Quotes from Paul Fleischman

My class had sprouted lima beans in paper cups the year before. I now placed a bean in each of the holes. I covered them up, pressing the soil down firmly with my fingertips. I opened my thermos and watered them all. And I vowed to myself that those beans would thrive.

It was a figure of a whale, with a white triangle that was supposed to be its spray. The spray moved up and down above the blowhole. On top of the spray sat a black-haired woman.

The sidewalk was completely empty. It was Sunday, early April. An icy wind teetered trash cans and turned my cheeks to marble. In Vietnam we had no weather like that. Here in Cleveland people call it spring.

God, who made Eden, also wrecked the tower of Babel, by dividing people.

The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices.

There, too, you are one among millions. But there at least you know your neighbors. Here, one cannot say that. The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends.

Brent suddenly thought back to Miss Gill, the mediator in Chicago, and her saying the effects of an act traveled far beyond one's knowledge. He knew she'd meant harmful acts, like his. He saw now that the same could be said for good deeds-good, bad, and indifferent-sent a wave rolling out of sight. He wondered what his own accounting, generations later, would look like.

Everybody lives inside his or her movie. Mine had usually seemed a light comedy. Then I noticed the first dead bee on the driveway.

No humans have ever lived as we do.

I used to try to patch up the whole world. For thirty-six years I worked for different groups, promoting world government, setting up conferences on pacifism, raising money, stuffing envelopes. Not that I've given up the fight. I've just switched battlefields, from the entire planet to this corner of Cleveland. Sometimes I've actually had more effect on the world since I [have].

A hunter-gatherer's needs are few, but a Western citizen expects a car, paved streets, hot water on demand, airports, sewer lines, phone service, a refrigerator, computer, microwave, and a PlayStation... as a start.

History is happening here and now.

I actually went on a vegan diet. So I was nagging myself there. I don't nag other people about it. It was sort of an interesting experiment, and I found it wasn't that hard at all.

I grew up in a house that might have had the only front-yard cornfield in all of Los Angeles.

You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland.

You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland.

Denial is often the first line of defense: refusing to accept that the bad news is true.

Whole cities shut down, but the garden just keeps going. Plants don't run on electricity or clock time, and none of nature does. Nature runs on sunlight and rain and the seasons, and I am part of that system. My body is part of nature...This system is much stronger than the other. It isn't some disgrace to be a part of it. It is an honor.

Radio listeners are voyeurs: lurking, invisible, eavesdropping.