Smaragdov Deska Quotes & Sayings

Get the better of yourself - this is the best kind of victory. — Miguel De Cervantes

I look over at Andie. "Please don't tell me she's going to touch chicken poop."
Andie's face is totally impassive. "Nope."
"Phew. That's a relief." ...
"She is going to touch their eggs, though."
... "Then she is going to touch their poop."
She laughs, sounding confused. "How so?" She takes a sip of her drink as she waits to be educated by me.
I cringe. "Ew, Andie. Because the eggs come from their butts, of course."
Andie laughs so hard she spits coffee out at me ... "You've got to be kidding me." She wipes tears away. "Oh, man, Candice, I sure have missed you."
I frown at her obvious ignorance of all things chicken. "I missed you too. But why are you laughing over simple scientific facts? Google is your friend, you know, Andie. You really shouldn't neglect your Googling. — Elle Casey

If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement - the sense of contempt, the hatred - on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won't change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness? — Derrick Jensen

One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me. — Molly Antopol

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together
and that's the only way ... — Albert Camus

If you become a giver, you'll make them feel like they want to reciprocate. — Price Pritchett