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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 00393f2 | You should hate me," she said brokenly. "You should leave me--" "Hush." His grip tightened, just short of bruising her. "Do you think so little of me? Damn you." He crushed his lips in her hair. "You don't understand anything about me. Did you think I wouldn't want to help you? That I would abandon you if I knew?" "Yes," she whispered. "Damn you," he repeated, his voice choked with anger and love. He forced her face upward. The hopelessness.. | lily-lawson | Lisa Kleypas | |
| 09ce224 | It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you can't interfere with people you love anymore than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. | John Irving | ||
| ab6ffd0 | She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change. | Susan Minot | ||
| 0767d2d | As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 196326a | Treachery," said the Mede. "Diplomacy," said Attolia, "in my own name." -- | mede | Megan Whalen Turner | |
| c7c44d4 | It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain. | eugenides king-of-attolia the-queen-s-thief | Megan Whalen Turner | |
| 8fbc335 | I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| f6787ce | Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. ...The words of the dying.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| b07a0c5 | Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd. | conscience | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 9b6c40f | and he loved her suddenly because she loved him. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| c2eec6a | It was better to tell such stories close to the river than in a drawing room. Words accumulate indoors, trapped by walls and ceilings. The weight of what has been said can lie heavily on what might yet be said and suffocate it. By the river the air carries the story on a journey: one sentence drifts away and makes way for the next. | secrets storytelling | Diane Setterfield | |
| 6d8ac7a | I wonder is happiness only an essence of good living, that you shall taste only once or twice while you live, and then go on living with the taste in your mouth, and wishing you had the fullness of it solid between your teeth, like a good meal that you have tasted and cherished and look back in your mind to eat again. | Richard Llewellyn | ||
| 49c1156 | the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things. | Marcus J. Borg | ||
| 194f4fb | It's all as if words, phrases, images, syntax were small glass beads from a necklace which was wrenched from some neck and spilled on the floor and down the sides of sofa cushions and armchairs and under bookshelves and maybe swallowed by the cat. I've got to find all the glass pieces before I can even reorder the color sequence, and restring it and tie it tighter than before. There's always a splendor in beginning all over. Even if it mean.. | Jim Carroll | ||
| 94f0ee1 | all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay | Jim Carroll | ||
| 5d308a7 | No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death - every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| fd8bfe9 | Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65] | Julian Barnes | ||
| de2ba5f | What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favourite perversion? ... I loved Ellen, and i wanted to know the worst. I never provoked her; I was cautious and defensive, as is my habit; I didn't even ask questions; but I wanted to know the worst. Ellen never returned this caress. She was fon.. | Julian Barnes | ||
| aa3ee52 | lkn lzmn.. kyf y`lmn lzmn fy lbdy@ thm yrbkn. kn nZn 'nn nDjwn fy lwqt ldhy kn amnyn fyh fqT. tSwrn 'nn ntHl~ blmsy'wly@ fy lwqt ldhy kn fyh jbn fqT. m 'smynh wq`y@ tbyn 'nh m hw l Tryq@ ltfdy l'shy bdl mn mwjhth. lzmn.. mnHn zmn kfy wstbdw jmy` qrrtn lmdrws@ b`ny@ mthdy@, wsybdw yqynn nzwt. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 190abff | Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry. | writers writing | Julian Barnes | |
| b93776b | There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius. | Julian Barnes | ||
| c0bab6d | I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 11480a9 | An illusion has three stages. "First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted at is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection. "The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, cojoin to .. | Christopher Priest | ||
| 6482343 | In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| b6833c6 | Queen you shall be, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 52913a5 | I looked for you on the Trident," Ned said to them. "We were not there," Ser Gerold answered. "Woe to the Usurper if we had been," said Ser Oswell. "When King's Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were." "Far away," Ser Gerold said, "or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells." "I came down on Storm's End to lift the siege," Ned told them, and the .. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 16cba0c | There are things to be learned even from the dead. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 89855ba | Less reliable tales also reached his ears, of a dwarf witch who haunted a hill in the riverlands, and a dwarf whore in King's Landing renowned for coupling with dogs. His own sweet sister had told him of the last, even offering to find him a bitch in heat if he cared to try it out. When he asked politely if she were referring to herself, Cersei had thrown a cup of wine in his face. | tyrion-lannister | George R.R. Martin | |
| 6409ca3 | Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his life Tyrion had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet this seven-times-damned she-wolf Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his abduction. | tyrion-lannister | George R.R. Martin | |
| fe4a3a3 | Jaime smiled. "I hope you're not thinking of taking the black on us, sweet brother." Tyrion laughed. "What, me, celibate? The whores would go begging from Dorne to Casterly Rock. No, I just want to stand on top of the Wall and piss off the edge of the world." | George R.R. Martin | ||
| eff92f6 | The oft repeated jape about his father was just another lie, Lord Tywin Lannister in the end did not shit gold. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| e8af8af | On the gallows tree, all men are brothers. | gallows-tree | George R.R. Martin | |
| 283c832 | Sweet smells are sometimes used to cover foul ones. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 31b32ca | Barristan Semly was not a bookish man, but he had often glanced through the pages of the White Book, where the deeds of his predecessors had been recorded. Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men - quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failing that afflicted le.. | the-kingsguard the-white-cloaks | George R.R. Martin | |
| 333f891 | He raised his eyes. "Sister. See. This time I knew you." Asha's heart skipped a beat. "Theon?" His lips skinned back in what might have been a grin. Half his teeth were gone, and half those still left him were broken and splintered. "Theon," he repeated. "My name is Theon. You have to know your name." | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 34837c0 | Books should broaden us, take us to places we have never been and show us things we've never seen, expand our horizons and our way of looking at the world. Limiting your reading to a single genre defeats that. It limits us, makes us smaller. It seemed to me, then as now, that there were good stories and bad stories, and that was the only distinction that truly mattered. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| ac82752 | The ones who look the most suspicious are likely innocent. It's the ones who look innocent I need to beware. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 806e0ba | You are a woman, my lady," the Greatjon rumbled in his deep voice. "Women do not understand these things." "You are the gentle sex," said Lord Karstark, with the lines of grief fresh on his face. "A man has a need for vengeance." "Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark , and you would see how gentle a woman can be," Catelyn replied." | cersei-lannister vengeance | George R.R. Martin | |
| c926c77 | The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they g.. | John Fante | ||
| 075f93e | I can't even tell you how good it felt to see him. It felt even better when he reached through the metal grate, wrapped his fingers around the front of my shirt, dragged me forward, and kissed me through the bars. "Sorry" he said-only not looking to sorry, if you know what I mean." | Meg Cabot | ||
| e75f4ac | I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom. | Meg Cabot | ||
| 1ab20a7 | Your assignment,' he bellowed at Kelly, 'was to make a persuasive argument. Demanding to know whether detractors of your position are on crack is not arguing persuasively. | Meg Cabot | ||
| 7aa051e | Are you a pirate? | mediator meg-cabot | Meg Cabot | |
| 30b26d7 | Look, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I said no because the whole thing would just be too Dirty Dancing , right? Summer fling at the resort, only with the roles reversed: you know, the poor working girl and the rich doctor's son, nobody puts Baby in the corner, blah blah blah. That kind of thing. | mediator meg-cabot suze-simon | Meg Cabot |