Morgan Barnard

“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.
In moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I can feel my own and I know that separation is an illusion, for my life extends far beyond the limitations of me.”
― David Mitchell

“Now, the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth,
a sorrowin’ song, with the words all wrong, in the many tongues of Earth.
The things a woman wants to say, the tales she longs to tell . . .
they take all day in the tongues of Earth, and half of the night as well.
So nobody listens to what a woman says, except the men of power
who sit and listen right willingly, at a hundred dollars an hour . . .
sayin’ “Who on Earth would want to talk about such foolish things?”
Oh, the tongues of Earth don’t lend themselves to the songs a woman sings!
There’s a whole lot more to a womansong, a whole lot more to learn;
but the words aren’t there in the tongues of Earth, and there’s noplace else to turn. . . .
So the woman they talk, and the men they laugh, and there’s little a woman can say,
but a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, and a hurt that won’t go away.
The women go workin’ the manly tongues, in the craft of makin’ do, but the women that stammer, they’re everywhere, and the wellspoken ones are few. . . .
’Cause the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth;
a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, in the manly tongues of Earth.

(a 20th century ballad, set to an even older tune called “House of the Rising Sun”; this later form was known simply as “Sorrowin’ Song, With the Words All Wrong”)”
― Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue

“You can remember it, he told himself, but you cannot experience it again like this. You have to be satisfied with the shadows.”
― John L. Parker Jr., Once a Runner

“You don't become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many day, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.”
― John L. Parker Jr., Once a Runner