Roy > Roy's Quotes

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?”
― Aldo Leopold

“Eventually, I started to cringe at the elitism that was often paired with punk and the like. A movement that professed inclusiveness seemed to actually be highly exclusive, as alienating and ungraspable as many of the clubs and institutions that drove us to the fringes in the first place. One set of rules had simply been replaced by new ones, and they were just as difficult to follow.”
― Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

“Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.”
― Jim Harrison, Wolf False Memoir

“A sonic boom crushes a baby mink's skull. We know that. Isn't it enough?”
― Jim Harrison, Wolf False Memoir

“Flesh is a reasonably good fertilizer, or even better, predator food. A family of coyotes would live off the carcass for a few days. Then the grass and ferns would grow up through the skeleton until the porcupines had gnawed it away for its salt content.”
― Jim Harrison, Wolf False Memoir

“For years now I've found the Earth haunted. Azoological beasts rage in untraceable configurations. They're called governments. Wounds made that never heal on every acre and covered with the scar tissue of our living existence. The argument at bedrock: I don't want to live on Earth but I don't want to die.”
― Jim Harrison, Wolf False Memoir

“There's always some smart ass Englishmen coming over here and telling us we're mean and vulgar. I agree. But they showed their hand way back during the Irish Potato Famine as instinctual Nazis.”
― Jim Harrison, Wolf False Memoir

“As usual, Junko thought about Jack London's 'To Build a Fire.' It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn't read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man's fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn't explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction.
The teacher ridiculed her view. 'Death is really what he wanted? That's a new one for me! And strange! Quite 'original,' I'd have to say.' He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed.
But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“A fire can be any shape it wants to be. It's free. So it can look like anything at all, depending on what's inside the person looking at it. If you get this deep, quiet kind of feeling when you look at a fire, that's because it's showing you the deep, quiet kind of feeling you have inside yourself...”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
― Jack Kerouac

“There's a fine line between being practical and being a candyass, which is a word that my father used to describe someone whom he considered to be the opposite of tough. ... Because I'm very afraid of becoming a candyass, I'll sometimes do things that I know to be impractical just so I don't have to worry about being a candyass.”
― Steven Rinella, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon