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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 602d29e | I am a harmless old seller of apples," she said, in a voice more appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war. "Pray let me past, dearie." The last word had knives in it. "No-one must enter the castle," said one of the guards. "Orders of the duke." Granny shrugged. The apple-seller gambit had never worked more than once in the entire history of witchcraft, as far as she knew, but it was traditional. "I know you, Champett.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| feefd16 | I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is, we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how we actually do behave, whe.. | John Fowles | ||
| fc9b9be | I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. | John Fowles | ||
| 5249bff | Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?' 'For fun?' 'Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction. | irony truth | John Fowles | |
| 936eb97 | I'm not really sorry. But I'm not absolutely unsorry. | John Fowles | ||
| 46d8b73 | The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniquenes.. | John Fowles | ||
| 3bb9d0e | When she went out she used to wear a lot of eye shadow, which married with the sulky way she sometimes held her mouth to give her a characteristic bruised look; a look that subtly made one want to bruise her more. | looks | John Fowles | |
| 760e911 | He said, it's rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. It's what distinguishes all great art from the other kind. | personality | John Fowles | |
| 52aeb89 | In spite of her superficial independence, her fundamental need was to cling. All her life was an attempt to disprove it; and so proved it. She was like a sea anemone -- had only to be touched once to adhere to what touched her. | independence irony | John Fowles | |
| 88a13f9 | Sometimes to return is a vulgarity. | perfection return | John Fowles | |
| 5babfd1 | They pay thousands and thousands for the Van Goghs and Modiglianis they'd have spat on at the time they were painted. Guffawed at. Made coarse jokes about. | conformists | John Fowles | |
| 6e3d43d | Between skin and skin there is only light. And there was my poetry. | John Fowles | ||
| 62c19bd | Poetry had always seemed something I could turn to in need - an emergency exit, a lifebuoy, as well as a justification. | John Fowles | ||
| d2dc9a8 | Each death laid a dreadful charge of complicity on the living; each death was incongenerous, its guilt irreducible, its sadness immortal; a bracelet of bright hair about the bone. I did not pray for her, because prayer has no efficacy; I did not cry for her, because only extroverts cry twice; I sat in the silence of that night, that infinite hostility to man, to permanence, to love, remembering her, remembering her. | desolation grief loss mourning | John Fowles | |
| ef219a9 | She was a mirror that did not lie; whose interest in me was real; whose love was real. | John Fowles | ||
| e697d42 | You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it ... fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality. That is a basic definition of Homo sapiens. | John Fowles | ||
| a9ed30c | I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't feel chosen." "I think you may be." I smiled dubiously. "Thank you." "It is not meant as a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself." | John Fowles | ||
| e4f2a75 | Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependant upon it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure; and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard. You may die before you turn the next page. | fortune hazards luck | John Fowles | |
| 9996947 | His heart is weak, but his will is strong-more so now than ever," he continued, shrugging into the light cape Ormsley was putting over his shoulders. "What do you mean, 'more now than ever'?" The physician smiled in surprise. "Why, I meant that your coming here has meant a great deal to him, my lord. It's had an amazing effect on him-well, not amazing, really. I should say a effect. Normally he rails at me when he's ill. Today he almost h.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 2f64af2 | What possessed you?" Lauren demanded of Jim the next morning. He grinned. "Call it an uncontrollable impulse." "I call it insanity!" she burst out. "You can't imagine how furious he was.He called me names! I-I think he's insane." "He is," Jim agreed with complacent satisfaction. "He's insane about you. Mary thinks so too." Lauren rolled her eyes. "You're insane. I have to work up there with him. How am I going to do that?" Jim chuckled. ".. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 2370799 | I'm going to hurt you, sweetheart, because there's no other way. If I could take the pain for you, I would." She did not turn her face away from him or try to twist free of his imprisoning grasp, and what she said made Ian's throat ache with emotion. "Do you know," she whispered with a teary smile, "how long I've waited to hear you call me 'sweetheart' again?" "How long?" he asked hoarsely. Putting her arms around his shoulders, Elizabeth .. | Judith McNaught | ||
| f59c95b | If she'd known what a good shot you are," he whispered past the unfamiliar tightness in his throat, "she'd never have dared." His hand lifted to her wet cheek, holding it pressed against his chest. "You could always call her out, you know." The spasmodic shaking in Elizabeth's slender shoulders began to subside, and Ian added with forced tightness, "Better yet, Robert should stand in for you. He's not as fine a shot as you are, but he's a h.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 2d52dd7 | Grow up!" Lauren felt as if he had slapped her. Infuriated past reason, she struck back at his ego. "You're absolutely right!" she blazed. "That's what I should do.Beginning today I'm going to grow up and start practicing what preach! I'm going to sleep with any man who appeals to me. But not with you. You're much too old and too cynical for my taste.Now get out of here!" | Judith McNaught | ||
| eb3336d | And in that unlikely moment, as she held his dagger poised high, ready to strike, Royce Westmoreland thought she was the most magnificent creature he'd ever beheld; a wild, beautiful, enraged angel of retribution, her chest rising and falling with fury as she courageously confronted an enemy who towered over her. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 401e36a | It would have hurt no matter who took you the first time. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 97f1059 | Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime - you'd know at once. | Agatha Christie | ||
| 2a68c98 | Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it's mercenary of me, but there it is | Agatha Christie | ||
| 0387378 | There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy! | christmas christmas-spirit hypocrisy poirot | Agatha Christie | |
| 3700b03 | Honey, life can be a ballroom dance and it can be full of shit. Your job in both cases is to watch where you step. | Lorna Landvik | ||
| a389555 | Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads, Its master's step is brisk; The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads But adds unto their risk. | Fred Saberhagen | ||
| e4d6832 | I remember I wanted to get away; I wanted to run. I couldn't stand any more. But I didn't want to run. I wanted everything to be perfect; everything was going to be great - I just had to be careful. I was responsible for it all. The clouds coming, I was dragging them towards us; my thoughts were doing it. I was ruining everything. It was up to me. I could control the whole day. All I had to do was make sure that I made no stupid mistakes. D.. | Roddy Doyle | ||
| 03f8fc3 | I swooned the first time I saw Charlo. I actually did. I didn't faint or fall on the floor but my legs went rubbery on me and I giggled. I suddenly knew that I had lungs because they were empty and collapsing. | love romance | Roddy Doyle | |
| d825252 | As the blood poured from his tattered heart into the open air and his brain suffocated, all those incomplete thoughts of Wittgenstein decayed with the dying neurons. Neural connections in the gray matter storing memories and ideas in their ordered configurations fired across the gaps, last gaps of mental life. Thoughts on Truth and Will were erased as flesh sloshed soft and limp against alabaster, no more than rotting human fruit. | Janna Levin | ||
| c7538bb | As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocation one grew out of as quickly as possible. | maturity parenting | Pat Conroy | |
| 570a806 | The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 573637d | She understood the nature of sin and knew that its most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 836cc5b | Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all. | pain suffering | Pat Conroy | |
| 8368b50 | It was a time in my life when many things bored me deeply and I hungered for beauty and those realms of pure elation granted to those who had the imagination to know what to look for and how to find it. | Pat Conroy | ||
| fa837b5 | The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism. | emotions optimism pessimism thinking | Pat Conroy | |
| ed19dad | The tide was a poem that only time could create, and I watched it stream and brim and makes its steady dash homeward, to the ocean. | Pat Conroy | ||
| e59b5ef | We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection chastened me and let me know my proper place in the grand scheme of things. It was the last time I would ever make a move that required boldness or a leap of the imagination. I became tentative, suspicious, and dull. I learned to hold my tongue and mark my trail behind me and to look to the future with a war.. | defeatism self-pity | Pat Conroy | |
| fd0e4a6 | As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 2b851fc | The body's a funny thing. It's so full of surprises that it makes conventional wisdom seem silly. | Pat Conroy | ||
| e986f86 | Like a long train which stops at every dingy little station, the winter dragged slowly past. | Christopher Isherwood |