"There's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me"

-Gretchen Kemp

"There is love of course. And then there's life, it's enemy."

-Jean Anouilh

Intelligence and tool-making were our strengths from the beginning. We used these talents to compensate for the paucity of the natural gifts - speed, flight, venom, burrowing, and the rest- freely distributed to the other animals, so it seemed, and cruelly denied to us. From the time of the domestication of fire and the elaboration of stone tools, it was obvious that our skills could be used for evil as well as for good. But it was not until very recently that it dawned on us that even the benign use of our intelligence and our tools might - because we are not smart enough to foresee all consequences- put us at risk.

- Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions.

What a strange wind it was today,
Whistlin' and whilin' and scurlin' away
Like a worried old woman with so much to say.
What a strange wind it was today.

What a strange wind it was today.
Cool and clear from a sky not grey
And my hat stayed on but my head blew away---
What a strange wind it was today.

-Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic.

The friends of Seymour Lawrence call him "Sam." And I say to Sam now: "Sam-here's the book."

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.

And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House-Five.

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.


FRANK O'HARA

"Mayakovsky"

He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together......

Two very young people, the sort who'll stay very young until they suddenly find themselves old.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Lees of Happiness

Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget;

falls drop by drop upon the heart.

And in our own despair, against our will,

wisdom comes to us,

by the awful grace of God.

-Aeschylus

Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Robert Kennedy

address, University of Kansas