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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ef9ae01 | For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men - friends, coworkers, strangers - giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by the lapels or messenger bag and say: The.. | Gillian Flynn | ||
| a8a991f | My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past.. | Gillian Flynn | ||
| 7a7ac9f | If you own a bar on your own, you're a player; if you own it with your beloved twin sister, you're-" "Irish." | irish | Gillian Flynn | |
| d00adaa | A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river. | John Steinbeck | ||
| d554bed | Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered--either by themselves or by others. | Sean Patrick | ||
| de78d63 | think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense," C. S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife. "It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. .. | Joan Didion | ||
| 0fc8c1d | I promised myself that I would maintain momentum. "Maintain momentum" was the imperative that echoed all the way downtown. In fact I had no idea what would happen if I lost it. In fact I had no idea what it was." | Joan Didion | ||
| 1705a58 | This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days,the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning." | foreboding | Joan Didion | |
| 753cc63 | I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree....Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies. | Joan Didion | ||
| d307fa4 | Words tend to last a big longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear - flowerpots, for example, or cigarette filters, or rubber bands - and for a time you will be able to recognize those words, even if you cannot recall what they mean. But then, little by little, the words become only sounds, a random collection of glottals and fricatives, a storm of whir.. | Paul Auster | ||
| 3051734 | Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication. | computers internet technology | Robert D. Putnam | |
| ec031cc | I would do exactly what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure," she said, "I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him." | Alice Sebold | ||
| 0615c97 | My life was over; my life had just begun. | Alice Sebold | ||
| 5a5da61 | Lindsey took my father's hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. I listened as she whispered the words he had sung to the two of us before Buckley was born: Stones and bones; snow and frost seeds and beansand polliwogs. Paths and twigs, assorted kisses, We all who knowwho Daddy misses! His two little frogs of girls, that's who. They know where they are, do you, do you? When her eyes closed and they b.. | Alice Sebold | ||
| 38fa3ee | Do you ever think of her?' she asked. They were quiet again. All the time,' Ruth said. A chill ran down my spine. 'Sometimes I think she's lucky, you know. I hate this place.' Me too,' Ray said. 'But I've lived other places. This is just a temporary hell, not a permanent one.' You're not implying...' She's in heaven, if you believe in that stuff.' You don't?' I don't think so, no.' I do,' Ruth said. 'I don't mean la-la angel wing crap, but.. | Alice Sebold | ||
| b1e40fd | Dick called, but he just left dirty voice-mail messages. Let's just say if I'm ever in the market for a massage involving canola oil and marabou feathers, I'm covered. | dirty funny jane-jameson molly-harper nice-girls-don-t-have-fangs richard | Molly Harper | |
| 3695430 | There were so many things Sebastian and I had to work out: we'd both been single for so long that blending our lives together wasn't going to be easy. I'd promised Sebastian we'd find a way. He deserved to be loved for everything he was. And for whatever crazy reason he had, he loved me, too. | romance | Jane Harvey-Berrick | |
| 32417f1 | The material object of observation, the bicycle or rotisserie, can't be right or wrong. Molecules are molecules. They don't have any ethical codes to follow except those people give them. The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine's always your own.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| f1d2934 | One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 9990250 | If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| b5c5572 | Hank, this is great." "Yes." He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood." | Ayn Rand | ||
| e76539d | I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I." | god individual pride | Ayn Rand | |
| 53f971d | LuAnn) Whatever. That'll teach me not to build my life around a man whose favorite book is . Listen, kid." She waggles her finger, as if scolding me. "Nothing good comes from Ayn RAnd. Trust me on this." | humor | Abby McDonald | |
| b03b731 | She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. to hell with that, she thought--and never worried about it again. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 3b3d667 | Be ugly, be God | Ayn Rand | ||
| 62ea85e | Do you want me to remind you that you once swore to make my happiness aim of your life? And that you cant say in all honesty whether i am happy or unhappy, because you haven't even inquired whether i exist? | Ayn Rand | ||
| 5eec91c | He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: that he had.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| e897f54 | Sometimes after dinner, he would walk into the woods that began behind the house. He would stretch down on the ground on his stomach, his elbows, planted before him, his hands propping his chin and he would watch the patterns of veins on the green blades of grass under his face, he would blow at them and watch the blades tremble then stop again. He would roll over on his back and lie still, feeling the warmth of the earth under him. Far abo.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 21c5871 | If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think and to discover the motions they are repeating. The survival of such mental parasites depend on blind chance; their unfocused minds are .. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 2df0bbe | I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the.. | science truth | Ayn Rand | |
| 978d923 | It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 060abf4 | The effort he demanded of his employees was hard to perform; the effort of himself was hard to believe. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 47a6e4e | The three of them set out every morning on adventures of their own kind. Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart's friend, saw them on top of a pile in a junk yard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile. He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, 'A young man of your position ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world.' 'What do you think I'm doing?' asked Francisco. | Ayn Rand | ||
| d5bf916 | p.61 He [Roark] was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren't. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 1d1435a | My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of ligh.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 558d049 | The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed looking down at him disapprovingly. The creature had many eyes, all over it, ultra-modern expensive-looking clothing, and rose up eight feet high. Also, it carried an enormous scroll. "You're going to read me my sins," Charles Freck said. The creature nodded and unsealed the scroll. Freck said, lying helpless on his bed, "And it's going to take a hundred .. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| f1d5fda | I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me--not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love--not your answer. Not even your indifference. | gail-wynand love the-fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| 05c8b7a | I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands...--I want you like an animal...or a whore. | dominique-francon howard-roark love the-fountainhead want | Ayn Rand | |
| 3d70115 | Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, be.. | greatness mediocrity | Ayn Rand | |
| 8e67366 | What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? | Ayn Rand | ||
| aad128f | It is a policeman's duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman's duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman. | justice law property society | Ayn Rand | |
| 3a5d049 | I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. | the-fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| 766b07f | Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 4bacd4f | I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary. | incompetence the-fountainhead work | Ayn Rand |