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August 23, 2005
power
"...the only thing power respects is power. Whenever you find a man who's in a position to show power against power then that man is respected."
--malcolm x, speech at ford auditorium
Posted by ali at 12:28 AM | TrackBack
August 9, 2005
the mirror
"We celebrated each moment of our meetings as a revelation alone in all the world. You were lighter and bolder than the wing of a bird flying down the stairs two at a time... pure giddiness, leading me through the moist lilac to your domain beyond the looking glass. When night fell, I was favored. The altar gates were opened and in the dark, there gleamed your nudity, and I slowly bowed. Awakening, 'Be blessed,' I said and know my blessing to be bold for you still slept. The lilac on the table stretched forth to touch your lids with heavenly blue and your blue-tinted lids were calm, and your hand was warm. Locked in crystal, rivers pulsed, mountains smoked, seas glimmered. You held a sphere of crystal in your hand and slept on a throne. And-- righteous Lord!-- you were mine. You awakened and transformed our mundane, human words. Then did my throat fill with new power and give new meaning to 'you' which now meant 'sovereign.' All was transformed, even such simple things as basin, pitcher, when like a sentinel, layered, solid water lay between us. We were drawn on and on where cities built by magic parted us like mirages. Mint carpeted our way, birds escorted us, and fish swam upstream while the sky spread out before us as Fate followed in our wake like a madman brandishing a razor."
--the mirror(1975), andrei tarkovsky
Posted by ali at 12:37 AM | TrackBack
August 8, 2005
john nash: 1994 nobel prize, a beautiful mind (2002)
Nash: Thank you. I've always believed in numbers and the equations and logics that lead to reason.
But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask,
"What truly is logic?"
"Who decides reason?"
My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional -- and back.
And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.
I'm only here tonight because of you [his wife, Alicia].
You are the reason I am.
You are all my reasons.
Thank you.
Posted by ali at 11:42 PM | TrackBack
August 7, 2005
the godfather
Don Corleone: Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man. |Play|
Don Corleone: I spent my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless. But not men. |Play|
Michael: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Kay Adams: What was that?
Michael: Luca Brasi, held a gun to his head, and my father assured him, that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.
Kay Adams: ...
Michael: ...That's a true story. |Play|
Michael: My father is no different than any other powerful man, any man who is responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.
Kay Adams: Do you know how naive you sound?
Michael: Why?
Kay Adams: Senators and presidents don't have men killed.
Michael: Oh. Who's being naive, Kay? |Play|
Sonny: Goddamn FBI don't respect nothin'.
Sollozzo: I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman; blood is a big expense. |Play|
I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but I taught her never to dishonor her family.
Michael: What I want - what's most important to me - is that I have a guarantee: No more attempts on my father's life.
Sollozzo: What guarantees could I give you, Mike? I am the hunted one! I missed my chance. You think too much of me, kid - I'm not that clever. |Play|
Don Corleone: What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you. |Play|
Sonny: Hey, whataya gonna do, nice college boy, eh? Didn't want to get mixed up in the Family business, huh? Now you wanna gun down a police captain. Why? Because he slapped ya in the face a little bit? Hah? What do you think this is the Army, where you shoot 'em a mile away? You've gotta get up close like this and bada-bing. you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. C'mere... |Play|
Michael: It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business. |Play|
Don Corleone: I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him - if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell... or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning - then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room; and then I do not forgive. But that aside, let me say that I swear on the souls of my grandchildren - that I will not be the one to break the peace that we have made here today. |Play|
Clemenza: I also, don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kinda business, but somebody comes to them and says, I've got powders, if you put up a three to four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing, so they can't resist. I want to control it as a business to keep it respectable. [shouts]
Clemenza: I don't want it near schools. I don't want it sold to children! In my city, we would keep the traffic in the Dark People, the Coloreds - they're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls. |Play|
Clemenza: All right, you just shot 'em both. Now what do you do?
Michael: Sit down and finish my dinner.
Posted by ali at 1:09 PM | TrackBack
August 5, 2005
mx on ml
Malcolm X On Martin Luther King, Jr...
"He got the peace prize, we got the problem.... If I'm following a general, and he's leading me into a battle, and the enemy tends to give him rewards, or awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets a peace award before the war is over."
--malcolm x
Posted by ali at 12:40 AM | TrackBack
August 4, 2005
my antonia
"I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table in the lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that his face seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savage scar that made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twisted moustache. As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them defenceless. These boys had no practised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers who never marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond of children!"
--my antonia, willa cather
Posted by ali at 9:33 PM | TrackBack
August 3, 2005
the great gatsby
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
--the great gatsby, francis scott fitzgerald
Posted by ali at 9:40 PM | TrackBack
August 1, 2005
pulp fiction quotations
Jules: Wanna know what I'm buyin' Ringo?
Pumpkin: What?
Jules: Your life. I'm givin' you that money so I don't hafta kill your ass. You read the Bible?
Pumpkin: Not regularly.
Jules: There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.
Vincent: Want some bacon?
Jules: No man, I don't eat pork.
Vincent: Are you Jewish?
Jules: Nah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all.
Vincent: Why not?
Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.
Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got enough sense enough to disregard its own faeces.
Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces.
Jules: I don't eat dog either.
Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we'd have to be talkin' about one charmin' motherfuckin' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?
Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any of the slopes were gonna get their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.
The Wolf: Jimmie, lead the way. Boys, get to work.
Vincent: A please would be nice.
The Wolf: What?
Vincent: I said a please would be nice.
The Wolf: Get it straight, gentlemen: I'm not here to say please, I'm here to tell you what to do. And if self-preservation is an instinct that you possess, you'd better do it and do it quick. If my help's not appreciated, lots of luck, gentlemen.
Jules: No, Mr. Wolf, it ain't like that...
Vincent: I don't mean any disrespect, I just don't like people barking orders at me.
The Wolf: If I'm curt with you, it's because time is a factor here. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you guys to act fast if you want to get out of this. So, pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the fucking car.
Jules: Look, do you wanna play blindman? Go walk with the shepherd. But me, my eyes are wide fucking open.
Vincent: What the fuck does that mean?
Jules: It means, that's it for me. From here on in you can consider my ass retired.
Vincent: Jesus Christ.
Jules: Don't blaspheme.
Vincent: Goddamn.
Jules: I said don't do that!
--pulp fiction