4.29.2008

My Life According to "Fahrenheit 451"

This is just the beginning. But my new favorite book is Fahrenheit 451. The temperature at which books start to burn...or maybe the book at which my life begins to burn. I'm not an overtly emotional person. I don't cry during sad or horrifying movies. I don't cry when reading books like The Notebook. Fahrenheit 451 is sad in someways, I guess, but it's not the mushy sadness. Even so, this book made me tear up more times than any book has ever before. That's saying something. And Marvin and David, I don't think the main idea of this book is censorship either. Here are my fave quotes:

From the page before the book starts:
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." Juan Ramon Jimenez

"He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other." p.24

"...but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not." p.30

"A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings flutter. ... 'Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.'" p. 37

"Always at night the alarm comes. Never by day!" p.39

Possibly my favorite quote ever in the history of my life:
"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." p.71

"'Jesus God,' said Montag. 'Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is is because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?" p.73

When we know we're doomed: "the last liberal arts college shuts for lack of students and patronage." p.75

"'I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive." p.75

"The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones raper her and leave her for the flies." p.83

"The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore." p.86

I do this: "The women showed their tongues, laughing." p.96

"Out of two separate and opposite things, a third. And one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool. Even now he could feel the start of the long journey, the leave-taking, the going-away from the self he had been." p.103

"We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen." p.108

"Here we go to keep the world happy!" p.109

"But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing." p.153

"'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" pp. 158,159

"And someday, after it sets in us a long time, it'll come out our hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right." p.161

"And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me."
"I'll hold onto the world tight someday. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning." p. 162

"And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up." p.164

And there you have it... This is probably the longest blog ever. And I'm sure there are many more bits and pieces of this book that I will love after I read it again, and again, and again...!!!!

4.20.2008

Coffee

Hopping out of bed and
thinking about the one thing


that will make the morning sun
a little brighter,


that will make the birds sing
a little more


enthusiastically, that will make
the crisp air seem


a little crisper and that will
make my day before


the day really starts.




Found on a Starbucks wall somewhere in NJ. Apparently on many Starbucks' walls.

4.08.2008

In this case: Matter over Mind

Be who you are and
say what you mean because
those how mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
Dr. Seuss