the person we love, the best we can do is try to clean up the mess. But no matter how hard we scrub, the stain on reality will never come out. The word you just read can never be unread. — Neil Strauss

My spirituality is severely challenged when I meet the most ignorant, evil and egotistical individuals in the world. It's even worse when I read their thoughts and can see how disgusting and psychotic they are behind their apparently clean appearance. In those moments, I wish I had a gun to shoot them in the head and send them to hell, where they belong. I regain my peace by knowing that they will certainly end there. — Robin Sacredfire

Maybe we ought to look at a guy's response to our microwave from now on." Aunt Annie said.
Really." Mom said. "The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don't keep it clean enough.The antisocial
"
Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father." Annie said. She'd read all of mom's books, too.
And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking." Mom said
Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock." Annie said. — Deb Caletti

TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn ... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. — Pete Hautman

The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave. — Mark Twain

Dear Mommy
I'm doing really good,
I get all A's in school
And I don't cry at bedtime anymore,
Though my new mom said I could.
I remember how much you hate tears,
You slapped them out of me
To make me strong,
I think it worked.
I learned to use a microscope
And my hair grew two inches.
It's pretty, just like yours.
I'm not allowed to clean the house,
Only my own room,
Isn't that a funny rule?
You say kids are so much trouble
Getting born, they better pay it back.
I'm not supposed to take care
Of the other kids, only me, I sort of like it.
I still get the hole in my stomach
When I do something wrong,
I have a saying on my mirror
"Kids make mistakes, It's OK,"
I read it every day,
Sometimes I even believe it.
I wonder if you ever think of me
Or if you're glad the troublemaker's gone,
I never want to see you again.
I love you, Mommy. — Karyl McBride

You do me proud, Captain. But, dear, I want to say one thing and then I'm done; for you don't need much advice of mine after my good man has spoken. I read somewhere that every inch of rope in the British Navy has a strand of red in it, so wherever a bit of it is found it is known. That is the text of my little sermon to you. Virtue, which means honour, honesty, courage, and all that makes character, is the red thread that marks a good man wherever he is. Keep that always and everywhere, so that even if wrecked by misfortune, that sign shall still be found and recognized. Yours is a rough life, and your mates not all we could wish, but you can be a gentleman in the true sense of the word; and no matter what happens to your body, keep your soul clean, your heart true to those who love you, and do your duty to the end. — Louisa May Alcott

Despite official drivel about clean bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, anyone who can read a newspaper or listen to a radio knows that some of us mortals have the power to destroy the human race and man's home on earth. We need not even make war; only by preparing, by playing with our new weapons, we poison the air, the water, the soil of our plants, damage the health of the living, and weaken the chances of the newborn. — Martha Gellhorn