Quotes of the day

Found in today's edition of the Sydney Morning Herald:

["the getting of wisdom", SMH Good Weekend, p.9; not online]
Tom Waits, musician, on a good lyric:

Contains weather, the names of towns and something to eat.

[Male code prevents us telling mates we love 'em** by Tim Dick]
Here referring to the film The Motorcycle Diaries and the adventures of Che Guevera & best mate Alberto Granado:

Their journey cemented a relationship - a loaded word, but that is what friendships are - which would last until Che's early death. It bound them together for life.
That is an unmitigated good, but the mateship code says the message - that we [men] need friends - has to be told through tales of adventure. [...]

My best mate is becoming a citizen at Sydney Olympic Park this Australia Day. He'll get his citizenship tree (and hopefully not kill his as I did mine), we'll sing our strange new anthem and then we'll have a drink. I'll go along knowing our friendship involves no Gallipoli, no Che revolution and no Alexander pash. But, and the code prevents me from saying this to his face, he makes my life good.

["A good man in Africa," by Nicola Graydon, SMH Good Weekend, pp.24-26; not online^^]

Paul Rusesabagina is, in most respects, unremarkable: a Rwandan of average height and stocky build, mild-mannered, polite and always impeccably dressed [...] For 76 days in 1994, Rusesabagina acted as the Oskar Schindler of the Rwandan genocide. With little more than a well-stocked cellar, a single telephone line and a knack for persuasive banter, this self-effacing man - himself a Hutu of moderate political persuasion - kept the Hutu death squads away from the 1268 terrified people who sought safety in his hotel in the country's capital. [...]

[Rusesabagina:] "...we Rwandans still refuse to call evil by its own name. It is always to do with 'the other'. The Hutus will tell you a history that favours their side; the Tutsis do the same. To me, we are all guilty. I lost members of my family to both ideologies. We need to sit around a table together - Hutus and Tutsis - and negotiate the future."
For, as [he] told the murderous militia: "One day all this will be over. How will you face history?"

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**If you can't/won't register for the online edition & want to read the article, let me know and I'll (quietly) post it in full.
^^Ditto for the posting thing. Please let me know if you can find it online.