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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 8f89ed8 | I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing. | Richard Peck | ||
| d75d8d7 | It didn't make any more sense to me then than it does now, how life can pile troubles up on a man what don't deserve them, while letting some of the biggest jackasses and scoundrels alive waltz their way through long, untroubled existences. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 9c104df | Starkly in an instant she saw herself as she really was-alone in a wood standing among blue shadows with no sounds and the air a sort of black ice. She had no coat. All the people she'd known had forgotten her. Her mother, biting off thread between her teeth, couldn't hear her, and her father with his eyes turned sorrowfully inward did not see her. They never had. Those she loved did not need her. Lila and Carl danced together in a bubble. .. | Susan Minot | ||
| 4c49a72 | Never stop loving me, Olivia Taylor. | Jodi Ellen Malpas | ||
| 5b35771 | I did not say that I am afraid. He is, though, I think. Afraid of his own desire for power. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| e106ed7 | My gift is that I always know when I've made an ass of myself. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 7514ad2 | Costis followed, telling himself that it wasn't true that he and the king and even the stone under their feet were nothing but tissue, transparently thin, and that for a moment, the only real thing in the universe had been there on the parapet with the king. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 94d12b0 | He looked at their shabby clothes in puzzlement. "We were traveling anonymously for safety--" explained the magus. "But surely--" | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 5d91655 | I'll stop shouting. I won't sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| aa68e94 | Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul. | embarrassment shyness soul | Michel Faber | |
| 164abbb | A truly modern man, William Rackham is what might be called a superstitious atheist Christian; that is, he believes in a God who, while He may no longer be responsible for the sun rising, the saving of the Queen or the provision of daily bread, is still the prime suspect when anything goes wrong. | Michel Faber | ||
| 1919bc2 | From the story The Last Days of a Famous Mime) He said nothing. He was mildly annoyed at her presumption: that he had not thought this many, many times before. With perfect misunderstanding she interpreted his passivity as disdain. Wishing to hurt him, she slapped his face. Wishing to hurt her, he smiled brilliantly. | Peter Carey | ||
| b690a54 | The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism - are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much .. | Oscar Wilde | ||
| a2539a2 | Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in.. | William Morris | ||
| 2c07f6f | Now let us go, love, down the winding stair, With fingers intertwined... | William Morris | ||
| ee29945 | You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can't stand it anymore, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| e1eb003 | I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 19f5741 | If there's anything I dislike it's the violin", she answered. "Why one should want to hear anyone scrape the hairs of a horse's tail against the guts of a dead cat is something I shall never understand." | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| e2e29a9 | Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| f849cd9 | You poor lonely boy,' she cried, 'it's so dreadful for you to have no parents.' Well, as my mother was a whore, and my father a drunk, I daresay I don't miss much. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| d47db9e | For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food to satisfy my small appetite, a room to myself, books from a public library, pens and paper, I should regret nothing. | wealth | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 76b9e17 | He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it se.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 6523471 | He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined the opportunity and breathed freely. 'It would have interfered with my work,' he told Philip. 'What work?' asked Philip brutally. 'My inner life,' he answered. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| f7e189e | self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice hims.. | passions self-sacrifice | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 0389ca2 | He wondered whether he had done right. He was dissatisfied with himself and with all his circumstances. He asked himself dully whether whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you hadn't | W Somerset Maugham | ||
| 1049e72 | There must be more to stories than you think. | Diane Setterfield | ||
| 6a3ff49 | She had not had the relief of amnesia. She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could feel so much and not die of it. But slowly, cell by painful cell, she began to mend. There came a time when it was no longer her whole body that burned with pain but only her heart. And then there .. | grief healing pain physical-pain suffering | Diane Setterfield | |
| 88be701 | Ordinary people, untwins, seek their soulmate, take lovers, marry. Tormented by their incompleteness they strive to be part of a pair. | Diane Setterfield | ||
| 9105ef7 | Reading had never let me down before. It had always been the one sure thing. | reader reading | Diane Setterfield | |
| 0d033f3 | I walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a conversation about cats. There | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| cb5d4f6 | Dr. Larch bent over him and kissed him, very lightly, on his lips. Homer heard Dr. Larch whisper, 'Good work, Homer.' He felt a second, even lighter kiss. 'Good work, my boy,' the doctor said, and then left him. Homer Wells felt his tears come silently; there were more tears than he remembered crying the last time he had cried - when Fuzzy Stone had died and Homer had lied about Fuzzy to Snowy Meadows and the others. He cried and cried, but.. | John Irving | ||
| 7c6e7d3 | He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic. | christianity spirituality | Irving Stone | |
| f7a7f20 | Vincent did not know how to express his feelings in words. He knew how to paint them. However, one cannot paint the farewell. | Irving Stone | ||
| a7d1657 | It is very strange to think back like this, although come to think of it, there is no fence or hedge round Time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough. | memoryes remember remembering time | Richard Llewellyn | |
| d9d3dac | the nose. It can be a nuisance in winter and such a blessing before a meal. | Richard Llewellyn | ||
| 65b2c8a | The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it -- as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables. Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection -- the path of transition and transformatio.. | Marcus J. Borg | ||
| 47dd518 | It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast between the standards of the past and the standards of the present. Some fulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident. | Norman Davies | ||
| 7a54d8e | I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something. | Michael Francis Moore | ||
| b1ea377 | To all the wolves of the world for lending their good name as a tangible symbol for our darkness. | Ed Young | ||
| ef41c16 | The weather here is windy, balmy, sometimes wet. Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement - mating season. And lots of fresh rabbit meat hopping about to feed the young ones with. | nature spring | Edward Abbey | |
| 16c3414 | History: the lies of the victors, the self-delusions of the defeated. | Julian Barnes | ||
| f885732 | You are young; you have hopes. One by one they will go, and nothing will be left but the bare fact of life. | hopelessness | Jack Vance | |
| 5415d1f | That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 22be864 | Sir Arthur Eddington summed up the situation brilliantly in his book The Nature of the Physical World, published in 1929. "No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron," he said, and our best description of the atom boils down to "something unknown is doing we don't know what"." | John Gribbin |