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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e5a3497 | You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. | Italo Calvino | ||
| f40692a | Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly. | Italo Calvino | ||
| 60ed074 | A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira's past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. | Italo Calvino | ||
| 0f5e6aa | Good people don't make fewer mistakes, they're just better at apologizing. | Jonathan Safran Foer | ||
| 990d80c | For how long could we fail until we surrendered? | Jonathan Safran Foer | ||
| 9e5c247 | And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table? | Jonathan Safran Foer | ||
| ace026b | And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 4aba184 | There was a part of her she hadn't yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place | Denis Johnson | ||
| e84bf19 | Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.' 'They could be silent.' 'Like those two, at the next table?' Jean Marc laughed. 'Oh, no, no love can survive muteness. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 598f3a0 | In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the sam.. | literature reading | Milan Kundera | |
| da2966e | It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 4434b7b | I may not know the weight of those things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 401423f | Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am... | Nick Hornby | ||
| 8632e1b | Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.' 'Too stupid.' 'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?' 'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watc.. | humor life-lessons simplicity suicide | Nick Hornby | |
| 092d61b | In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another...They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. | Jhumpa Lahiri | ||
| 9e248b7 | And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she'd worn, the insecurity she'd felt, all the innocent mistakes she made. | Jhumpa Lahiri | ||
| a218f88 | But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy. | americans jhumpa-lahiri privacy the-namesake | Jhumpa Lahiri | |
| 6f2b966 | But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me. | disillusionment dostoyevsky hell maugham reality self | Haruki Murakami | |
| 7027003 | I'm just sad. You were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that you're having yours, it seems there's not a thing I can do for you. You're all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| f9420d3 | That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. | thoughts-on-life | Haruki Murakami | |
| 8bcc874 | I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 1d357f9 | The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 90f3c67 | One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 3d40a56 | You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble. I'm not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You've got to look ahead a bit or else you'll bump into something. You've got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what's ahead. That's critical, no matter what you're doing. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 8c54c96 | In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| f9a9912 | People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 097808b | WL's [White Liberals] think all the world's problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don't believe that. There's a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It's what separates us from roaches | sacrifice | Paul Farmer | |
| a1e5e4d | You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing. | sherlock-holmes talents | Laurie R. King | |
| 1f861b6 | There should be a phone service that turns off your phone between midnight and six A.M. every night. And if you want to make a call, you have to pick up the phone and talk to an operator: Put me through to AAA. My car battery's dead. Yes, ma'am. Put me through to Pink Dot. I need vanilla Haagen-Dazs toute de suite! Yes, ma'am. Put me through to my ex-boyfriend... I'm sorry, ma'am, the operator would say. That would be a bad idea. Now you go.. | Kim Gruenenfelder | ||
| 70709f3 | Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized. | Steve Martin | ||
| 1a8ca9d | Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday. | cancer death family jesse jodi-picoult kate leukemia my-sister-s-keeper sadness | Jodi Picoult | |
| 2017fa5 | If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting. | Jodi Picoult | ||
| 2db0a59 | Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence. | Jodi Picoult | ||
| 4a6bb37 | Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing.. | motherhood | Jodi Picoult | |
| 7e5abbb | Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one's advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance. | Jodi Picoult | ||
| 1145f72 | Do ye dare to draw arms against the justice of God?" snapped the tubby little judge. Jamie drew the sword completely, with a flash of steel, then thrust it point-first into the ground, leaving the hilt quivering with the force of the blow. "I draw it in defense of this women, and the truth," he said "If any here be against those two they'll answer to me, and then God, in that order." | Diana Gabaldon | ||
| c9f2949 | Good," I said, completely provoked. "You deserve it. Maybe that will teach you to go haring round the countryside kidnapping young women and k-killing people, and..." I felt myself ridiculously close to tears and stopped, fighting for control. Dougal was growing impatient with this conversation. "Well, can ye keep one foot on each side of the horse, man?" "He can't go anywhere!" I protested indignantly. "He ought to be in hospital! Cert.. | Diana Gabaldon | ||
| 3a166a4 | I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie | William Faulkner | ||
| a943f03 | any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man | William Faulkner | ||
| ff00fdf | What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire? Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independen.. | James Joyce | ||
| e7f3a8b | the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so. | growth risk | Roald Dahl | |
| e62f2d6 | EATABLE MARSHMALLOW PILLOWS LICKABLE WALLPAPER FOR NURSERIES HOT ICE CREAMS FOR COLD DAYS COWS THAT GIVE CHOCOLATE MILK FIZZY LIFTING DRINKS SQUARE SWEETS THAT LOOK ROUND | Roald Dahl | ||
| f51cc88 | There's nothin' you can get from a book that you can't get from a television fastah!" -Harry Wormwood" | Roald Dahl | ||
| 9505e29 | In any event, parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit. | Roald Dahl |