1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
2647
2648
2649
2650
2651
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 9bdd33d | She put her hand on his shoulder and gave a soft squeeze. She did not know what else to do. First her mother, then her father and Fanen, and finally Hilfred--they were all gone. Mauvin was slipping away as well. The boy who loved his sword more than Wintertide presents, sweet chocolate cake, or swimming on a hot day refused to touch it anymore. The eldest son of Count Pickering, who had once challenged the sun to a duel because it had raine.. | Michael J. Sullivan | ||
| a71454a | I'm not going to kill these people," Hadrian said. "They're nice people." "How do you know?" "I talked to them." "You talked to me too." "You're not nice people." "I know, I know, I have those wolf eyes that good old Sebastian warned you about. Remember him? The nice man who, along with his nice lady friend, was planning to slit your throat?" "He was right about you at least." | Michael J. Sullivan | ||
| d5e05fa | The thing about the old is that we never change so much as the young. We slip in degrees, adding rings like trees--a new wrinkle here, a shade less color there, but the young transform like caterpillars into butterflies. They become whole new people as if overnight. | change youth | Michael J. Sullivan | |
| 4aab802 | Royce cast a harsh and anxious look at the prince. "What?" Alric asked. "I thought we discussed the importance of keeping a low profile." "Oh, please." The prince waved a hand at the thief. "I don't think it will get me killed if this monk knows I'm the king. Look at him. I've seen drowned rats more formidable." | Michael J. Sullivan | ||
| 94e0dee | Sometimes the price of dreams is achieving them." Arista" | Michael J. Sullivan | ||
| 9df92cd | Wake up, buddy," Royce whispered, nudging him. Hadrian was damp with sweat. "About time you got here. I was starting to think you ran off and left me." "I considered it, but the thought of Magnus as my best man kinda forced the issue. Nice haircut, by the way. It looks good on you--very knightly." -- | Michael J. Sullivan | ||
| ade3a3f | You could also "request" to be locked into the seclusion room. Not many people made that request. You had to "request" to get out too. A nurse would look through the chicken wire and decide if you were ready to come out. Somewhat like looking at a cake through the glass of the oven door." | Susanna Kaysen | ||
| 13fdad5 | Nothing," I said. "It's quiet. It's like-- I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff." I laughed. "I guess my life will just stop when I get married." It didn't. It wasn't quiet either. And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future." | marriage | Susanna Kaysen | |
| e8c90f6 | I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it; even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself ("counteract feelings of 'numbness' "). I was demonstrating, externally and irrefutably, an inward condition." | Susanna Kaysen | ||
| f187bde | If the Britannica has taught me anything, it's to be more careful. I don't want to turn into an unseemly noun or verb or adjective someday. I don't want to be like Charles Boycott, the landlord in Ireland who refused to lower rents during a famine, leading to the original boycott. I don't want to be like Charles Lynch, who headed an irregular court that hung loyalists during the Revolutionary War. I can't have "Jacobs" be a verb that means .. | A.J. Jacobs | ||
| f87d3a7 | Ezekiel and his fellow prophets have become my heroes. They were fearless. They literalized metaphors. They turned their lives into protest pieces. They proved that, in the name of truth, sometimes you can't be afraid to take a left turn from polite society and look absurd. | A.J. Jacobs | ||
| c23ba20 | Each cherry took about three seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat, but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could do was to devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really appreciate the tartness of the skin and the faint crunching sound when I bite down. I guess it's called mindfulness. Or being in the moment, or making the mundane sacred. Whatever it is, I'm doin.. | attention cherries cherry-tree page-172 paradox religion sacred wisdom | A.J. Jacobs | |
| b19cce4 | What seems terrible at first may turn out to be a great thing. You can't predict. | A.J. Jacobs | ||
| 8a7cd20 | Hating America] would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cr.. | Kurt Vonnegut | ||
| 6786d1d | What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn't know much about love. | love revenge | Cornelia Funke | |
| eb1d405 | It was a chilly morning after the night's rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost by someone high up in the clouds. | morning simile sky sun | Cornelia Funke | |
| 5882141 | here her writing became so small Meggie could hardly make it out) The last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled and reached for her hand. , she wrote on the palm of it, and Meggie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold them fast. She read them again and again on the long drive back to Elinor's house, and it was many days before they faded. | Cornelia Funke | ||
| 05204a2 | Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine. | Cornelia Funke | ||
| c0e63c9 | Ah,yes!That...Silvertongue!" Orpheus spoke the name in a disparaging tone, as if he couldn't believe that anyone really deserved it. Yes, that's what he's called. How do you know?" There was no mistaking Dustfinger's surprise. The hellhound snuffled at Farid's bare toes. Orpheus shrugged. "Sooner or later you get to hear of everyone who can breate life into letters on a page." -- | Cornelia Funke | ||
| 2f609f6 | Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!" "Well, that's no different from real life," remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end." | life story | Cornelia Funke | |
| 7008318 | A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb | Cornelia Funke | ||
| f0ba4e9 | Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. | Cornelia Funke | ||
| d8e0563 | The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rightness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma, or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful.. | Louis Menand | ||
| fd63d98 | I made an egg salad sandwich and took a bite of it over the open silverware drawer. A piece of egg salad fell in among the forks. I swore softly with my mouth full. Another piece of egg salad fell in. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 0e281b3 | Notes of joy have a special STP solvent in them that dissolves all the gluey engine deposits of heartache. War and woe don't have anything like the range and reach that notes of joy do. | Nicholson Baker | ||
| 4aaf0e0 | The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback. | funny humor quirky | Nicholson Baker | |
| a9735ab | I had cooperated. I could not have refused. I was smitten with her, half in love but also afraid, because in my life (and she seemed to know this) I had not loved anyone without having been wounded. Love was power and possession, love caused pain: you were never more exposed than when you were in love, never more wounded; possession was an enslavement, something stifling. | love possession power | Paul Theroux | |
| e56aad6 | I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom. | Paul Theroux | ||
| 0a4840e | I have a hatred of the taming of animals, especially large ones that are so contented in the wild. I abominate circus acts that involve big befooled beasts--cowed tigers or helplessly roaring lions pawing the air and teetering on small stools. I deplore zoos and anything to do with animal confinement or restraint. | Paul Theroux | ||
| 6a3d3d0 | People will tell you, "What's the use? What's the point of reading novels and poetry?" They'll tell you to go to law school or to be an economist or to do something useful. But books are useful. Books will make you thoughtful, and they might even make you happy. They will certainly help you to become more civilized." | Paul Theroux | ||
| c3b3abd | The right rumour in the right ears can kill the emperor, as they say. | the-magicians-apprentice trudi-canavan | Trudi Canavan | |
| 8530756 | Believe me. There was nothing good in always being second place. Next to you, I may as well have been invisible - at least when it came to the ladies. If I'd known, we'd both end up as bachelors, I wouldn't have been so jealous of you.' 'Jealous?' Akkarin's smile faded. He turned away to stare at the horizon. 'No. Don't be jealous. | lorlen | Trudi Canavan | |
| cef2aea | As the others paired off he turned to face her. "Can't leave me partnerless," he said. She pulled a face, grabbed the bowl and stood up."Forgot my little speech earlier, have you, Jayan?Not if you were the last man in Kyralia." | kyralia tessia | Trudi Canavan | |
| d182337 | Ranel had said that the murderer wore a ring with a red gemstone. Looking at Akkarin's hands, she was almost disappointed to see they were bare. Not even a mark to hint that a ring might have been worn regularly. His fingers were long and elegant, yet masculine... | Trudi Canavan | ||
| 1e443af | Hunter-gatherers no more live on the knife-edge of survival than wolves or lions or sparrows or rabbits. Man was as well adapted to life on this planet as any other species, and the idea that he lived on the knife-edge of survival is simply biological nonsense. As an omnivore, his dietary range is immense. Thousands of species will go hungry before he does. His intelligence and dexterity enable him to live comfortably in conditions that wou.. | Daniel Quinn | ||
| ed66a5e | What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways. I stretch out on the floor with my ear parked next to the speaker, in a trance. I place the album cover over my face to block out any interruption as "I'll Be Your Mirror" seduces me. I immediately add the song to my mental list of top ten songs ever. And as I'm bobbing my head with dreamy aban.. | Shauna Cross | ||
| 326806d | My father, " she said, pronouncing it fadder, and Beverly saw that her dress had also changed. It had become a scabrous, peeling black. The cameo was a skull, its jaw hung in a diseased gape. "His name was Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Although that was not his name, either. But he did love his joke, my fadder." | Stephen King | ||
| 19effb6 | the sloeback, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat bobbing sea | Dylan Thomas | ||
| 1928703 | There's a black Mercedes rollin' through the combat zone Your servants are half dead; you're down to the bone Tell me, tall man, where would you like to be overthrown | Bob Dylan | ||
| 3a017b9 | The only thing "free" about so-called free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is an euphemism for the peculiar way labor as a factor of production not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair." | freedom work | Bob Black | |
| ec6e2e9 | Memory has a way of distorting the past, of making certain events seem larger and more significant in retrospect than they ever could have been at the time they occured. | Tom Perrotta | ||
| 83d7715 | They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself. | gratitude homecoming yourself | Tom Perrotta | |
| 9100878 | Of course world travel isn't as good as it seems, it's only after you've come back from all the heat and horror that you forget to get bugged and remember the weird scenes you saw | Jack Kerouac | ||
| 8310472 | Pretty soon...do you realize there'll be so many additional childhoods and pasts with everybody writing about them everybody'll give up reading in despair-There'll be an Explosion of childhoods and pasts, they'll have to have a giant Brain print them out microscopically on film to be stored in a warehouse on Mars to give Heaven Seventy Kotis to catch up on all that reading- Seventy Million Million Kotis! - Whoopee! - Everything is free! | jack-kerouac prophecy | Jack Kerouac |