John Nichols > Quotes

“Each person leaves a legacy--a single, small piece of herself, which makes richer each individual life and the collective life of humanity as a whole. But do not despair, for despair is a despicable and bourgeois affectation; we must not allow it. As for what happens next, well, as the Cuban poet Regino Pedroso once said, "como forjamos el hierro, forjaremos días nuevos": as we hammer out iron, we shall hammer out new days.”
― John Nichols, The Nirvana Blues

“We are touched by magic wands. For just a fraction of our day life is perfect, and we are absolutely happy and in harmony with the earth. The feeling passes much too quickly. But the memory – and the anticipation of other miracles – sustains us in the battle indefinitely.”
― John Nichols, A Fragile Beauty: John Nichols' Milagro Country

“Listen cousin, the way things are supposed to work out, one day the struggles of all you screwed up little underdogs will forge a permanent rainbow that'll encircle this entire earth, I should live so long.”
― John Treadwell Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War

“If the radical right had its way we’d all be church-going polyester heterosexuals driving around in white Cadillacs eating meatloaf and wax beans while mammoth bulldozers leveled all our forests and even hummingbirds were extinct.”
― John Nichols, The Voice of the Butterfly

“In the heart of the slaughterhouse -- always -- enough room to nourish the awe.”
― John Nichols

“I've always believed if you're involved even in a very small struggle - in some sort of infinity in a grain of sand - in your local neighborhood, that every action has universal implications. I believe that if I struggle for the rights of an acequia in Taos, New Mexico that the ripple effect [will spread] from that tiny struggle.”
― John Nichols

“Each person leaves a legacy -- a single, small piece of herself, which makes richer each individual life and the collective life of humanity as a whole.”
― John Nichols, The Nirvana Blues

“Sooner or later Cleofes is gonna get it.”
― John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Yet if I am for myself only, what am I?”
― John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War