Coda Quotes

“In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Tal vez amar es aprender a caminar por este mundo”
― Octavio Paz , Mexican Poetry: An Anthology

“Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people’s faces, / Will you find your lost dead among them?”
― Ezra Pound, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound

“Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito--out! Every simile that would have made sub-moron's mouth twitch--gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer--lost!
Every story slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like--in the finale--Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention--shot dead.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“It’s just another stop on the curvy road
the final encounter
for the man who has lived
death is the answer.”
― Mie Hansson, Where Pain Thrives

“You can’t translate something
that was never in a language
in the first place.”
― Chase Twichell

“By the time you do what it takes to be a hero, you don't want to be a hero.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“I'd always tell them that I was hard-of-hearing. One minute they said it didn't bother them, the next they'd tell me to forget it.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Heavy are the hands that bear the signs.”
― Mickey Carolan, Mom Dad Not Hear: 30 Powerful Stories and Lessons about Leadership, Life, and Love from My Deaf Parents

“Davvero Oliver, agli sportelli della felicità c'è sempre una fila incredibile che difficilmente si riesce a immaginare.”
― Marco Gregò, Nella terra del sole che sboccia

“A snapshot memory, circa 1955:
I'm draped over Dad's shoulder, bouncing along in time with his stride. It's a hot day and we're strolling through a fairground. Beside us, Verna clings to Mom's hand. A cob of corn has slipped from my sweaty clutches, and I'm shrieking at full lung capacity to have it retrieved. Bobbing over Dad's shoulder, I can see that tasty morsel - sticky with grit, no doubt - receding into the distance, and I'm furious.

My parents, facing the other direction, are oblivious to my rising howls of protest. Big sister ignores me. Curious onlookers wander by, but I'm not at all self-conscious. I want that cob of corn, and I want it now! Nothing else matters...

I learned soon enough that my parents would never react to my verbal outbursts unless they were facing me. If they couldn't see my face, it didn't count. I'm not sure when that realization dawned, but I know it was early. I recall, as a small child, running into another room to tug on Mom's arm. I knew instinctively that shouting would be useless.

From my infancy, the deaf-hearing dynamic shaped every part of our mother-child communication. Specifics elude me; I only knew that I understood her, and she understood me. Most likely, we used a blend of speaking, signs, and gestures. If I had to describe it, I'd call it mother-talk, that intimate connection that happens between mothers and their offspring. You know how they just understand each other? Well, that's how it was, with us.

Excerpt from Patricia Conrad's Gentle into the Darkness, p. 68”
― Patricia Conrad, Gentle into the Darkness: A Deaf Mother's Journey into Alzheimer's

“Sex, drugs, and rock & roll...It don't get no better.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Drugs cry for those who cannot weep, and mourn for those who cannot grieve.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Tribalism is a prison of perception.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Sometimes, the only way to make things better is to believe they will be.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Every heart has got a story. Listen for the ones nobody wants to hear.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Never let anyone dictate your narrative.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Everything is a McApocalypse to those people. They think the sky is falling, but the universe is laughing at them.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“The past takes a different shape in the future.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“Demons that lurk in darkness feast on silence.”
― Michael C. Haymes

“The lessons of our past, no matter how horrifying, must be remembered if we are to preserve our future.”
― Michael C. Haymes