golden oranges

“And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low. . . .”

—John Steinbeck, from his novel of the depression, The Grapes of Wrath; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

red sons-of-bitches

“I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. . . . They were Commies . . . red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago. . . .”

—Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer in One Lonely Night, 1951; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

a strange black race

“I want to see lithe Negro girls,
Etched dark against the sky
While sunset lingers. . . .

I want to hear the chanting
Around a heathen fire
Of a strange black race. . . .

I want to feel the surging
Of my sad people’s soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.”

—Gwendolyn Bennet, a poem from the 1930s; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

I have visions

“You think I have visions
because I am an Indian.

I have visions because
there are visions to be seen.”

—Buffy Sainte-Marie, a poem published in Akwesasne Notes 1967; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.

our flag

“And our flag—another pride of ours, our chiefest! We have worshiped it so, and when we have seen it in far lands—glimpsing it unexpectedly in that strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us—we have caught our breaths and uncovered our heads and couldn’t speak for a moment, for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for. Indeed, we must do something about these things; it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our states do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones.”

—Samuel L. Clemens, from his essay To the Person Sitting in Darkness, 1901.

Now in the night

“Fill up again your pumpkins with alcohol, and hand up the largest of them to me. . . . Solemn, I will light the giant candles for you. Now in the night. In the deep black night.”

—Max Beckmann, On My Painting, 1964.

the boredom of life

“Our torches stretch away without end . . . silver, glowing red, purple, violet, green-blue, and black. We bear them in our dance over the seas and the mountains, across the boredom of life.”

—Max Beckmann, On My Painting, 1964.

‘black sites’

“Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA’s own covert prisons—referred to in classified documents as “black sites.””

—Dana Priest, Wrongful Imprisonment: The Anatomy of a CIA Mistake, Washington Post, December 4, 2005; quoted in Static, by Amy Goodman and David Goodman, 2006.

Do we want the stars?

“Do we want the stars? We can have them.”

—Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing, 1990.

ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power

“He arrived with a seedy two-bit carnival, The Dill Brothers Combined Shows, during Labor Day Weekend of 1932, when I was twelve. Every night for three nights, Mr. Electrico sat in his electric chair, being fired with ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power. Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightning jumped into me. Mr. Electrico cried: ‘Live Forever!’”

—Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing, 1990.