Messums Quotes & Sayings

Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth. — Felix Frankfurter

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself — Amin Maalouf

A crock of shit, Rick had called it. But actually this was worse. Shit, to quote Gore Vidal, has its own integrity. This was a crock of nothing. — Robert Harris

Changing what you eat isn't going to help unless you start managing your stress level, — Susan Albers

1:147-148
A KING IN HALF-SLEEP

I wake from sleep within you. I turn and hold you in my arms, as a king in half-sleep thinks himself alone, then feels his bride next to him in bed, smells her hair, and remembers he has a companion.

Slowly waking more, he begins to talk. So I wake inside you, the pleasure, the soft-saying, the elegance of the hours we walk in wonder. I draw closer. When my servants ask of me, tell them I am near (2:186).

Then I remember Moses fainting in the presence, Jesus' face, the mysteries that the saints unfold, Muhammad's sure stance, lovers mixing together in their songs, and I know that I have been given these feet to walk the amazement you gave them. — Bahauddin

I have done no wrong but the zealots are trying to attack me because I am so critical of them. — Sunil Gangopadhyay

Marriage vows contain the words "to have and to hold," not "to have and to scold. — Tracy Kunzler

What colors are the eyes of Anubis?"

"Brown...Duh. — Rick Riordan