Quotes About Community

In 1999, and a mere ten days after a certain Thursday , eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold planted bombs in their Littleton, Colorado, high school and went on a shooting rampage that killed one teacher and twelve students, while wounding twenty-three, after which they shot themselves. So young Kevin—your choice—has turned out as American as a Smith and Wesson.

the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards

as self-satisfaction, and their contentment came across as exclusionary.

The existence of other people is essentially awkward.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.

As I say the words, I realize how true they are. And maybe that's the trick to getting through it, through life: realizing that everybody, including ourselves, is lugging around some kind of screwed-up baggage. Maybe we are put here to help each other carry the loads.

You know you are with true friends when they lift, encourage, correct, and then spur you on.

If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known. MATTHEW ARNOLD, NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH POET AND PHILOSOPHER

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

I'm mesmerized by the way he speaks—New Orleans is pronounced N'awlins. When he says backyard, it's backyaaad. It's the kind of voice that makes you feel instantly at home, like you're a close friend or part of the inner circle. —SINGLE-MINDED

we learned that girls are much more likely to seek help for a suffering friend if they can count on adults to respect their tribal loyalties.

Personal discretion, respect for our daughters' privacy, or even competitive feelings within tight communities make it hard for parents to talk with one another about the garden-variety challenges that come with raising teenagers.

Well, here's a little secret, kiddo - that's pretty much how everyone down here feels most of the time. But we keep walking anyway. We just keep moving forward. And if we're lucky, we find some people who don't mind stumbling around with us, and somehow that makes it a little easier to stay on our feet.

Maybe it only took one person to open an umbrella and stick it up in the air to block out the rain, but it took a whole lot of people to close it. And even though I was pretty sure I still had a few more inches to go, I knew that once my umbrella was all the way closed, I was going to keep it like that for a long time.

At least I wasn't Major Disaster. That was Tommy's mom.

He understood that being of service to others takes you out of the smallness of your own issues and into the bigger realm of the heart.

We knew that alone we wouldn't make it. But together. . .together we had a chance.

It's been ten years since Ellie Mack disappeared, a fifteen year old fro north London, disappeared on her way to the library.

You're here every night, you join in, but you always seem to be - I don't know - more of a spectator than a participant, as if you are studying us, possibly for some sort of anthropological purpose. Do you even like us?

His mum, like him, had no friends. It was as if they could tell, he thought, they could tell she wasn't ever going to be one of them. She was always going to be trying, never just being.

when I thought I was all alone in the world, there'd been a cast of people waiting in the background for me to come back to them, they'd been there all along. They picked me up and they took me with them.

Other people have been out here all day, enjoying themselves, enjoying the weather, enjoying their friends and their children. Other people have been living.

That's one thing I've learned. If you're with the right people then you're generally in the right place.