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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 3dc8089 | In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. | direct fat intentions simplistic slow virtue | Tim O'Brien | |
| f867eb9 | It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty... Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference- a powerful, implacable beauty- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly | Tim O'Brien | ||
| f19bbcc | One morning in Saigon she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at everybody else?' I shook my head. 'They weren't mad exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.' 'What did you want?' 'Nothing,' I said. 'To stay alive.' 'That's all?' 'Yes. | Tim O'Brien | ||
| 05455b0 | Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love. And it was real. When I write about her now, three decades later, it's tempting to dismiss it as a crush, an infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and rich as love can ever get. It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to com.. | Tim O'Brien | ||
| a90e187 | She'd say amazing things sometimes. "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you cant ever be dead." | Tim O'Brien | ||
| b825ef4 | When the shoes first fell from the sky,he remembered thinking that destiny had struck him. Now he thought so again. It was more than a coincidence. It had to be destiny. | Louis Sachar | ||
| 3e765dc | And what would you like, Sharie?" asked Miss Mush. "What do you have?" asked Sharie. "Potato salad". "What else is there?" asked Sharie. "Nothing" said Miss Mush. "Okay" said Sharie. "I'll have that." "Potato salad?" asked Miss Mush. "No,nothing." said Sharie." | humor | Louis Sachar | |
| fef4f34 | She knew what bothered her at the store...It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the pointless actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done-and here it was the complicated procedures with moneybags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people from even serving the store as efficiently as they might-the sens.. | mindless monotony patricia-highsmith retail the-price-of-salt work | Patricia Highsmith | |
| 0d08d90 | He remembered that right after that, he had stolen a loaf of bread from a delicatessen counter and had taken it home and devoured it, feeling that the world owed a loaf of bread to him, and more. | Patricia Highsmith | ||
| 1f0512d | Even the pearl at her earlobe looked alive, like a drop of water that a touch might destroy. | Patricia Highsmith | ||
| 97dee9f | Therese was propped up on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will tran.. | Patricia Highsmith | ||
| 3aebe02 | The truth doesn't care what we think of it. | Anne Michaels | ||
| e036a9a | And she knew for the first time that someone can wire your skin in a single evening, and that love arrives not by accumulating to a moment, like a drop of water focused on the tip of a branch - it is not the moment of bringing your whole life to another - but rather, it is everything you leave behind. At that moment. Even that night, the night he touched one inch of her in the dark, how simply Avery seemed to accept the facts - that they we.. | pain | Anne Michaels | |
| d19e11e | The shawl's bottom edge the clearest blue, as if it has been dipped in the sea. The blue of a glance. | Anne Michaels | ||
| 96b6e39 | It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement. | politics retirement | Gregory Maguire | |
| 049c423 | It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palac.. | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 45f0ce0 | Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?" "You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]" | Gregory Maguire | ||
| bf0dd52 | Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn't it? | lion wicked | Gregory Maguire | |
| e68ba13 | She watched the sun bleed water out of the icicle. Warm and cold working together to make an icicle. Warm and cold anger working together to make a fury, a fury worthy enough to use as a weapon against the old things that still needed fighting. | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 3043988 | With all those stars in the sky, why isn't there enough light for us to see by? We stumble like blinded sheep.' 'As you can see, it is clouding over. The stars can't pierce the gloom; they just wait it out. That isn't the stars fault. It is their custom to stay heavenly. | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 91eeac3 | Some said the original evil was the vacuum caused by the Fairy Queen Lurline leaving us alone here. When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil and maybe slpits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 0c14d16 | The storm dropped a house on her head. | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 21ede7f | It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow. | evil good goodness | Gregory Maguire | |
| e3f6711 | The world was floods above and fire below | philosophy | Gregory Maguire | |
| b5be2e4 | Was it an accident that I saw Fiyero, I wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes, or is it just that world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew? | Gregory Maguire | ||
| dbacf9f | Ah, the inner eye blinks, and the spirit trembles, at the dangerous cost of seeing one's self as one is. | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 824ed85 | Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad..." | Gregory Maguire | ||
| 9ec9af3 | Politics bores you?" Bronsen said. Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations.. | damage deceit depradation lies politicians politics scholarship | Iain Pears | |
| bc0d54d | Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves. | Chris Bohjalian | ||
| fd311fd | Dead ... might not be quiet at all. | Chris Bohjalian | ||
| 254638c | Then there were those girls who became midwives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies - girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent process of birth...The difference between a woman who becomes an OB and the women who becomes and midwife has less to do with education, philosophy or upbringing than with the depth of her appreciation for the miracle of labor and for life in its moment of emerge.. | Chris Bohjalian | ||
| 8d9f376 | Great persons, like great empires, leave their mark on history. | Janet Wallach | ||
| 2335e28 | It's vitally important that you buy your own crown and declare yourself Queen, and then spend the rest of your life living into that. | Jill Conner Browne | ||
| da2c5e7 | Why was it that jam always coated me so? | princess-ben | Catherine Gilbert Murdock | |
| 8d1a0ea | I milked, of course, and did some work around the barn, and tried not to think about Brian, which was like trying not to breathe. | relationships | Catherine Gilbert Murdock | |
| 44eb0e8 | It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What'd you choose to do with yours? | Philippa Gregory | ||
| 7bdddc4 | I could not do it. I would not do it. I sat back on my heels with the book in my hand with the light of the fire flickering and dying down and realized that not even in mortal danger could I bring myself to burn a book. | Philippa Gregory | ||
| 51bb8d4 | You don't need to struggle, your baby is coming. Help him come to us, open your body and let him come into the world. You give birth, you don't force birth or besiege it. It's not a battle, it's an act of love. You give birth to your childd and you can do it gently. | Philippa Gregory | ||
| 6f74418 | Sometimes you cannot help what you hear, you cannot help what you see. | life margery-jourdemayne | Philippa Gregory | |
| b57b08e | The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will love me. | history importance love marriage objectification objectification-of-women personhood unimportant women | Philippa Gregory | |
| 65e5954 | Nothing in the world matter more than life. You have a long road to walk and a lot of lessons to learn if you don't know that. | Philippa Gregorya Gregory | ||
| 43e3151 | In truth, I did not have to wonder. She would be feeling that disturbing mixture of emotions that she always summoned from me: admiration and envy, pride and a furious rivalry, a longing to see a beloved sister succeed, and a passionate desire to see a rival fall. | Philippa Gregory | ||
| aac092c | And - I think you know, don't you? - that I love you, Anne.' I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father's when he sailed for England. 'You do? Truly?' 'I do.' He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. 'Will you marry me?' he whispers. 'Yes,' I s.. | love marriage match richard-iii | Philippa Gregory | |
| fbe3bc4 | Have learned that the most precious thing is a place where you can be as you are, where someone can see you as your true self. | Philippa Gregory |