Millennium Quotes - page 3
The beauty of the forest is extraordinary - but "beauty” is too simple a word, for being here is not just an aesthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, with awe. ... [The forest] has to do with the ancient, the aboriginal, the beginning of all things. The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here - for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden. Now, as I wandered in the cycad forest on Rota, it seemed as if my senses were actually enlarging, as if a new sense, a time sense, was opening within me, something which might allow me to appreciate millennia or aeons as directly as I had experienced seconds or minutes. ... Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.
Oliver Sacks
It's the end of the world. I was excited by the whole situation. Well, if everybody is going to die, die hard, shit, but what do I know? Is this an atomic bomb--the end of the world--the end of the millennium? No more fear of being fired--for typos or tardiness--digressions or recessions--and what a way of being fired--bursting into flames--without two weeks notice--and without six months of unemployment--and without sick leave, vacation, or comp time--without a word of what was to come--on a glorious morning--when nature ran indifferent to the course of man--there came a point when that sunny sky turned into a hellhole of a night-with papers, computers, windows, bricks, bodies falling, and people running and screaming. (On September 11th terrorist attacks.)
Giannina Braschi