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Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s. Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation. And that is a vision of America that most of the people in this country cannot and will not abide.Charles M. Blow
2
The only way to vanquish cowardice is to brandish courage.Charles M. Blow
3
Children see God every day; they just don't call it that. It's the summer sky painted with cumulus clouds by day and sequined with a million stars by night. It's the sweet whispers of sweet gum trees and the sounds riding the tops of honeysuckle-scented breezes. Children feel God stuffed into brown fluffy dogs with stitches strong enough to withstand a good squeeze, and on the lips of round women who can't get enough sugar from Chocolate.I began to believe that God is us and nature, beauty and love, mystery and majesty, everything right and good. .Charles M. Blow
4
I had been fortified by trauma, the way a bone, once broken, grows back stronger than it had been.Charles M. Blow
5
It was words and reading that had made me quiet, and being quiet had made me a mark.Charles M. Blow
6
One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.Charles M. Blow
7
A lie is like a cat: you need to stop it before it gets out the door or it’s really hard to catch.Charles M. Blow
8
I better understood the little lies that liquor told, lifting spirits and drowning sorrows while withholding the whole truth--that, in the end, it is the spirit in peril of drowning. Sorrows have gills.Charles M. Blow
9
We don’t vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them.Charles M. Blow
10
It was the kind of building that remembered things, deep-down things, things that rode tears into the world, telling them back to anyone old enough or wise enough to know how to listen with their eyes.Charles M. Blow
11
Co-opted convictions will always betray you.Charles M. Blow
12
Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you.Charles M. Blow
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There is no wrong time to do the right thing.Charles M. Blow
14
I don't know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.Charles M. Blow
15
The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe's house because Mam' Grace was slipping away, only I didn't register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday.Charles M. Blow
16
The Obama years will be remembered as a cultural - and legal - tipping point for equality for all people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual, arguably the civil rights movement of our times. The president signed the bill repealing 'don't ask, don't tell.' The Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court.Charles M. Blow
17
America is not static. America is striving. And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism. You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.Charles M. Blow
18
All identity labels are umbrella terms to some degree, but this term 'bisexual' is not only serviceable, but it is sufficient. And yes, it brings together a bunch of people who are maybe shades different from one another. And maybe that's the beauty of labels: that they force you to be with other people and see the difference.Charles M. Blow
19
My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.Charles M. Blow