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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 97afa66 | I initially thought you were ugly, but then you walked closer to me and I realized you were pretty. | Mindy Kaling | ||
| 09db3dd | But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself. | Nathaniel Hawthorne | ||
| a0d7244 | The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness. | D.H. Lawrence | ||
| 4c2ed5f | She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! | finding-yourself living-alone understanding women | D.H. Lawrence | |
| 77b79b3 | That's how women are with me " said Paul. "They want me like mad but they don't want to belong to me." | D.H. Lawrence | ||
| 0f2d40f | She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her eyes. | D.H. Lawrence | ||
| ff8f16e | She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness. | humanity new-york-city society | Ruth Ozeki | |
| 30ce0e8 | True freedom comes from being unknown. | fame freedom society | Ruth Ozeki | |
| b2af859 | Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain. | Cormac McCarthy | ||
| bd89588 | People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did. | Cormac McCarthy | ||
| 3a2d0be | I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said. I know you didn't. I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of. I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir. | lessons loss past | Cormac McCarthy | |
| eb8ea23 | What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not. | remember | Cormac McCarthy | |
| 3fb7b59 | Hard people make hard times. I've seen the meanness of humans till I don't know why god ain't put out the sun and gone away. | Cormac McCarthy | ||
| aa039ad | She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. | Cormac McCarthy | ||
| d513118 | Maybe it's like Mac says. Ever man winds up with the horse that suits him. | horse man | Cormac McCarthy | |
| 6f00c47 | What is our life: (Pause.) it's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's it. Where is the moment? | life moment past present | David Mamet | |
| 2baa15b | Sometimes I'd get mad because things didn't work out so well, I'd spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I'd be so mad I'd want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious. | Jack Kerouac | ||
| 1d17803 | I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball. | Annie Dillard | ||
| 89142e8 | No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it. | Annie Dillard | ||
| 1366efb | The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain and Lazarus. | Annie Dillard | ||
| e88e31d | All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom o.. | Annie Dillard | ||
| 66286ef | everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110] | Anne Lamott | ||
| 65bcfac | Maybe it is because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add the tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way. | Anne Lamott | ||
| e1ba69c | If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. | grief loss | Anne Lamott | |
| 3271f0b | There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. Its tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots or water, tending to you, making you clean all over again. | Anne Lamott | ||
| 121edb1 | I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways. | ordinary self | Anne Lamott | |
| e82119f | butterflies were wind energy made visible. | Anne Lamott | ||
| 0e29554 | What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting.. | Anne Lamott | ||
| c314fad | You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.), F.A.C.O.G." -- | Mary Roach | ||
| 1953488 | How does he look, Jeeves?" "Sir?" "What does Mr Bassington-Bassington look like?" "It is hardly my place, sir, to criticize the facial peculiarities of your friends." | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| dbfb826 | I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better." | tea | Amy Tan | |
| e732027 | I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok fo.. | Amy Tan | ||
| 77adce5 | I realise it's going to happen. This girl of my dreams, this girl who is more like me than anyone I've ever met, wants to kiss me. | young-adult-fiction young-adult-romance | Simone Elkeles | |
| 268f242 | You're dangerous."he says. Why?" | Elizabeth Cady Stanton | ||
| f5384d4 | Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore. | humour noir stationary | Richard Brautigan | |
| 8f6bf28 | Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged? | Eudora Welty | ||
| bf0521b | The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means "to speak of all kinds of things." It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded." | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 7cfd20c | Tell 'em to God. Don' go burdenin' other people with your sins. That ain't decent. | sins | John Steinbeck | |
| 80928b0 | I keep my expectations low, so nobody disappoints me." "Yeah, well, I have high expectations." I look toward Miranda. "I guess my friends do, too." "Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier." | Simone Elkeles | ||
| 9f4e659 | Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to withstand the pressure of the unknowable. | Carlos Castaneda | ||
| b6606aa | Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way. A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea.. | Carlos Castaneda | ||
| 5ad1df0 | My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular. | Carlos Castaneda | ||
| 9d118a2 | Self knowledge is always bad news. | John Barth | ||
| bea5507 | When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, .. | William Shakespeare |