Alive, Alive, Oh!

“The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.”

“A child is a curly dimpled lunatic.”

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.”

“Strange children should smile at each other and say, ‘Let’s play.’”

“Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.”

“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

“History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”

“Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it helps you get through life?”

“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”

“I never knew anybody … who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.”