The modern growth of monopolies in the shape of trusts, cartels, federations of employers and so on has greatly increased the power of the capitalist to levy toll on the community. This tendency will not cease of itself, but only through definite action on the part of those who do not profit by the capitalist regime.

I lie on the couch in the living room and feel a deep sense of shame, because I’ve increased our debt by getting sick.

It is one thing to be bad with money when you have it, and quite another to be bad with it when you don’t. My mother gave away what little she had, mostly because she had been taught that every poor person she met was the Lord in disguise, testing her love.

The kindness of strangers, the vicissitudes of life, the merry-go-round at the mall

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause

Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.

One can die in cleanliness, or one can die in filth. I’m not talking about your soul. At the Prince Hotel — an old Bowery flophouse — the men paid a few dollars a night to live in stalls, four feet wide and six feet deep, with chicken-wire ceilings.