Ann

“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.

I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to
carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do:

Say NO!

For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then!

In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish.

The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track.

The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs.

In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army.

Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities.

The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY?

will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered,

the last animal scream of the last human animal -

All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if -

You do not say NO.”
― Wolfgang Borchert