Sharon Olds Quotes

To die hating them, that was freedom.

Our rejection of the occupier at heart is resistance.

While it's really hard to do, at the same time, I'm escaping my body, which I really want to do. I'm living someone else's life. I get very intensely into the story, into the interviews and the research. I'm experiencing things along with my subjects. I have a freedom I don't have in my physical life.

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

Neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promise success .... Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.... Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance!

Come with me, Douglass, I will defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them.

The struggle now is the struggle for our emancipation; the struggle now is the struggle for our independence. Joy Bangla!. Since we have given blood, we will give more blood. God-willing, the people of this country will be liberated...Turn every house into a fort. Face (the enemy) with whatever you have…. This time the struggle is for our freedom!

Let us hasten to break the chains of those victims who groan in their dungeons, awaiting salvation at your hands! Do not abuse their confidence! Do not turn a deaf ear to the lamentations of your brothers! Let us fly quickly to avenge the dead, to give life to the dying, freedom to the oppressed and liberty to all!

You cry the first tear because something is genuinely, singularly upsetting. And you cry the second tear because everybody is crying that first tear with you, and you know that.

To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.

I could step out of this sad life like it's an old sorry dress.

Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .

From craving is born grief, from craving is born fear. For one freed from craving there's no grief- so how fear?

True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!

A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.

It is the place of feeling that binds us or frees us.

And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. Everything that mattered except one lousy picture was in the trash, but it felt so great. I started jogging, wanting to put even more distance between myself and school. It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

This is what happens: somebody—girl usually—got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just float away. And maybe you never see the balloon again . . . Or maybe three or four years from now, or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home . . . But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time.

It is only through opening your hearts will you be able to see that by promoting freedom for all, you are unchaining yourself. I guess I'm an optimist. I have faith in people and our government ultimately to do the right thing. And to my brothers and sisters in California, I'm there with you every step of the way until that day comes...

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

In general, indulgence for those we know is rarer than pity for those we know not.