"Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo took her last breath unaware of the firestorm raging outside the tranquil hospice where she had lived for the past five years.

"But her saga left a profound impression on the nation, sparking extraordinary attempts by politicians to keep her alive as they fought her husband over her fate.

"She left behind not only a shattered family but millions of vocal mourners from the Vatican to the streets outside her hospice. Yet, even as those mourners drew most of the attention, the vast majority of Americans believed she had the right to die.

"Perhaps most of all, her story was a lesson for countless people who never discussed, much less wrote down, what they would want if they were suddenly thrust into her tragic situation."

-- Maya Bell, Reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, published in the Kansas City Star.

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

"It's the line that eventually will be cited by Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the line endlessly quoted to me by people, the line by which I'll be remembered, and I suspect it will probably be my epitaph."

-- Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Esq., 1937-2005.


Image from University of Iowa.

"Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

Well the first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire,
Kinfolk said Jed move away from there
Said Californy is the place you ought to be
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.

Hills, that is.
Swimmin pools, movie stars.

The Beverly Hillbillies!

(Epilogue)

Well now its time to say good-bye to Jed and all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin in.
You’re all invited back again to this locality
To have a heapin helpin of their hospitality

Hillbilly that is. Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y'all come back now, y'hear?"

-- Paul Henning, Creator of the Beverly Hillbillies, and songwriter of The Ballad of Jed Clampett, 1911-2005.


Image from EPGuides.

"Real change of self isn't found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all."
-- Guy Finley, The Secret of Letting Go.

"I was coming out of the shower and I fell and all my body weight - I'm pretty fragile - all my body weight fell against my rib cage, And I bruised my lung very badly... Elizabeth Taylor used to feed me, to hand-feed me, at times... Please, I don't want anybody to think I'm starving, I'm not. My health is perfect, actually."
-- Michael Jackson, in an interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.


Image from MTV.

“I’m outraged, and I think that every American in this country should also be outraged, that this government is trampling all over a personal family matter that has been adjudicated in the courts for seven years.”
-- Michael Schaivo


Image from The New York Times.

"Right about now I feel as low as I ever have... I'm starting to regret sticking around. I should've taken the razor blade express last time around. Well, whatever, man. Maybe they've got another shuttle comin' around sometime soon."

-- Jeff Weise on his LiveJournal blog, several weeks prior to going on a suicidal shooting spree at Red Lake High School, Signs of Danger Were Missed in a Troubled Teenager's Life, by Monica Davey and Jodi Wilgoren, The New York Times.

"I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child."
-- Dan Quayle

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
-- Kahlil Gibran

"I am a Negro who has never lived in the South, thank God, nor was I ever trapped in an urban ghetto. I grew up in Danville, Illinois, where my family always lived on a pleasant street in a pleasant neighborhood."
-- Bobby Short, 1924-2004


Image from Danville Library.

"My final thought is a simple but mighty one:
it is the obligation we have been given.
It is to not turn out the same.
It is to grow, to accomplish,
to change the world."

-- Stephen Sondheim, Merrily We Roll Along.


Imge from SJSondheim.com.

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."
-- Henri Matisse


Image from MoMA.

Barbara Cook: "I remember going into Joe Allen's , and you saying 'God, I hate you. You always make me cry. When you sing, you always make me cry.'"

Stephen Sondheim: "Well, you do. It's all about passion. It's what we do for a living. And when I say, do for a living, I do not mean money. It's what you invest of yourself."

-- Joyce Wadler, As quoted in Boldface, The New York Times, today.


Image from tla video.

"Don't bid the devil good day till you meet him."
-- Irish Proverb.

"'All human beings should try to learn what they are running from, and to, and why,' said James Thurber. Judging from the astrological omens, Cancerian, I think this is the perfect time for you to take his advice very seriously. You're in position to see things that are normally invisible to you, including secrets you hide from yourself and truths you have studiously avoided knowing. Maybe you don't think you're telepathic, but I assure you that right now you at least have the power to read your own deep and mysterious mind."
-- Robert Brezny, Free Will Astrology

"I've always been a praying person."
-- Hillary Rodham Clinton

“If I who am nothing, who am nobody, have been allowed to visit so many great cities of the world with my fare paid, then anyone can do it.”
-– Quentin Crisp, How to Have a Life-Style, Circa 1978.


Image from Digilander.

"You know, honey, I've noticed you walk into a party and you sit in the corner. You can't do that. When you say yes to a party, that's a social contract. You're saying yes to being charming, being interesting, and being part of the group."
-- Cy Coleman, to his wife, as related in a New York Times article by Lois Smith Brady, March 6, 2005.


Image from Musiq.

"Don't worry if you relapse. It's how you respond to a relapse that counts."
-- Susan Shapiro, Lighting Up, p. 247.

"I think it's tragic what women are doing to their faces, trying to
look like dolls. It doesn't make women look younger; it makes them look wierd. When you hit a point where you're looking like a doll, you're gone. As a spiritual being, you're dead.".
-- Kirstie Alley, on cosmetic surgery, in The New York Times.

"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right."
-- Confucious, as quoted by the Higher Powered blog.

"Dan Rather's attempts to defend himself, however, spoke more of an aging anchor's self-delusion than self-knowledge. 'Too much passion melded to loving the work leads to making mistakes,' Mr. Rather said in the hourlong tribute. 'I would rather have too much than not enough.'... "The mistake that led to last night's premature farewell was more mundane than that. The final indignity for Mr. Rather wasn't just that his career ended on a mistake, but that the flawed '60 Minutes' story trapped him in the role he most despised: an overextended news reader who relied, too blindly, on the shoddy reporting of his producers."
-- Alessandra Stanley, Signing Off: Rather's Wish for Viewers Is Still 'Courage', The New York Times.

"That prison is punishment is the first lesson. Eventually, every inmate hears the correctional officer's favorite sonnet: 'You did the crime, now do your time.' Prison is cold.

"The second lesson inmates learn is how to do the time. During my first two weeks I was administered a battery of tests, after which the guards assigned me to the prison laundry.

"For me, doing time wasn't so bad because I also enjoyed reading and soon discovered that I could counsel needy inmates. But most inmates 'did time' by trying to sleep it away. In the dormitory at any hour of the day or night I'd find half the inmates stretched out, sleeping 18 hours a day. Life in prison corrodes the soul.

"The third lesson is that there is vocational training for the fortunate few, but for most, the only "training" is learning how to avoid getting caught the next time. At Maxwell, evening conversations in the TV room sounded like seminars on improving professional criminal qualifications. It's not surprising that 67 percent of inmates are arrested or incarcerated again within two years.

"The fourth lesson is: trust no one. I had good training for this in the White House, where the maneuvering of presidential counselors resembled a hockey game in the Nixon years. That training served me well in the prison. I was a public figure; every inmate wanted to befriend me. Among them were the many good, God-fearing folk who made their living with secret moonshine stills and who never let prison interfere with their vocation. With a supply of raisins and potatoes swiped from the mess hall, they brewed a lethal mix in the prison dormitory attic and were eager to share their product with me. I declined. Marijuana was freely available, as were other numbers of favors I was offered.

"Many offers seemed well intentioned, but there were those who would have delighted in leading me astray. Prisons are desperately lonely places, deadly boring, and inmates play mind games for amusement."

-- Chuck Colson, Martha Stewart Living Free, The New York Times

"From [the age of] seven years, I started to go to concerts, collecting autographs and preparing the scores for the concert during the week and, of course, dreaming that the conductor would be sick. Then I would jump on the stage, make my debut and I would be famous... It did happen, with the Romanian State Ensemble – without poisoning the conductor,"
-- Sergiu Comissiona, former Music Director for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 1928-2005.

"Ain't the beer cold!"
--Chuck Thompson, Legendary sportscaster for the Baltimore Orioles and the Baltimore Colts, 1922-2005

"I heard a fact the other day that the population of New York City has the least amount of virgins of any area of that size in the U.S. Raise your hand if you're surprised by this."
-- John Holowach, The Holowach Blog.

1. God is good and everywhere present.
2. The spirit of God lives within each person, therefore, all people are inherently good.
3. We create our life experiences through our way of thinking.
4. There is power in affirmative prayer, which we believe increases our connection to God.
5. Knowledge of these spiritual principles is not enough. We must live them.


-- The five basic Unity principles, as paraphrased by Unity Church of Fort Collins.

"Martha Stewart returned in the early morning hours yesterday to one of her homes, a sprawling model farm in rural Westchester County. And there she found that not much had changed since she last roamed free, with reporters and photographers camped by the dozen in front of her house and the public keenly interested in every detail of her post-prison existence.

"She passed around coffee and doughnuts to reporters gathered outside her property. And she strolled from building to building on the grounds, wearing a long winter-white coat and clearly displaying a happy mood, even waving to a helicopter hovering 1,000 feet overhead.

"It is the most freedom she will have until early August. Ms. Stewart, who must complete five months of home confinement as the next part of her sentence, has until Sunday to report to her federal probation officer. She is to be fitted with a plastic monitoring device, which she will wear on one ankle, that will allow probation officials to track her movements. The probation department will also install a transmitter in her house, said Chris Stanton, chief probation officer for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.

"Then the truly restrictive aspects of home confinement begin. Ms. Stewart will be confined to a single building, almost certainly the main house on the 153-acre expanse at the corner of Maple Avenue and Girdle Ridge Road in Bedford that she has spent the last three years restoring, sometimes to the annoyance of local zoning officials.

"She may have her dogs at her side, but she is not allowed to go outside to walk them. She can keep chickens, but she is not permitted in the henhouse. She may have a garden, but she herself cannot dig in the dirt."

-- Constance L. Hays, Home Sweet Home Confinement, The New York Times, today.


Image from The New York Times.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference."
--Anonymous

"Feelings misinform."
--Susan Shapiro, Lighting Up.

"You can see them in any kind of weather and at almost any time of day. On bicycles that look sturdy enough to withstand a collision with a tank, the seats often wrapped in old plastic bags, they surge ahead through snow and rain, heat and, yes, especially gloom of night. No marble carving will ever exalt their heroic efforts, yet they are fixtures of almost any residential neighborhood in New York City. They deliver dinner, and sometimes lunch and breakfast, too. Yet within the reinforced bags dangling from their handlebars, the prepared dishes in their plastic, microwave-proof containers convey far more than a meal. They speak of the evolving stew of cultures that simmers throughout the five boroughs. They speak of the typical New Yorker's contradictory character: brash but overworked, stoic but requiring rewards, impatient but willing to wait. Most of all they embody what many New Yorkers regard as an inalienable right: to have meals of almost any conceivable sort delivered to their door, hot, fragrant and appetizing."
-- Eric Asimov, In New York, the World Is Brought to Your Door, The New York Times

"Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness."
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, in an interview, The New York Times Magazine.