Derricotte Quotes & Sayings

Oftentimes, when people cut a record from analog tape to vinyl, they digitize the music first; I did a little investigating and discovered that most vinyl records that I've ever heard were digitized before they were put onto vinyl. — Kevin Shields

The job of the artist is not to resolve or beautify, but to hold complexities, to see and make clear. — Toi Derricotte

Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there's no mind. — Bodhidharma

world seems filled with people who are genuinely, deeply interested in physics but whose lives have taken them in different directions. This book is for all of us. — Leonard Susskind

Each one of us is called to become that great song that comes out of the silence, and the more we let ourselves down into that great silence the more we become capable of singing that great song. — David Steindl-Rast

The voyage had proved a human and financial disaster. Of the 198 men who rounded the Cape, only 25 returned alive. Worse still, two of the three ships had been lost and the one that did manage to limp into port was carrying not spices but scurvy. Lancaster had proved--if proof was needed--that the spice trade involved risks that London's merchants could ill afford. It was not until they learned that the Dutch had entered the spice race, and achieved a remarkable success, that they would consider financing a new expedition to the islands of the East Indies. — Giles Milton

The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription. — Henry James

These are the stories of travelers on a spiritual quest between worlds. Part mythmaker, part poet, Omar Castaeda is an original, and these stories are unlike any in our literature. — Toi Derricotte

A picture in a book,
a lynching.
The bland faces of men who watch
a Christ go up in flames, smiling,
as if he were a hooked
fish, a felled antelope, some
wild thing tied to boards and burned.
His charred body
gives off light
a halo
burns out of him.
His face is scorched featureless;
the hair matted to the scalp like feathers.
One man stands with his hand on his hip,
another with his arm
slung over the shoulder of a friend,
as if this moment were large enough
to hold affection. — Toi Derricotte

My Father Still Sleeping After Surgery
In spite of himself,
my father loved me. In spite
of the hands that beat me, in spite
of the mouth that kept silent, in spite
of the face that turned cruel
as a gold Chinese king,
he could not control the love
that came out of him.
The body is monumental, a colossus
through which he breathes.
His hands crawl over his stomach
jerkily as sand crabs on five legs;
he makes a fist
like the fist of a newborn. — Toi Derricotte

What does pouring out your heart to God do? He already knows all what goes on in your heart and mind, right?
Pouring out your heart to Him starts the flow of intimacy with Him. It lets Him know that you want to share your innermost being with Him and that you truly want intimacy with Him. The act of sharing opens your heart and life up to intimacy with Him. — Linda Boone

So don't make a show of your philosophical learning to the uninitiated, show them by your actions what you have absorbed. — Epictetus

We live at a time that is notable for the polemical nature of discussions about identity, consciousness, rationality, agency, memory, and feeling. 'New atheists' and reductive materialists conduct gladiatorial debates against defenders of faith and enemies of reductionism. Lots of heat is produced, but, alas, little light is shed. How marvelous it is, then, to see this fine new book by Lenn E. Goodman and Gregory Caramenico. Here is a learned, illuminating, and decidedly non-polemical treatment of the classic questions of soul, mind, and brain-an exemplary work of scholarship. — Robert P. George

What is more punished
among the angry than anger? among the unsatisfied than desire?
among the hate-filled
than hate? among the frightened than fear?
— Toi Derricotte

Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job. — Toi Derricotte

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing. — Anthony Burgess

Haven't you ever seen someone standing alone?
I shrug. Just one.
Why don't you talk to that child?
Because it's me and Devon told me I shouldn't talk to myself. Not in public anyway — Kathryn Erskine

Hadn't we better turn it lower?" Tony whispered.
"Eh, what? It's quiet enough, I think."
Tony flung a hunted glance at the window. "You have let me listen in to Germany. If the police find out, there will be great trouble -"
"There won't be any trouble at all," said Thomas. "You're in England, remember. You're free to tune in to any station you please. — Constance Savery

Oxford is wonderful. I'm having a great time. We do go out, but I still try to spend most of my time studying in the library. — Chelsea Clinton

Sometimes, those who put up the biggest shields are those who are protecting the biggest hearts. My Gram used to always say, if you want to know the size of a person's heart, look at how they treat animals or those that can offer them nothing in return. — Penelope Ward

I hate it when, after I let a white person know they've said something racist, I end up having to listen for hours to their life. — Toi Derricotte