Quotes About Community

Americans really believe that the past is past, he writes. They do not care to know that the past soaks the present like the light of a distant star. Things that are over do not end. They come inside us, and seek sanctuary in subjectivity. And there they live on, in the consciousness of individuals and communities. The forward thrust of exuberance, like closure, risks leaving behind an essential past.

Among the Yuit Eskimos of St. Lawrence Island, if an individual requested suicide three times, relatives were obligated to assist in the killing. The person seeking suicide dressed in ritual death garb and then was killed in a "destroying place" set aside specifically for that purpose. To save commonly held resources of food or to allow a nomadic society to move on unhindered by the physically ill or elderly, some societies gave tacit if not explicit approval to suicide.

Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass.

The Self Is Not Portable The self is not portable. It cannot be packed. It comes sneaking back to any place from which it's been extracted, for it is nothing alone. It is not an entity. The ratio of self to home: one part in seventy.

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.

For some reason, we called it umbrella sex; if you fancied someone your own sex, you were an umbrella.

A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at "creating." Ruth

I could see similar townhouses on the opposite side of the street. There were six of them in a row, and the front of each had been painted a slightly different colour, to prevent a resident climbing the wrong steps and entering a neighbour's house by mistake.

In those early months, we'd somehow developed this idea that how well you were settling in at the Cottages—how well you were coping—was somehow reflected by how many books you'd read. It sounds odd, but there you are, it was just something that developed between us, the ones who'd arrived from Hailsham.

Boatman, she says. There's a tale I once heard, perhaps as a small child. Of an island full of gentle woods and streams, yet also a place of strange qualities. Many cross to it, yet for each who dwells there, it's as if he walks the island alone...

And the reason it meant so much—so much more than, say, dancing or table-tennis—was because the people out there were different from us students: they could have babies from sex.

Harry has a lot of ideas about changes to this and that, but really, no one in the village wants upheaval, even if it might benefit them. People here want to be left alone to lead their quiet little lives. They don't want to be bothered with this issue and that issue.

She's no dream woman I keep telling you, princess. Everyone here knew her a month ago and had a good word for her. What can it be makes everyone, yourself included, forget she ever lived?

Ein Mensch kann irgendwo arbeiten und seine Steuern zahlen, aber am Ende will er dorthin zurück, wo er aufwachsen ist

the evening field, hovering against the sky, each creature within it busily changing position, anxious to find a better one, but never straying beyond the boundary of the shape they made together.

I suppose they have a point though,' he said. 'I don't belong here. This is a meeting for lifted kids.

When I look back to this period, and remember it was less than twenty years from the end of a world war in which the Japanese had been their bitter enemies, I'm amazed by the openness and instinctive generosity with which our family was accepted by this ordinary English community.

After all, if a community could reach some sort of an equilibrium without having to be guided by an outsider, then so much the better.

All in all, this is an excellent place to partake of morning tea, but surprisingly few of the inhabitants of Taunton seem to wish to avail themselves of it. At

But I can see him studying his newspaper, breaking off regularly to look up at the passers-by on the pavement outside. From the way he does this, I had thought at first that he was waiting for a companion, but it would seem he wishes merely to greet acquaintances as they pass by.

She's useful to me, I'm useful to her. As long as that continues, Rowan Street is safe from an old-lady smack down of epic proportions.

In Cainsville, town elders still hold power. They'll protect you.

Everyone had heard what happened and they were all so pleased, so very pleased. Which seems a little odd, but in Cainsville "a little odd" was the norm.

Suburbia: a place where they cut down trees and name streets in their memory.