Favorite Quote Collection

Inspiring  Amusing  Quirky

… Found in an old note book, I wanted to breathe life back into words which touch my soul and spark the imagination… 

Basically collected from Movies and Music, with perhaps a single Political Quote among the ridiculous and the fantastic. From single lines, to whole speeches.

Words are magic without the rituals. They can inspire, destroy, cast seeds of infesting doubt, lift spirits, mend broken hearts and instigate infectious laughter.

Whether they emerge from films, lyrics or great minds, inspiration can emerge from anywhere, even a public toilet in London! Where I once read an interesting snippet of graffiti… ‘Happiness does rely on the absence of problems’ …

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The Viking Prayer

“Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother,
and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
Back to the beginning!

Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place among them,
In the halls of Valhalla!
Where the brave may live forever!”

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“So it’s Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groovy”

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“Voilà!

In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valourous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.”

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“Just paint your face” the shadows smile

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If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.

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Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it’s fucked up and he is a fucker
But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain
I call upon the author to explain

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I thought I would save the best (and the longest) till last… 

 

 

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children – victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” – not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power – the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then – in the name of democracy – let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world – a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Final speech from The Great Dictator Copyright © Roy Export S.A.S. All rights reserved

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Anne Harrison 20.07.17

The Hero’s Journey

… What Structure? *Scratches Head*

Twas no fib when I wrote … ‘anticipation gripped those who witnessed the arrival of this force and even your humble narrator isn’t sure what she’s going to write next…’ at the end of Part 47, I don’t exactly know what I am going to write in Part 48 yet, I have about a dozen ideas, my thoughts regarding this ‘Notsoshortshortstory’ actually branches off 14 years into the future, but obviously that wont be in the next part and not all my ideas get scribbled down, typed up, remembered or develop beyond a dream. Basically I have No structure.

Now, I read a lot about the art of writing, I subscribe to various Blogs and Websites, The Wonderbook is a constant companion and I have drank up every word in On Writing and I’m utterly fascinated by The Story Seminar . One thing which pops up time and time again is ‘The Hero’s Journey’ which has been written about countless times, with various experts putting their personal twist upon this theme. It can be complicated, broken down into diddy fractions or simply Three Acts.

We covered it in class upon the creative writing course:

Many stories, many films, follow this journey of discovery for our (initially) unwilling Hero and his friends/foe. It is a tale that has followed us (mankind) throughout our history, from ancient Myths and Legends right through to Harry Potter. The Hero’s Journey is Mankind’s Journey, it may echo our own trials and tribulations through life, sometimes.

It is a concept which fascinates me as I (personally) can also relate this to The Fool’s Journey, which is the progress of the Fool through the Major Arcana in Tarot Cards.

The Fool is The Hero, Look at all these beautiful characters he meets upon his travels through the Major Arcana! How many character archetypes are hidden (in plain sight) in the Tarot? The Wise Man… Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Ben Kenobi … The Hermit.

We have our Kings and Queens, Magicians, Love, Death, Judgement, Strength… All the glorious concepts we also find in The Hero’s Journey… But my rumbling thoughts have taken a bizarre twist of their own and this is no longer what I wanted to write about when I started this blog, however, that’s just the way my mind works and I’ve got lost trying to follow the tangled threads of a messy thoughts. Instead I’ve given you something else to ponder over. I don’t expect I am the first person to relate these two concepts? I don’t know how I got onto the subject of the Tarot when I actually wanted to reflect upon the ‘Hero’ theme, but it fits, so I will just leave that there and slink back into my cave and rethink over what it is I wanted to write about…

 

Anne Harrison 14.03.17

 

Learning to Read Again

This is a personal blog today, to reflect upon my love for books, poetry and all things decorated up in pretty words. Learning to read again was possibly one of the most difficult yet rewarding goals of recent years, considerably aided by my University course and a graphic novel that I got last Christmas.

The ability to read, to focus upon the words and absorb stories was cruelly stolen from my mind, a lingering side effect from the TIA in 2013. It was this health scare which helped me turn my life around (which appears to be an ongoing long … possibly life long process of self development with brief episodes of ‘Meh’) the same health scare which spurred me to enroll in University in the first place.

I’m going to try and put my frustration into words. I have always loved reading, from an early age when my Dad read ‘Lord of the Rings’ to me as a bedtime tale. I collected books, novels, naturally, but also many books upon the Paranormal and the Supernatural. Anything weird and wonderful, mysterious and exotic. I read with a hunger, soaking up words, delighting in each morbid case. Then I lost it all, following the TIA, the simple of act of reading was gone from my mind. I would stare at a page, the same page for what felt like hours, I would look at the words, I knew what the words meant, I knew if I string together a series of words that they should make sense in that order, they would create a sentence and tell me something. I knew that, so why was I still gazing at the same word? Why was I stuck? I felt like there was this invisible barrier in my head, all the words went in, through my eyes, hit this barrier and splurggggedsssdsfg… Nothing, my brain could not translate words and my heart was breaking.

It has taken me three years to finish  The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski three bloody years to read a simple 300-ish page novel, the sort of shit that should have taken no time at all. Yet each word was like agony, I read and re-read pages, chapters, sentences… I gave up and for a long time the book haunted me like a ghost of reading past, mocking me, mocking my broken abilities.

The reading list we were given at University filled me with dread, I was struggling to read the handouts, class was like this jumble sale of ideas and chatter, a close knit of friends who adored to share knowledge and opinions without hostility and I flourished with this verbal exchange. However I could not work my slow painful way through a single novel, I improvised enough to scrape through classes with a vague understanding of each story, which only heightened my desire to re-read again as I was introduced to classics, old favorites and shit I really hated.

As a child one of my teachers thought I might have had dyslexia, one of the only teachers I had who didn’t think I was just ‘slow’… Though I moved home and nothing more was said about this in my new school and the idea was dismissed, it’s not something I know much about, but I do know that the use of coloured paper can help and this is how a graphic novel lead me in my own adventure back into books…

The images brought to life the snappy dialogue and brief narratives. There was just enough for my addled mind to read and I delighted in the action packed drama, all wrapped up in glorious technicolour. I felt like a big kid again with my weekly issues of 2000AD, thrilled that I could grasp a story without blankly letting the letters merge together into a puddle of nonsense.

I did not express my struggles to my lecturer, I’m not sure I’ve really approached this subject with anyone really, it’s not something I’ve ever felt comfortable discussing, or should I say admitting… I felt ashamed with my inability to read on a creative writing course, yet it also propelled me with some determination to get over this stumbling block. I mean the ability to read still had to be inside my head somewhere, I just needed a way to rewire the route between my eyes and the little bit in my head which translated the scribbles into scenes. Having the scenes there assisted this process and even though sometimes, when I get tired my brain goes blank and stops consuming words, so the letters dance on the page like a morbid mockery, then one simply rests.

I’m reading two books currently and delighting in every word in both, I’m buying new books and looking forward to delving into their pages, I’ve even devised my own reading list and branching my new found literacy discovery into various directions of genre. My passion has returned and with my desire for reading I am also writing more, even if only through the pages of my little blog.

 

Anne Harrison 18.02.18