John James Osborne
- Britain
People in London tell the foreigner who seeks some understanding of Britain, "Whatever you do, don't stay in London. Get out of London and go..." The visitor is advised to go to the villages in Somerset and Norfolk, to Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands, to ancient York and Durham in the north of England, to the coal towns of Wales or to the great cities of wild highlands of Scotland. All of these places and more reveal much of Britain.
Erich Fromm
- Afterword to 1984 by George Orwell
Orwell, like the authors of the other negative utopias, is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and to awaken us. He still hopes - but in contrast to the writers of the utopias in the earlier phases of Western society, his hope is a desperate one. The hope can be realized only by recognizing, so 1984 teaches us, the danger with which all men are confronted today, the danger of a society of automatons who will have lost every trace of individuality, of love...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- The Red Wheel
It's with worrying and grieving I know I'm still living. The three platoon commanders shared a bunker. Built in warm, dry weather, it never got damp. It was quite deep, so that once through the door there was no need to stoop. It was roofed with ten-inch pine beams laid crisscross. The walls were lined with lath and the floor was boarded. The battery tinsmith had knocked together a stove with a merrily roaring draft and a great appetite for wood. When the stove was lit the bunker was warmer...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is beyond doubt the most startling work ever to have been published in the Soviet Union. Apart from being a literary masterpiece, it is a revolutionary document that will affect the climate of life inside the Soviet Union. It is a pitiless and relentlessly told tale of forced labor camps under Stalin.
Jake Goldberg
- Miguel de Cervantes, Youth
The exact date of birth of Miguel de Cervantes is not known, but it was certainly no more than a few days before his baptism in the church of Santa Maria la Mayor, in the small city of Alcala de Enares 20 miles northwest of Madrid, on October 9, 1547. His family lived at 2 Calle de la Imagen, a street in a quarter of the city heavily settled by Jews and Muslims who had embraced Christianity, officially at least, rather than face expulsion from Spain.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes. PhD
- Soul vs. Ego
Three things differentiate living from the soul versus living from ego only. They are: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time. The ego, however, has a penchant and a proclivity to avoid learning. Patience is not ego's strong suit. Enduring in relationship is not Raven's forte. So it is not from the ever-changing ego that we love another but rather from the wild soul.