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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a20f1d2 | No child, still less a fetus, has ever mastered the art of small talk, or would ever want to. It's an adult device, a covenant with boredom and deceit. | Ian McEwan | ||
| 5b3ae7f | But even I know that love doesn't steer by logic, nor is power distributed evenly. Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as wells as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want. Memories are poor for past failures. Childhoods shine th.. | Ian McEwan | ||
| d8b1de5 | When he replied with her name, it sounded like a new word -- the syllables remained the same, the meaning was different. | Ian McEwan | ||
| 35302ee | Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution | Ian McEwan | ||
| c963050 | It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here. | Franz Kafka | ||
| ba1c058 | Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 34cfde5 | So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you. | Franz Kafka | ||
| d894dc4 | If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 7a1f030 | There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 25e0451 | That is why she dislikes dreams: they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its privileged status. | Milan Kundera | ||
| ff392bd | Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 9fd0544 | There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 97fc8fb | Kitsch" is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German is entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." -- | Milan Kundera | ||
| 2c8e18a | A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 87f290e | I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values. | metaphysical romantic-fiction | Milan Kundera | |
| 1c31fc6 | You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell. -Call me that name again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe--from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not? | Tad Williams | ||
| f9bcc3b | Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive. | creative creativity imagination imperfect imperfection inspiration | Jhumpa Lahiri | |
| b1b4ea5 | Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it, and then I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada's family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, but I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should.. | Jhumpa Lahiri | ||
| de0bb54 | What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, "It's all your fault!" | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 59a3178 | April was too lonely a month to spend alone. In April, everyone around me looked happy. People would throw their coats off and enjoy each other's company in the sunshine--talking, playing catch, holding hands. But I was always by myself | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 5e6a60a | Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callou.. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 23d4ad0 | Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It is like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. Things will go where they are supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it is time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. | love pain | Haruki Murakami | |
| 61f519b | Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love with him, but she never made demands. 'I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi,' Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him. | love | Haruki Murakami | |
| ef7e8a1 | En la vida siempre hay cosas demasiado complicadas para explicarlas en cualquier idioma. | explicar silencio vida | Haruki Murakami | |
| cc41ff5 | People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you can forget, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| b0b5ded | Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?" "No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Torme and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days," Komatsu said. "Wouldn't it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?" | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 625c824 | Okay, let's put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it's alright if I don't sleep with you. What I'm saying is I'd like to be as fair as possible. I don't want to force anything on anybody, any more than I'd want anything forced on me. It's enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me. | desire kangaroo-communique swirl | Haruki Murakami | |
| 2ff032e | Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 3f75a9f | Nature is actually unnatural | Haruki Murakami | ||
| d1336f7 | Everything in life is a metaphor. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 242d260 | Just remember, life is a box of cookies. You know how they've got these cookie assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat up all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like so much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. 'Now i just have to polish these off, and everything'll be O.K.' Life is a box of cookies. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| fe0b8b1 | Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone? Why the hell does it have to be like that? | love | Haruki Murakami | |
| 424c119 | If a person remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but it's like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It's hard to go back to the original shape. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| c6f62bc | He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me. | relationship sadness | Haruki Murakami | |
| 0363023 | An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| 7700182 | When I first met you I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time running away for all you're worth. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| d651062 | A theory is a battlefield in your head. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| e16dcbc | Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil--they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box. | Haruki Murakami | ||
| a25203c | What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example?" "Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably." | music | Haruki Murakami | |
| a1c13a9 | My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once. My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man. I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light. | Wisława Szymborska | ||
| 5ab6da4 | I became, in other words, more like Holmes than the man himself: brilliant, driven to a point of obsession, careless of myself, mindless of others, but without the passion and the deep-down, inbred love for the good in humanity that was the basis of his entire career. He loved the humanity that could not understand or fully accept him; I, in the midst of the same human race, became a thinking machine. | Laurie R. King | ||
| 080bc78 | Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind. | Laurie R. King | ||
| 8aa7089 | I figured out something, Lorie," he said. "I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than you say and I say more than I know. That means we're a perfect match, as long as we don't hang around one another more than an hour at a stretch." | Larry McMurtry | ||
| 12f2d83 | Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn't matter, He believes in you... | Alexandre Dumas |