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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 71541ff | don't create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about. | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | ||
| 6e00504 | Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion." | Kate Atkinson | ||
| f8a01ce | Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren't we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids? | Kate Atkinson | ||
| 0ea6bdd | The man who was speaking had a degree in jargon and a doctorate in nonsense. | Kate Atkinson | ||
| 188ec09 | New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example. | Colson Whitehead | ||
| 0660beb | But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it... The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the Freeman had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others. Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an ang.. | freedom native-american slavery | Colson Whitehead | |
| 4bcbedc | There were plenty of things in the world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked. | Colson Whitehead | ||
| 65976f1 | Now they are empty, Ramon replied with a shrug of broad, muscled shoulders on his six-foot-three-inch frame....For the first time, a glint of humor touched Ramon Galverra's finely sculpted mouth and arrogant dark eyes. | romance | Judith McNaught | |
| ef41782 | Allow me to presume upon this new friendship of ours by telling you that denying your fiance your company in order to gain whatever it is you want, is not only foolish but risky. It was obvious to me that his grace has a great affection for you, and I truly think he would give you anything you want if you simply gave him that lovely smile of yours and asked him for it. Deceit and deviousness do you no credit, my child, and what's more, they.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| f7f37e9 | Life was wonderful, so filled with people and activities, with love and laughter. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 26dc669 | Nor is he man enough to make a woman of you. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 4165060 | Love" and all the obsessive behaviors associated with it, was an absurd emotion." | Judith McNaught | ||
| 5a0e50b | Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny. | destiny island landscape luck south-carolina | Pat Conroy | |
| 9328399 | It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief. | god | Pat Conroy | |
| de1b0ae | My mother's voice and my father's fists are two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art. | Pat Conroy | ||
| c4dcbf1 | There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. | childhood development parenthood | Pat Conroy | |
| af81f31 | the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure...What's to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims on the arena have to be saints? ...A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority - not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities - because all minorities are .. | minorities persecution | Christopher Isherwood | |
| c77d87f | Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| a3e0dca | I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 89af0cb | In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. | literature reading words | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 63efe15 | We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. | brave-new-world | Henry David Thoreau | |
| e886baa | ONLY THE DAY DAWNS TO WHICH WE ARE AWAKE,IF WE ARE TO GRASP THE REALITY OF OUR LIFE WHILE WE HAVE IT,WE WILL NEED TO WAKE UP TO OUR MOMENTS,OTHERWISE,WHOLE DAYS,EVEN A WHOLE LIFE COULD SLIP BY UNNOTICED.. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| db96f1e | Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 52776b8 | I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 49bf4c7 | There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. | activism evil poverty | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 1be259c | But there's so to learn," he said, with a thoughtful frown. "Yes, that's true," admitted Rhyme; "but it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters." "That's just what I mean," explained Milo as Tock and the exhausted bug drifted quietly off to sleep. "Many of the things I'm supposed to know seem so useless that I can't see the purpose in l.. | learning purpose | Norton Juster | |
| 21bde84 | We heard her come halfway up the stairs, where she must have seen the bedroom light on. Again, the normal parent reaction would have been to say something like, "You had better come out this moment or I am releasing the tiger!" But Debbie was not a normal parent, so we heard her gigle and creep away, saying, "Shhh! Rachel! Come with Mommy! Stuart is busy!" | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 5c73d85 | Anxiety and excitement are cousins; they can be mistaken for each other at points. They have many features in common--the bubbling, carbonated feel of the emotion, the speed, the wide eyes and racing heart. But where excitement tends to take you up, into the higher, brighter levels of feeling, anxiety pulls you down, making you feel like you have to grip the earth to keep from sliding off as it turns. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 233df4d | English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones. | english-weather london london-weather rain | Maureen Johnson | |
| 165cd81 | Oh, the ongoing love affair between hair and mouths. Hair always goes for the mouth. The mouth opens, and hair says, "I'm going in! I'm going in!" like a manic cave diver." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| bfd9ad1 | Sometimes Stevie felt bad for her parents. Their idea of what constituted interesting was so limited. They were never going to have as much fun as she did. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| ee994db | Probably some period thing. I go completely mental too. Period fever. It's the worst." This effectively killed all conversation for a while. ..."Fixed that," she said. "You told him I had ," I replied. "There's no such thing as period fever." "No such thing as ghosts either." "No, there is no such thing as period fever. There's a difference between being a guy and being ." | name-of-the-star rory | Maureen Johnson | |
| 6e2664f | You don't know me yet," I said. "Rory was telling me she lives in a swamp," Charlotte said. "That's right," I said, turning up my accent a little. "These are the very first shoes I've ever owned. They sure do pinch my feet." Jerome gave a little snort." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| b4e7dcf | It was like she had been punched in the gut. Stevie said stuff like that all the time and was told she was wrong. David said it once and got a nod and a compliment. Oh, the magic of dudes. If only they bottled it. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| cb1a336 | But I think Cybil was my biggest fan. She cut out my articles and hung them in her locker and we were always cracking up how if you wrote the simplest, most obvious thing in the world people thought you were a genius. | Blake Nelson | ||
| 9875758 | Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you. | humanity humans life ownership | Daniel Quinn | |
| c065cab | Shut up," Morgan said, whirling on the woman and pointing the sword at her. "Shut up, you shrill harpy, before I aid you in doing so by means of a dozen ways you won't care for in the least." Adhemar's fiancee fell, blessedly, silent." | kickass-heroine shut-the-hell-up | Lynn Kurland | |
| bcfe526 | It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky. | James Baldwin | ||
| 84289bd | You think...that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are. Why are they--shameful? Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It's like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light. | James Baldwin | ||
| 2200270 | The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it 'ominous' when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don't we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we're going to have to defend ourselves against you? | gun-control malcolmx racism | James Baldwin | |
| ece1b9a | You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything. | fiction-writing james-baldwin quotes | James Baldwin | |
| a6c0ebd | The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another--or others--always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not to attempt to destroy it .. | James Baldwin | ||
| 5bb9e7b | All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart." | love misery | James Baldwin | |
| a90d2fb | Not a thousand years ago, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Not a thousand years ago, the Supreme Court decided that separate could not be equal. And today, as we sit here, no one is learning anything in this country. You see a nation which is the leader of the rest of the world, that had to pay the price of that ticket, and the price of that ticket is we're sitting in the most illiterate nation in the world. THE MOST ILLITERATE NATI.. | James Baldwin |