If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own. – Kurt Vonnegut at Letters of Note.

“What if you are part of the problem? What do you do when you realize that your history is the history of exploitation? That your lifestyle is depends on a system that you now see is unjust?” – Leah Hunt-Hendrix interviewed at Salon.

Rumpus: Is this interview being monitored right now? Potter: Maybe. The more important question: Is that going to stop us? – Activist Will Potter interviewed at The Rumpus.

“(C)ourage is vital piece of any well-lived life.” – Sugar on body image at The Rumpus.

“I admire the force of your stream.” – Wells Tower at NYR Blog

The spot was haloed red around the edges and charred in the center, about the size of a stubbed-out cigarette because it in fact was the designated location where her man could stub out his cigarette while they were making dog-style sex, and thinking of it from kind of a convenience aspect it was a sweet thing for her to allow and because it was so scarred up she couldn’t feel a new smoke stubbed out, and in that way it was the perfect display of love. – Amelia Gray at Toad

One day somewhere in the world something terrible will happen and for once we will heed the ruins. We will begin collectively to take responsibility for the world we’re creating. Call me foolishly utopian, but I sincerely believe this will happen. I do. I just wonder how many millions of people will perish before it does. – Junot Díaz at Boston Review

Forgiveness of self is central to the project of being an ally because, simply put, you won’t be much good to other folks until you can get over your own shit. Until you stop feeling like the piece of shit the world revolves around. – Margaret Price at TheRedTree.

There’s only so much you can devote in any one day to reading. But you must read. That’s why I feel I must read the newspapers first. Why? Because I really want to know what is going on. – Gay Talese on reading material at The Atlantic.

Of such corporal instances as these he bore no tidings, and though it was the custom in that part of the world to stop with any traveler and exchange the news, he seemed to travel with no news at all, as if the doings of the world were too slanderous for him to truck with, or perhaps, too trivial. – from Blood Meridian by Cormac MaCarthy