Dan > Recent Status Updates

“Few gifts, survey soldier, as well as finding beauty and ugly places, and humor in the lap of fear.”

“I wonder if any of us had a choice about our judgments or if we were forced into circumstances beyond our control into our own orbits our own pathways.”

The Battle of Poitiers “Men trod in their own guts and spat out their teeth; many were cloven to the ground or lost their limbs while on their feet. Dying men fell in the blood of their companions and groaned under the weight of corpses until the Gabe out their last breath. The blood of serfs and princes flowed in one stream into the river.” - Geoffrey le Baker

“We don’t often make laws to enforce what everyone is already doing. Instead, we make laws to stop people from doing something we don’t want them to do.”

“It’s an uncomfortable truth that most societies are held together far more loosely than those living within them care to recognize: Apply enough pressure, and the cracks in any community will quickly show.”

“It’s finally started hasn’t it?” Oh my god! This book is crack!

“Richard, the Lionheart, in his captivity, had supposedly refused to render respect to the holy Roman emperor, proclaiming rather famously that he was ‘born of a rank that recognizes no superior, but God.’”

“ Our attention to the present fundamentally shapes our definition of the past. As we change, as our interest change, so does our understanding of history.”

“Judge not the parent who keeps silent to their child’s cry. There are too many reasons in heaven and earth to disappoint the ones we care for.”

But you know as well as any guilty party that no one thought stands alone. That there is a city within you, populated by both high- and lowborn beliefs, interjections, prayers, rantings.

“And so he laid down that night by the dying fire with little thought as the inner workings of his body-the chemistry of the equipment inheritance that began as the acids of a stomach method, narrow and potent flesh of a God”

“If only there were a way to prolong the inevitable. If only there were a way to hold a moment in your hands and keep it alive forever.”

“‘Do you get nervous before a battle?’ Jun asked…’Yes,’ Keema said. ‘I get nervous.’ Jun chuckled. ‘Why is that funny?’ Keema asked…’Fear is not something my brothers would ever admit to. I’ve never met any warrior who would admit to such weakness.’ ‘It’s not a weakness,’ Keema said. ‘Oh?’ ‘Fear keeps you alive.’”

“A peacock amongst its ostentation is mighty, but a peacock alone will be torn apart by those he once hunted”

“But none of them said anything, just as you had said nothing when your own father had left, for there are moments in this life that speak clearly for themselves.”

“Father’s leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out overtime, like an old photo rubbed raw.”

“…being a good leader was simply a matter of not expressing how you truly feel.”

“And when later, I was discovered, like the discarded toy, I was, a guard, sympathetic to my state, brought me to my lover, who, with trembling hands held me to their breast before I then breathe my last, and returned to the Sleeping sea, wingless, and free.”

“We are made of stories, and if we don’t know them-the ones that make us-how can we ever be fully realized? How can we ever be who we really are?”

“-yet I knew, and still know what it was like to both not belong and belong, what it was like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being. We’re all alike, even when we’re not.”

“To think that the reservation is what makes an Indian an Indian is to massacre all over again the Natives who do not populate it.”

“But one thing is for certain, I thought: you are who you are even if you don’t know it”

“When you look back, it’s so easy to see the path that you’ve traveled. But looking forward, there are only dreams and fears.”

“She understands now that death has a way of providing freedom.”

“‘You all live lives where you need such things,’ she said. Doesn’t do me any good working in the garden.’”

“Trust the road. Because nobody stays, and in the long run you’re on your own with your ghost. You’re the ship, they’re the bottle.”

“Fly away and don’t fall back into the slime I’m trying to crawl out of here…Too scared to leave the last place where people looked at me and their son or blood brother or their shot at a winning season…”