Shemeka Valasco > Shemeka's Quotes

“Cornered, Will punted. He had worked in a cut-throat world long enough to know that he would get the ball back and score.”
― Marilyn Dalla Valle, Westwind Secrets

“I have no use for the truth. I buried it deeply a long time ago.”
― S.G. Blaise, The Last Lumenian

“You can’t lose what’s real”
― Daniel Mangena

“العقل البشري يبعثر اهتماماته كما لو كانت من زغب الأشواك، كل الرياح تثيرها و تحركها”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“You looked at them and wondered why the were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The mast had said, "You are ugly people." They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. "Yes," they had said. "You are right.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Hey, do you know what you call a blond with a brain?" I asked, and the continued on the same breath, "a golden retriever."
I've heard that one, too," she said, no longer smiling.
I'll keep trying." I promised.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn

“چنان تنهایی وحشتناکی احساس می‌کردم که خیال خودکشی به سرم زد. چیزی که جلویم را گرفت، این فکر بود که هیچ‌کس، مطلقاً هیچ‌کس، از مرگم متأثر نخواهد شد و من در مرگ خیلی تنهاتر از زندگی خواهم بود.”
― ژان پل سارتر, Nausea

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”
― Sir Thomas More, Utopia

“Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee. a”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Die, enemies of Ra!" Sekhemet yelled. "Perish in agony!"
"She's almost as annoying as you," I told Horus.
"Impossible," Horus said. "No one bests Horus.”
― Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid

“However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There”
― Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity

“Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The result of practicing the fifth agreement is the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery

“Behind the tall-backed and elaborately wrought chairs, stand the servants, men and maidens—fifteen in number—discriminately selected, not only with a view to their industry and faithfulness, but with special regard to their personal appearance, their graceful agility and captivating address. Some of these are armed with fans, and are fanning reviving breezes toward the over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies; others watch with eager eye, and with fawn-like step anticipate and supply wants before they are sufficiently formed to be announced by word or sign.”
― Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom

“Even the smallest actions of a friend can make a big difference. — Zeta Davidson —”
― Gary Chapman, Love Is a Verb Devotional: 365 Daily Inspirations to Bring Love Alive

“Vozač je rekao djedu koliko koštaju karte i dok je djed vrlo pažljivo prebrojavao novac - jer je svjetlo u autobusu bilo preslabo - vozač se okrenuo prema putnicima, digao desnu ruku i rekao: „How!“ i prasnuo u smijeh, i svi su prasnuli u smijeh. Tada sam se počeo bolje osjećati znajući da su prijateljski nastrojeni i ne zamjeraju nam što nismo imali vozne karte.
Onda smo pošli prema stražnjem dijelu autobusa i tamo sam vidio jednu bolesnu ženu. Oko očiju joj je bilo neprirodno crnilo, a usne su joj bile jarko crvene kao od krvi. Kad smo prošli pokraj nje, stavila je ruku iznad usta i zavrištala: „Wa...huuu!“ Ali sigurno ju je ubrzo prestalo boljeti jer se počela smijati i svi ostali su se smijali. Čovjek koji je sjedio pokraj nje se također smijao i pritom se lupao po nozi. Imao je veliku sjajnu kopču na kravati pa sam znao da su oni bogati i mogu platiti liječnika ako im je potreban.”
― Forrest Carter, Malo drvo

“Quite simply, when she came near him, she knew that she had discovered some lost part of herself; with him she was whole. Whatever might happen between them as ordinary man and woman, something lay beyond it which would never die or lessen in its intensity. They shared a destiny, and somehow they must fulfill it together... and often when she had come so far in her thoughts she would stop and stare at herself in disbelief.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply; I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot. I will tell him that I can never understand such a thing, that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart; I will not make a fool of myself by encouraging him to mock me. “I understand, yes,” she said.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.
But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent. Besides”
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

“Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor”
― Herman Melville

“Encyclopedias don’t win wars.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“A man dies, girl, he isn't any more, least not down here. Respect and all that crap doesn't deserve the dead; it just makes the living feel better. The dead one, maybe he is somewhere else-- maybe all he needs to be somewhere else is to believe he will be somewhere else. I won't deny a man his belief, and I don't know any more'n you about souls and all that stuff. But I know this: Speaking good or bad about something that isn't anymore is a bloody waste of time. I can't feature Saint Peter sitting up there saying: 'Hey, Adam, there's folks bad-mouthing you down there. What'd you do to merit that?”
― Peter Benchley, The Deep