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6445460 It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking - I had to keep pinching myself. Then I'd wake up kind of in reverse; I'd go back to the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable. Jim Thompson
b2cf558 People looking for easy answers to big problems. People that blame the Jews or colored folks for all the bad things that happen to 'em. People that can't realize that a heck of a lot of things are bound to go wrong in a world as big as this one. And if there is any answer to why it's that way - and there ain't always - why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers. But that's the way my daddy was - like those pe.. easy-answers pills war Jim Thompson
c8459be When life attains a crisis, man's focus narrows. [...] The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion. Jim Thompson
1c8e725 I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped. tail teeth women Jim Thompson
b08dad7 Usually, during the past fifteen-odd years, I'd hated to see the morning come. That's a psychotic symptom, you know, not wanting to awaken--hating to face things that are bound to be more than you can handle. Jim Thompson
d0c3a83 Just before the went back into warp and its crew sat down at the table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it had found a live man in a suit, it left a dead youth in shorts and a tattered shirt, tumbling and freezing while a thin shell of air molecules expanded around the body, like an image of departing life. death life shell space vacuum zallin Iain M. Banks
7a53cdd I'm too drunk to recall much of what I've said. Which, come to think of it, is probably just as well, judging by the way people who are normally quite sensible dissolve into gibbering, rude, opinionated and bombastic idiots once the alcohol molecules in their bloom-stream outnumber the neutrons, or whatever. Luckily, one only notices this if one stays sober oneself, so the solution is as pleasant (at the time, at least) as it is obvious. Iain M. Banks
a4e5fc7 I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I'm very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off. I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watc.. murder young Iain Banks
e0cb41c Hey, Wrobik; cheer up, yeah? You're going to shoot down a fucking starship. It'll be an experience. Iain M. Banks
0de49cb He could not believe that ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section's evangelical materialism provided their conscience-salving good works. What more could they want? The war had to be the Mind's idea; it was part of their clinical drive to clean up the galaxy, make it run on nice, efficient lines, wit.. Iain M. Banks
ccb82e4 There was something comforting about having a vast hydrogen furnace burning millions of tons of material a second at the centre of a solar system. It was cheery. Iain M. Banks
776f9a8 I let myself into the cellar, locked the door behind me. The cellar was cold. I found the whisky, let myself out of the cellar and locked it, turned all the lights out, gave Mrs McSpadden the bottle, accepted a belated new-year kiss from her, then made my way out through the kitchen and the corridor and the crowded hall where the music sounded loud and people were laughing, and out through the now almost empty entrance hall and down the ste.. Iain M. Banks
09f96f1 I'm doing fine. I eat dogs! Heh heh heh!' I Iain Banks
edf397d Sometimes it was so easy to forget that I was kissing a vampire. Stephenie Meyer
e6a87ee Here's to responsibility," he toasted. "Twice a week." "And recklessness every day in between," I emphasized. He grinned and touched his can to mine." Stephenie Meyer
a01b373 History was easy, but I don't know about the Calculus. It seemed like it was making sense, so that probably means I failed. Stephenie Meyer
55c562f Storytelling was the most honored of all talents, for it benefited everyone. storytelling talents Stephenie Meyer
67e1b73 This love was tricky...was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire? Stephenie Meyer
e848d40 I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself closer to him until my lips touched his. love Stephenie Meyer
2747bad Dad used to say lots of funny things - like he was speaking his own language sometimes. Twenty-three skidoo, salad days, nosey parker, bandbox fresh, the catbird seat, chocolate teapot, and something about Grandma sucking eggs. One of his favourites was 'safe as houses'. Teaching me to ride a bike, my mother worrying in the doorway: "Calm down, Linda, this street is as safe as houses." Convincing Jamie to sleep without his nightlight: "It's.. Stephenie Meyer
5833475 You haven't changed at all. I expected a perceptible difference, but here you are, red-faced just like always. Stephenie Meyer
802e8e4 It took us most of the morning to put together the letter she sent to the Frontier Management Department, and I learned a lot about how to be frigidly polite and still leave somebody feeling like they'd been spanked. Patricia C. Wrede
375929b Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really...How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. Paul Bowles
f23dcf4 Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klarung der Gedanken. Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tatigkeit. Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erlauterungen. Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht >>philosophische Satze<<, sondern das Klarwerden von Satzen. Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trube und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen. 4.112 The object of philosophy is the .. Ludwig Wittgenstein
53567b0 Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic heretics ideas negotiation Ludwig Wittgenstein
a581f20 Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work. Sue Monk Kidd
ecba495 You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that when it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid. Sue Monk Kidd
f76aedb Sometimes, everything in the world seems to be lined up against you. All the evidence says you ought to run the other way. Make the bravest choice, not the safest. It's not the best advice, but it's all I have to offer Linda Lael Miller
5d54657 There are places in my heart...where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass. Harold Pinter
307b09a I had a definite sense of somehow being a passenger in an evil vehicle crusing through Paradise. car paradise roads Sam Shepard
e426af4 I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle hell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black str.. Vladimir Nabokov
069aca9 In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their a.. literature Vladimir Nabokov
a91dd2e Humbert Humbert: You know, I've missed you terribly. Lolita Haze: I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. Humbert Humbert: Oh? Lolita Haze: But it doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. Humbert Humbert: What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? Lolita Haze: Well, you haven't even kissed me yet, have you? nabokov Vladimir Nabokov
18e0716 All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other... Vladimir Nabokov
380059a What he had really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape. Vladimir Nabokov
aa249d0 You came into my life-not as one comes to visit (you know, "not taking one's hat off") but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps." Vladimir Nabokov
6a93214 I liked, as I like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unawares. What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do god and devil combine to form a live dog? Vladimir Nabokov
1da313b And the most poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from the chorus. Vladimir Nabokov
9a9e550 Solitude was corrupting me. Vladimir Nabokov
e0cea9a All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. Joseph Conrad
33e4cf1 I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship. Joseph Conrad
b74d6aa I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- h.. death devotion mourning sorrow time Joseph Conrad
af6b953 To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. Joseph Conrad
090c737 Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Joseph Conrad