Song ix Quotes

“Iniquity it is; but pass the can. My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;Our only portion is the estate of man: We want the moon, but we shall get no more. (Last Poems, IX)”

“For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty.”

“I’ve come down from the skylike some damned ghost, delayedtoo long…To the abandoned fieldsthe trees returned and grew.They stand and grow. Time comesTo them, time goes, the treesStand; the only placeThey go is where they are.Those wholly patient ones…They do no wrong, and theyAre beautiful. What moreCould we have thought to ask?...I stand and wait for lightto open the dark night.I stand and wait for prayerto come and find me here.” Sabbaths 2000 IX”

“A BILL OF ASSERTIVE RIGHTSI: You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.II: You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.III: You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.IV: You have the right to change your mind.V: You have the right to make mistakes—and be responsible for them.VI: You have the right to say, “I don’t know.”VII: You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.VIII: You have the right to be illogical in making decisions. IX: You have the right to say, “I don’t understand.”X: You have the right to say, “I don’t care.”YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY NO, WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY”

“A hero is a matter of perspective. The only sure thing in war is casualties. Ideology, patriotism and religious zeal all fuel heroic notions.”

“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.”

“In the moments when I forgot to remind myself to remain calm, I rewarded myself with a multiversed chorus of self-denigration and blame. Weak. Inadequate. Damaged. A problem and a disappointment. The litany of criticism stuck in my brain, skipping through the same tired phrases, like an old, scratched, forty-five speed record, drumming my failure into the silence of the night, adding to my desperation and frustration. I had been singled out for the universe for a reason, and this illness was my fault. I knew that, even though saying as much out loud sounded like crazy talk. I couldn't explain why, but I felt like I deserved what I was getting.”

“But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.”

“What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung.After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there?”