Crossing Quotes - page 7
We were huddled in the prow of our assault craft. German shells landed in the water, but you didn't hear any noise -- just white geysers of water going up alongside. Other small ships were swamped, and several of the tanks that accompanied us foundered. There were quite a few helmets floating around in the water nearby, which increased our apprehension. The Germans were firing from the ridge. I saw the first Americans killed by rifle fire crossing the inundated area. We knew Americans could get wounded, but we didn't know that they could actually expire. We thought that was only going to happen to the enemy. It was rather a sobering sight.
Larry LeSueur
I think the genre decides for me-which sounds like a way of avoiding the question unless I explain first that this chameleon-like border crossing, this shifting of genre identities is, I realize, parallel to, or anticipates, or recollects my own life. I'm probably fluctuating across genres perhaps because my identity itself is always in flux...
Ariel Dorfman
He was the outlier of a new type: the first twentieth-century personality to be famous for being famous. If he toured Africa with 17 pieces of matched luggage, or got hit by a car crossing Fifth Avenue in New York, he wrote about it. His life became a forerunner of reality TV; in today's terms, he did everything to seek celebrity but release a sex tape. A great question of Churchill biography, therefore, is how this Paris Hilton of British politics became the second coming of King Arthur.
Mark Riebling
Outlaw consciousness is born the moment I drop out, stop the world, cease being an actor identified with the mythic roles I have been playing in society. Change begins when I do nothing except observe. The wisdom of the railroad crossing: Stop. Look. Listen. Meditation is the healthy form of voyeurism.
Sam Keen
He was an extraordinary man – a colorful bird against the background of academic gray. A scholar and erudite, he was witty, malicious, surprising, uncompromising and courageous. His knowledge and talent for lecturing made him a valued popularizer of neuroscience. He could simplify even very complex phenomena, showing their essence and meaning. Non-standard interpretations of the reality that he presented at the lectures were witty, but also deep and attracted fascinated youth. He loved Krakow – he knew everything about it and was a great guide. There is grief and anger in us that he was driven over at the pedestrian crossing by a delivery van.
Jerzy Vetulani
The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The 1950's have comprised an exciting decade in the science of the sea. During this period a manned vehicle has descended to the deepest hole in the ocean floor. During the 'fifties, also, the crossing of the entire Arctic basin was accomplished by submarines traveling under the ice. Many new features of the unseen floor of the sea have been described, including new mountain ranges that now appear to be linked with others to form the longest and mightiest mountains of the earth-a continuous chain encircling the globe. Deep, hidden rivers in the sea, subsurface currents with the volume of a thousand Mississippis, have been found. During the International Geophysical Year, 60 ships from 40 nations, as well as hundreds of stations on islands and seacoasts, co-operated in an enormously fruitful study of the sea.
Rachel Carson
Turner visited Plymouth (my native town) while I was staying there in the summer of 1813, or perhaps 1814 (1812 ?), painting portraits. As he wished to see the scenery of the river Tamar - [river in South-west England], I accompanied him, together with Mr. Ambrose Johns from Plymouth.. ..to a cottage near Calstock, the residence of my aunt, Miss Pearce, where we all stayed for a few days. From that point as a centre Turner made various excursions, and the result of one of his rambles was a sketch of the scene which afterwards grew into the celebrated picture of the painting 'Crossing the Brook'. The bridge in that picture is Calstock Bridge; some mining works are indicated in the middle distance. The extreme distance extends to the mouth of the Tamar, the harbour of Hamoaze, the hills of Mount Edgcumbe, and those on the opposite side of Plymouth Sound. The whole scene is extremely faithful.
J. M. W. Turner
We now continued our journey without encountering any further casualty, except in crossing the Arkansas river, where we lost several mules by drowning; and on the 22d of April we made our entrance into Van Buren. This trip was much more tedious and protracted than I had contemplated - owing, in the first part of the journey, to the inclemency of the season, and a want of pasturage for our animals; and, towards the conclusion, to the frequent rains, which kept the route in a miserable condition.
Josiah Gregg
And I will tell you, because I was six feet from the TV set, that no one-no one-saw a tit. There was no titty to be seen. I know that's a fact, because I'm a guy that, if there's a titty, I'm the first one to look. And if you actually thought that you saw a titty, then... you were desperate to see one. Much like someone crossing a desert might see the mirage of water.
Lewis Black
The US now has training camps featuring imitation "Arab” urban districts, and has picked up the Israeli practice of entering a dense neighbourhood not via the street, but by crossing through homes – a parallel pathway to the street, running from one interior room to another by carving holes in contiguous walls, and dealing with the inhabitants as they come across them.
They have learned, above all, that the city itself has become an obstacle. And while it is true that they can simply bomb a city to pieces – as we've seen with the bombing of Aleppo and other cities by Syria's government and its allies – we have not recently seen the total destruction of the Hiroshima nuclear attack or the fire-bombing of Dresden.
Mike Jones
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill, what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.
William Penn
How can anyone have a true sense of the Hebrew race without crossing this terrifying desert, without experiencing it? For three interminable days we crossed it on our camels. Your throat sizzles from thirst, your head reels, your mind spins about as serpent-like you follow the sleek tortuous ravine. When a race is forged for two score years in this kiln, how can such a race die? I rejoiced at seeing the terrible stones where the Hebrews' virtues were born: their perseverance, will power, obstinacy, endurance, and above all, a God flesh of their flesh, flame of their flame, to whom they cried, "Feed us! Kill our enemies! Lead us to the Promised Land!"
To this desert the Jews owe their continued survival and the fact that by means of their virtues and vices they dominate the world. Today, in the unstable period of wrath, vengeance, and violence through which we are passing, the Jews are of necessity once again the chosen people of the terrible God of Exodus from the land of bondage.
Nikos Kazantzakis
[On a defence of the burka preventing men from looking at women sexually.] No, no, no. Honestly, the burka doesn't work. I was in a cab in Piccadilly the other day when a woman in a full burka crossing the road in front of me tripped over the pavement, went head over heels and up it came, red g-string and stockings. I promise that happened. The taxi driver will back me up on that.
Jeremy Clarkson
Her hands came out of her sleeves. There was a rod of blinding silver in each. Before I could stir she had brought the rods together, crossing them before her smiling face. At the intersection forces of tremendous power blazed into an instant's being, forces that streamed from the poles of the world and could touch only for the beat of a second if that world were not to be shaken into fragments. I felt the building reel below me.
I felt the gateway open.
Henry Kuttner
A few weeks after the song's release, what was a fictionalized story became very real. On October 17, Tupac was crossing the street in downtown Oakland, California, when police officers Alexander Boyovich and Kevin Rodgers stopped him. They accused him of jaywalking and asked to see his ID. In the police report, they referred to Tupac by his middle name, Amaru, and called him angry and hostile. They said Tupac told them, "This is just two white cops who want to stop a n-----.”
A month later at a press conference, Tupac told his side of the story. As he was preparing to enter Union Bank, the officers approached him. Tupac asked why they were requesting to see his ID. He accused them of having a slave-master mentality before allegedly being thrown onto the concrete, cuffed, and choked until he was left unconscious. He was put in jail for seven hours for resisting arrest and later released.
Tupac Shakur
Crossing color, class, gender, and generational lines, the communities of addiction and recovery are as democratic as America gets. Twelve-step meetings are in fact downright radical: nonprofit and nonhierarchical, with a fierce etiquette of listening to and caring about everyone who wanders into the rooms.
John Leonard (critic)
