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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| fe00e28 | everybody he knew was going quietly mad from being tied on a leash that was too short. | Harry Crews | ||
| 8355df8 | It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass? | S.M. Stirling | ||
| e592ad4 | Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice." | S.M. Stirling | ||
| a94b791 | Meli, are you sure these "humans" are on our side?) (No ... but at least they are not Khieevi.) (That is beginning to seem less and less of a recommendation. Like us in form, perhaps, but hardly in ethics.) (That may not be entirely a bad thing. If they meet their friends with weapons in both hands, what do you suppose they do to their enemies?)" | Anne McCaffrey | ||
| 3b6891f | Ready to cry ready to dy ready for any thing is how I come to it now. In fear and tremmering only not running a way. In emtyness and ready to be fult. Not to lern no body nothing I cant even lern my oan self all I can do is try not to get in front of whats coming. Jus try to keap out of the way of it. | Russell Hoban | ||
| 3369504 | An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in.. | philosophy reflection | Russell Hoban | |
| d45c578 | Father looked at her and she was beautiful in the way she had been as a girl. He did not realize the pleasure he felt in having made her cry. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| d9d6dea | You want God? Don't look at Scripture, look everywhere, at the planets, the constellations, the universe. Look at a bug, a flea. Look at the manifold wonders of creation, including the Nazis. That's the kind of God you're dealing with. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| 893d684 | The story was clearly over, as in juggling when the ball you throw up finds the moment to come down, hesitates as if it might not, and then drops at the same speed of that celestial light. And life is no longer good but just what you happen to be holding. | life | E.L. Doctorow | |
| f8eea27 | Magnolias don't look like that," Ignatius said, thrusting his cutlass at the offending pastel magnolia. "You ladies need a course in botany. And perhaps geometry, too." "You don't have to look at our work," an offended voice said from the group, the voice of the lady who had drawn the magnolia in question. "Yes, I do!" Ignatius screamed. "You ladies need a critic with some taste and decency. Good heavens! Which one of you did this camellia?.. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| f8dc110 | The Dr. Nuts seemed only as an acid gurgling down into his intestine. He filled with gas, the sealed valve trapping it just as one pinches the mouth of a balloon. Great eructations rose from his throat and bounced upward toward the refuse-laden bowl of the milk glass chandelier. Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen. Everywhere there lurked pitfalls like Abelman, the insipid Crusaders for Moorish Di.. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 5d1b0f0 | Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 79b42fc | I have taken to arriving at the office one hour later than I am expected. Therefore, I am far more rested and refreshed when I do arrive, and I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 045e525 | the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for those who do know reality when they see it. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 5ee169d | Will I ever see you again? No. Do I love you? Yes, for all time. | Connie Willis | ||
| 392a2ac | Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy's hand and clasped it tightly in her own. "I knew you'd come," she said, and the net opened." | Connie Willis | ||
| 37ad824 | Insecure, ill-dressed chaos theorist desires intelligent, insightful, incandescent trends researcher. Must be SC. | Connie Willis | ||
| 835eefe | There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I | Connie Willis | ||
| 47bc3e8 | We aren't a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries . . . her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing. (556) | David Brin | ||
| bdb4dfd | While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing lif.. | feudalism writing | David Brin | |
| 8940b39 | Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think. | Jay McInerney | ||
| 57a952c | What he liked about his brother, he said, is that he made people become what they didn't think they could become. He twisted something in their hearts. Gave them new places to go. Even dead, he'd still do that. His brother believed that the space for God was one of the last great frontiers: men and women could do all sorts of things but the real mystery would always lie in a different beyond. He would just fling the ashes and let them settl.. | Colum McCann | ||
| 4003c69 | Their perfect English accents. As if serving all their vowels on a fine set of tongs. | Colum McCann | ||
| d20e2c2 | The old days, they arrive back in the oddest ways, suddenly taut, breaking the surface, a salmon leap. | Colum McCann | ||
| 46d2126 | You want to arrest the clocks, stop everything for half a second, give yourself a chance to do it over again, rewind the life, uncrash the car, run it backward, have her lifted miraculously back into the windshield, unshatter the glass, go about your day umtouched, some old, lost sweet tasting time. | Colum McCann | ||
| 4a4d55b | The watchers below pulled their breath in all at once. The air suddenly felt shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before. | Colum McCann | ||
| 09304ec | It's about fear. You know! They're all throbbing with fear. We all are.... Bits of it floating in the air. It's like dust. You walk about and don't see it, don't notice it, but it's there and it's all coming down, covering everything. You're breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it's so fine you don't notice it. But you're covered in it. It's everywhere. What I mean is, we're afraid. Just stand still for an instant an.. | Colum McCann | ||
| e847550 | There was something in the music of the accent that Douglass liked: it was as if the Cork people put long lazy hammocks in their sentences. | Colum McCann | ||
| 87ac57b | It's hardly wisdom, but the older I get the more I believe that our lives are built not out of time, but light. The problem is that the images that so often return to me are seldom those I want. | Colum McCann | ||
| 2b38ca3 | The rich...should beg the poor to forgive us for the bread we bring them. Healthy people sometimes feel they need to beg forgiveness too, although there is no reason why. Maybe we simply ask forgiveness for not being born where these poor women have been born, knowing that if we lived here too, our fate might well have been the same. | Jonathan Kozol | ||
| 5e21492 | Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school--and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives. | Jonathan Kozol | ||
| d435a49 | Funny how things like that can change when you're in these kind of situations. Kash usually drove me crazy. He was so stubborn, and such a smart-ass, but I missed those annoying traits so much. I missed the way our personalities clashed and resulted in us fighting; I would give anything to fight with Kash again. The thought of having children with him used to terrify me, and now I was afraid I'd never get to have that opportunity. And I hat.. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 8a08720 | Because you need me and if this is my last hour with you, I'm not going to waste another second of it. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 99137fb | Esa primera noche, me di cuenta de que nunca conoceria a una chica como tu. Pero te mereces a alguien que haya esperado por ti tanto como tu has esperado por el. Y no importa cuanto yo desee ser ese chico, no puedo, Harper. | Molly McAdams | ||
| cd599cb | Si piensas que actuar como si no existieras no es lo mas dificil que he hecho nunca, te equivocas. Odio no hablar contigo, odio no discutir como si fueramos un matrimonio de ancianos y odio no pasar todos los dias a tu lado. Pero asi es como tiene que ser. Brandon me odia, y Princesa, confia en mi cuando digo que tiene todas las razones para hacerlo. Asi que si despues de todo lo que te he hecho, sigues incluso considerando ser mi amiga, en.. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 3be5455 | Grabbing his hand, I stepped close and placed a hand over his racing heart. "You are what makes me happy. I can't live a life that you're not in, Kash. I've already tried it once before, it didn't work." | Molly McAdams | ||
| 938e155 | I lay in bed and watched moments break into phenomenal particles of panic and could actually see the divine crack of God's ass as he completely turned his back on me. | doubt fear god panic | Arthur Nersesian | |
| b140d38 | My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell. Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry. ...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight i.. | hopelessness life | Arthur Nersesian | |
| 8e56f04 | No student should be encouraged -- by anyone -- to change himself until he's "normal," a term that says everything and means nothing." | Alexandra Robbins | ||
| a1554a5 | Melrose was so concerned that the [book]shop might close for lack of business, that he had suggested he would like to invest in it or even become a silent partner. "You see, books have always been a hobby of mine." Books had never been a hobby; they were a necessity." | Martha Grimes | ||
| 7593458 | The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb. | society | Kenzaburō Ōe | |
| 15fa18c | In this age of ours it's hard to say with certainty that having lived was better than not having been born in the first place. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 1b18829 | I'm the one who'd like to send a telegram, AM RATHER IN TROUBLE--but addressed to whom? | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| e88f563 | Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering. | Shūsaku Endō |