Proprium Bacterium Quotes & Sayings

Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death. — Richard Baxter

The truth that writers secretly harbor is that all books are failures. We try to do something that can't be done. Words. Is that all we rely on? Smudgy ink marks on a page? Pallid wisps and blotches? Text as scaffolding trying to hold up worlds? Actually, no, it's not all we rely on. What's worse is our reliance on the reader. A writer is forever locked in an interdependent relationship. It's like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river - our flimsy words and their frail, overreaching imaginations. The bridge will never meet in the middle. It's not possible. Sometimes you haven't even decided on the same river. The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis missed in the middle by a matter of inches the first time around. They tried again and made it. Writers know we never will. — Julianna Baggott

So Medicare decided to pay hospitals like ours for internship and
residency training programs, get it? It's a win-win, as they say - the hospital
gets patients cared for by interns and residents around the clock,people like us who live on site, and whose stipend is a bloody fraction of what the hospital would pay full-time physicians. And Medicare delivers health care to the poor. — Abraham Verghese

I'm really into jeans. It's kind of more for comfort ... So, like, comfort and oversized are really in for me. — Mark Indelicato

His face flushed, and I felt like cheering. "Yes," he said stiffly. "Besides de vings."
"Hmm. Besides de vings." Nudge tapped one finger against her chin. "Um ... " Her face brightened. "I once ate nine Snickers bars in one sitting. Without barfing. That was a record!"
"Hardly a special talent," ter Borcht said witheringly.
Nudge was offended. "Yeah? Let's see YOU do it." ...
... "I vill now eat nine Snickers bars," Gazzy said in a perfect, creepy imitation of ter Borcht's voice, "visout bahfing."
— James Patterson

It was disconcerting that being in love felt lonelier than lonelines. — Emily Maguire

Yes, I believe the greatest blessing any one can have is to be a failure, this is the first step towards the success, — Mary Ann Templeton

The whole idea of worship being associated with music, it gives you an impotence to make art that is true, that is honest and that opens the human heart to God and to reality. — Michael Gungor

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century. — J.G. Ballard

It can be seen, then, that a public debate on the issue of the Nakbah, whether conducted in Israel itself or in the United States, its imperial protector, could open up questions concerning the moral legitimacy of the Zionist project as a whole. The mechanism of denial, therefore, was crucial, not only for defeating the counter-claims made by Palestinians in the peace process, but, far more importantly, for disallowing any significant debate on the very essence and moral foundations of Zionism. — Noam Chomsky

If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing it badly. — Martha N. Beck