Quotes About Engagement

Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?

The meeting of writer and reader is an intimate act, and it properly takes place in private.

Ruth tells me at least once a day that old people, or people getting old, tend to disengage, back away, turn inward, listen only to themselves, and get self-righteous and censorious. And they mustn't. (I mustn't.)

Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?

I am and have a being and play a part.

I am what is around me.

Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.

All great work—artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual—is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness.

Now is the time for all good men to come to.

Begin your writing, fiction or article, where the action begins. This action can be internal (e.g., an important insight or personal decision) or external (e.g., a murder or calamity). Begin too early, you lose your reader. Begin too late, you lose your story.

We convince by our presence.

...the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.

The greatest happiness comes from being vitally interested in something that excites all your energies.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

The crowd, in its uncritical political engagement, is not always discerning about new possibility that comes with risk and often votes in fear for the status quo.

prophetic preaching can take place only where the preacher is deeply embedded in the YHWH narrative.

history consists primarily of speaking and being answered, crying and being heard. If that is true, it means there can be no history in the empire because the cries are never heard and the speaking is never answered. And if the task of prophecy is to empower people to engage in history, then it means evoking cries that expect answers, learning to address them where they will be taken seriously, and ceasing to look to the numbed and dull empire that never intended to answer in the first place.

Thus the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is an act of trust in the subversive, exodus-causing God of the first commandment, an act of submission to the restful God of commandments one, two, and three. Sabbath is a practical divestment so that neighborly engagement, rather than production and consumption, defines our lives.

1. The first partner in the meeting is the text.

3. There is a text in its boldness. There is a congregation, perhaps reduced and diminished by fatigue. Third, there is this specific occasion for speech.

One of the things that economics brings to the analysis is explicit recognition that people will not engage in activities—including racial discrimination—no matter what the cost.

Everyone wants a hand in the outcome, a piece of the knowledge.

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.