Michael > Recent Status Updates

"Life is stubborn. So am I. I have conceded to make this abyss my habitat, every single day, for the rest of my life. But I shall live in this abyss only on my terms."

"Dying is hard. Living is harder. Even harder is living on when life is fractured by timeless deaths. It takes an instant for death to become a fact, a single point in a time line, which eclipses all things in the past and eliminates any possibility for the future. Death is like Euclid's definition of the point in geometry: "A point is that which has no part."

"After Vincent die, a. couple of mothers asked if they oculd tell their children that he had died in an accident... I explained to the mothers that their proposal seemed to me a disrespect of their own children and a violation of Vincent's memory. Not calling a fact by it's name can be the beginning of cruelty and injustice."

What can I say to a young person who has strong convictions but a failure of imagination? Not much, really. The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction and paltry imagination and meager understanding.

"What can I say to a young person who has strong convictions but a failure of imagination? Not much, really. The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction and paltry imagination and meager understanding."

"Everything was bad reading. Everything was going bad everywhere." Some things don't change.

Broke out in tears after an absurd act of meaningless violence took place in the novel. Some notable quotes "The killing came suddenly and unreasonably." "The head was mine, but not to use, not to think with, only to remember, and not too much remember."

"I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory...There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity...Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one'.... (The man who first said that) was probably a coward.... He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them"

"He said we were all cooked in another year. He said were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war." Very little media cant throughly dismantle the supposed glories of war. Hemingway, in this novel, does so with ease.

"Still nobody was whipping any one on the Western front. Perhaps wars weren't won any more. Maybe they went on forever."

"I was blow up while we were eating cheese." The absurdity of war.

"I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow." Odd to me that folks think of this novel as boring. At times it does suffer from Hemingway's extensive descriptions but it can be emotionally potent and profound nonetheless.

"At the start of the winter. came the permanent rain with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army." Incredible two page opening. I'm not usually fond of description that goes on long but Hemingway brought life into his landscape.

Applebaum discussing Havel's beliefs in civil disobedience and modern smear state are pointed and show how close the U.S. is becoming what it once opposed. That said, It's still important to be a person who makes a conscience choice to live in the world and stand for something rather than give way to apathy and fear. Today's news should show that loud and clear.

Applebaum making a strong argument that the West's inaction against ethically enforcing it's ideals abroad is visiting it back at home.