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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0ab872c | How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't--it saddens me to think of it--but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks." | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| f2175a4 | I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn't choose. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 12ebdbf | He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something. | god humor | Sue Monk Kidd | |
| 5815e11 | women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 1128369 | T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 6ac2097 | The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled. | heat weather | Sue Monk Kidd | |
| 6465cae | I'd heard August say more than once, "If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you." T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me over, and August was giving it to him." | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 743bc9a | People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they ever would get. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 0fa244e | I shall not speak of my sufferings. Cowering deep down among them I feel nothing. It is there I die, unbeknown to my stupid flesh. That which is seen, that which cries and writhes, my witless remains. Somewhere in the turmoil thought struggles on, it too wide of the mark. It too seeks me, as it always has, where I am not to be found. | Samuel Beckett | ||
| ca1c600 | There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle. | words | Samuel Beckett | |
| a285371 | And in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good, in April. The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted to this purpose, of a neverfailing toughness and impermeability. Even farts made no impression on it. I can't help it, gas escapes from my fundament on the least pretext, it's hard not to mention it now and then, however great my distaste. One day I .. | Samuel Beckett | ||
| d6e12b0 | Let them be gone now, them and all the others, those I have used and those I have not used, give me back the pains I lent them and vanish, from my life, my memory, my terrors and shames. There, now there is no one here but me, no one wheels about me, no one comes toward me, no one has ever met anyone before my eyes, these creatures have never been, only I and this black void have ever been. | fuckoff jerkass-til-the-last-minute weary human-contact void | Samuel Beckett | |
| 04717f5 | False modesty is as bad as false pride. Know exactly what you are capable of at any moment, and act accordingly. Any other path is folly--and could be deadly in battle. | Christie Golden | ||
| 720eae0 | It is a fool who repeats the same actions expecting a different outcome. | Christie Golden | ||
| 7d2d259 | You can't believe people when they look you in the eyes. You gotta' look behind them. See what they're standing in front of. What they're hiding. Everyone's hiding, Wes. Everybody. Nobody look like what they are. | theater | Sam Shepard | |
| 5e32eb2 | With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could. | Richard Adams | ||
| ec30d6b | For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Span.. | lollipop lolita pronunciation | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 20c1bd4 | She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide f.. | innocence insanity | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 26ed5f5 | It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| f823471 | Certainly it's all in bloom, certainly we'll go. For aren't you and I gods? . . . I sense in my blood the rotation of unexplorable universes. . . . | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| b477285 | And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me--my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing--yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy--yes, happy! | self-centeredness lonliness | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| d059756 | But then I have long since grown accustomed to the thought that what we call dreams is semi-reality, the promise of reality, a foreglimpse and a whiff of it; that is they contain, in a very vague, diluted state, more genuine reality than our vaunted waking life which, in its turn, is semi-sleep, an evil drowsiness into which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and sights of the real world, flowing beyond the periphery of the mind--as.. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 668cdb4 | There is titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself, 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, , observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy even that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life: one senses in every past instant a parting of ways, a 'thus' and an 'otherwise', .. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| f0d5eb7 | One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz---ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good read.. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 0d8542b | And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: "O rainbow-colored gods. . ." | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 9d97e4c | Death often is the point of life's joke. | life | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 28e21a4 | Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| e1cad96 | And I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| f67e5d1 | One last word," I said in my horrible English, "are you quite, quite sure that--well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow , but--well--some day, any day, you will not come live with me? I will create a new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope." "No," she said smiling, "no." "It would have made all the difference," said Humbert Humbert." | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 4e4a575 | The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 935621a | The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries..acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural... | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 0838bbd | All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity -- it is to destroy it. | truth | Joseph Conrad | |
| d9ec22f | The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 375d3cc | Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| a62c00c | In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. | travel ship water | Joseph Conrad | |
| bd4927d | Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| b6b6a87 | It is not an easy thing to alter the trajectory of your life. People have expectations on your behalf. You come to believe them yourself. | Jay Parini | ||
| 4d82d13 | Besides, who wants to read about success, anyway? Successful serial murderers, maybe. | Mindy Kaling | ||
| d78fa94 | If you're a kid who was not especially a star in your high school, I recommend going to a college in the middle of nowhere. I got all the attention I could ever have wanted. | Mindy Kaling | ||
| c366f00 | Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys bring a knapsack to work. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who "totally knows how to cut hair." Boys can pack up their whole life in a duffel bag and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have "gigs." Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys don't know how to adjust their conversa.. | Mindy Kaling | ||
| bf5e2e9 | At the age of six, the criteria for handsome was simply: "Is he not related to me?" and "Have I seen him on television?" That was it. By this standard, Larry Bird, Dick Clark, and Andy Rooney. All handsome guys." | Mindy Kaling | ||
| 8f694fc | When I have kids I will largely follow how my parents raised me, because, like everyone else on the planet, I think my parents are perfect and so am I. But one thing I will impart to my children is "If you're scared of something, that isn't a sign that you have to do it. It probably means you shouldn't do it. Call Dad or Mom immediately." | Mindy Kaling | ||
| a0f54be | It's traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That's because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound. And if I look at it that way, I think I can see the value of a wedding. If you're my best friend and the only way I get to have dinner with you is by traveling thousands of miles, selecting a chicken or fish op.. | Mindy Kaling | ||
| 8225449 | My parents were supportive of my creativity but did not have a lot of patience for whimsy with zero production value. They had stuff to do. | Mindy Kaling |