A Quote by Rebecca Solnit

There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.
When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long.
It's tough to say where I live. There are some bills that get to the house in L.A., some to the house in Mexico, and some to the house of my father - so I never lose track of those.
Burn, baby, burn,” she muttered in a hard, satisfied voice. I cleared my throat. “As much as I hate to interrupt the supreme satisfaction you’re taking in watching the mansion blaze to the ground, I’d really like to get out of here before the whole house collapses on top of us.
Our [black people's] path is clear: We refuse to be inferior. We want to be exactly what Allah (God) has desired for us to be and we can't be that in their [white people's] house. We either have to take over their house or go and build a house of our own.
I do think that the Constitution and the traditions of this country constrain all of us - those of us in Congress and those of us in the White House - from some of our impulses, shall I say, that we'd like to pursue.
We can build influence by self promotion, but God will only promote those who do not promote themselves. That which is built on self-promotion will have to be maintained by human striving. Those who allow God to build the house have taken a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.
We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.
I've burned my own house down, the torch is in my hand.Now I'll burn down the house of anyone who wants to follow me.
All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own.
We are called to care for those sickened by pollution, house those displaced by environmental calamities, and heal the spirits of those - especially our youth - who are disheartened by a world where human survival is now in question.
In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity.
The way people receive our music is different and some people may say that our music is not metal. But I feel that those reviews allow us to challenge ourselves and gives us an opportunity to grow even more.
I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house.
The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar.... Any one of these things I mean, not all together. I have traveled thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of traveling simply as a means of getting a livelihood.
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values.
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