Soft Negative Imperative

Famous quotes containing the words soft, negative and/or imperative:

    Soft are the hands of Love,
    but what soft hands
    clutched at the thorny ground,
    scratched like a small white ferret
    or foraging whippet or hound.
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.
    Elma Lewis (b. 1921)

    Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.
    Mary Arrigo (20th century)