words with immigrants, exiles and refugees.

Here’s a collection of people who found, or tried to find, homes away from home. If I create from the heart, nearly everything works. If from the head, almost nothing. — March Chagall

We always project into the future or reflect in the past but we are so little in the present. — Marina Abramovic

IT is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance. — Dalai Lama

The more tense you are, the less you can hear. — Yo-Yo Ma

 Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. — Anne Frank

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

 To be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind. — Madeleine Albright

 Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. — Albert Einstein

 We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought. — Oliver Sacks

 Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.  — Marie Curie

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.  — Arthur Rimbaud

 Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities, but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster. — Quentin Crisp

Peace begins with a smile. — Mother Teresa

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary. — Milan Kundera

 You can make a fresh start with your final breath. — Bertolt Brecht

 There is peace even in the storm.  — Vincent Van Gogh

 In our hearts we are just human beings who want a dignified life. Is that too much to ask for? — Tawakkol Karman

 Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. — Moshin Hamid

The world is surreal and beautiful and everything is fine. — Regina Spektor

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mensches at work.

 it is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance. — Dalai Lama

The third rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. — A.A. Milne

 Every collaboration helps you grow.  — Brian Eno

 The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. — Abraham Lincoln

 When people are judgmental and aggressive, all you end up doing is geting other people to turn away in irritation. To change people’s minds you have to respect the people you’re talking to. — Moby

An enemy despised is the most dangerous of all enemies. — Publilus Syrus

Mistakes are portals of discovery. — James Joyce

You’re not teaching anyone unless you’re learning yourself. — Hilton Als

9 wonders of the word.

Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes courage. RIP Mary Tyler Moore

When we are committed to doing the work of love, we listen even when it hurts. — bell hooks

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance. — Anatole Broyard

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self. — Brendan Behan

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open.

We’re stuck in fear and in not wanting to cross that most important bridge of understanding that we’re more alike or not. We all cry, we all laugh.  — Stevie Wonder

No matter how many options we have, the real challenge is figuring out how to evaluate them. — Aziz Ansari

I think most people try to get others to see through their eyes. — Captain Beefheart

Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom. — Francoise Sagan

women in the trenches, women in the sketches

Have compassion for everyone, even if they don’t want it. — Lucinda Willlams

When we are committed to the work of love, we listen even when it hurts.  — bell hooks

 I made no resolutions for the new year. The habit of making plans, criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life is too much of a daily event for me.  — Anais Nin

 Walls turned sideways are bridges. — Angela Davis

 Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding. — Diane Arbus

 Try to love someone you want to hate because they are just like you somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds deeply within you that you cannot begin to fathom.  — Margaret Cho

 If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s not to be so judgmental of other people. — Patti Smith

 Life is the input of everyone who you touched in your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another. — Yuri Kochiyama

 The world needs all types of minds. — Temple Grandin

I’m too small for the universe to revolve around me. It’s a huge relief. — Neko Case

Kindness eases change. Love quiets fear.  — Octavia Butler

Humility is attentive patience. — Simone Weil

 The best times are always going to be the most intense, the ones with the highest highs and the lowest lows. — Fiona Apple

 You don’t have to be fearless to do anything. You can be scared out of your mind. — Esperanza Spalding

In violence, we forget who we are. — Mary McCarthy

It takes more than one person to bring about peace — it takes all of us.  — Rosa Parks

 Sticking labels on you cuts off all other elements of what you are. — Siouxsie Sioux

 It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences. — Audre Lorde

 You have to listen with a heart. I don’t want to sound touchy-feely. It is not. It is very hard work — Anna Deavere Smith

Everything is negotiable. Whether the negotiation is easy is another thing. — Carrie Fisher

It is all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies. But oh, what about forgiving our friends? — Willa Cather

 The mind and the voice by themselves are not sufficient. — Mahalia Jackson

 The world is surreal and beautiful and everything is fine. — Regina Spektor

 To be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind. — Madeleine Albright

 Keep in mind always the present you are constructing. It should be the future you want. — Alice Walker

 When we really see each other, we want to help each other. — Amanda Palmer

 The only thing ruder than finger pointing is rocket pointing.  — Aparna Nancherla

 Nonviolence is pretty ballsy, pretty advanced weaponry.  — Ava Duvernay

 It’s just really important that we start celebrating our differences. Let’s start tolerating first, but then we need to celebrate our differences. — Billie Jean King

I can’t judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself. — Cyndi Lauper

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand, our ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. — Brenda Ueland

 There can be mercy in the midst of misery. — Cynthia Hopkins

 Storms make trees take deeper roots. — Dolly Parton

I think at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity. — Eleanor Roosevelt.

Life is not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. — Gilda Radner

War is what happens when language fails. — Margaret Atwood

 The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn. — Gloria Steinem

 You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. — Harper Lee, in To Kill a Mockingbird

 Change comes from listening, learning, caring and conversation. — Gwen Ifill

 You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. — Indira Gandhi

 What makes us human, I think, is our ability to ask questions.  — Jane Goodall

We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome. — Isabel Allende

We always project into the future or reflect in the past but we are so little in the present. — Marina Abramovic

 Think of something you can do as opposed to all the things you can’t — and do that. — Kathleen Hanna  (Apologies for the typo in the drawing. Will fix it, by and by.)

 Since we live in this world, we have to do our best for this world. — Aung San Suu Kyi

 Every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage everyone to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might become liberators for ourselves and each other. — Laverne Cox

 Don’t wait for a Gandhi, don’t wait for a Martin Luther King, don’t wait for a Mandela, you are your own King…  Leymah Gbowee

To be alive is to be vulnerable. –Madeleine L’Engle

 For fast acting relief, try slowing down.  — Lily Tomlin

 Peace begins with a smile. — Mother Teresa

Change is possible. If you fight for it. — Elizabeth Warren

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. — Joan Didion

Pull your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. — Anne Sexton

 Recognize yourself in others. — Nadine Gordimer

 We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.  — Anais Nin

 If I could forgive, it meant I was a strong good person who could take responsibility for the path I had chosen for myself. — Piper Kerman

 The greatest gift is not being afraid to question. — Ruby Dee

 Service is the rent that you pay for your room on this earth. — Shirley Chisholm

 We are all products of what we want to project to the world. — Cindy Sherman

 In our hearts, we are just human beings who want a dignified life. Is that too much to ask for? — Tawakkol Karman

 To hear, one must be silent. — Ursula LeGuin

 You cannot find peace by avoiding life. — Virginia Woolf

Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech. — Susan Sontag

Sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative you can get beyond your pain or negativity. — Yoko Ono

nine fine minds opine.

 If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking to them in real life. — Barack Obama

 Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. — Howard Zinn

 Humility is attentive patience.  — Simone Weil

Be flexible. Be able to adapt your style to that of your partner. In doing so, you are not surrendering your individuality, but blending it with that of your partner. — Fred Astaire

It’s all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies…but oh, what about forgiving our friends?  — Willa Cather

The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you’re going to find out you’re wrong – that is the rule.  — Conor Oberst

 It takes more than one person to bring about peace — it takes all of us.  — Rosa Parks

 Laughing brainss are more absorbent.  — Alton Brown

If you’re not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you are consistent, you will succeed. — John Lewis

 

 

Three Kings.

Wishing everyone a reflective and peaceful Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His words are as resonant now as ever. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.

 Hate is too great a burden to bear.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. 

black and white and etched all over

 

drawing lines.

…and more people with wise words, etched by yours truly. In violence, we forget who we are.  — Mary McCarthy

 For every minute you remain angry, you give ups sixty seconds of peace of mind.  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

 You don’t have to be fearless to do anything. You can be scared out of your mind. — Esperanza Spalding

The only thing wore than receiving a bullet in m spine would have been to nurture revenge in my heart.  — Detective Steven McDonald

 The best times are always going to be the most intense, the ones with the highest highs and the lowest lows. — Fiona Apple

 The thing about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness. — John Berger (RIP)

 Genius is the recovery of childhood at will. — Arthur Rimbaud

Creativity can come from any background.  — Jarvis Cocker

2017 is off to a sketchy start.

Ringing in the new year with some more wise words from smart people.Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better person. — Benjamin Franklin

I made no resolutions for the new year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. — Anais Nin

For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past. — Michael Dirda

We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.  — Arthur Ashe

 The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins. — Oliver Wendell Holmes

Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. — Bruce Springsteen

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – but nothing is broken, so don’t worry about trying to fix anything.  — Bob Ross

Sticking labels on you cuts off all other elements of what you are. — Siouxsie Sioux

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. –Winston Churchill