1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
2761
2762
2763
2764
2765
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 |
| cf1f987 | An hour later, we'd indulged in the traditional St Mary's ritual for dealing with any sort of crisis, which is to imbibe vast reservoirs of tea. People laugh, but it works. By the time the kettle has boiled, the tea made, the amount of sugar added has been silently criticised, the tea blown on and finally drunk ... all this takes time, and if you're a member of St Mary's with the attention-span of a privet hedge, then you've forgotten what .. | Jodi Taylor | ||
| 39491ee | Believe it or not, there were rules. Everyone needs rules. After all, how can you break what doesn't exist? Rules give anarchy something to aim at. | Jodi Taylor | ||
| e79facb | Olivia Taylor, I'm so fucking fascinated by you. | Jodi Ellen Malpas | ||
| 3f9a644 | He was calm and soothing and had a reasonable explanation for everything. No woman should have to put up with that. | Jodi Taylor | ||
| 4e70a37 | Happiness, I have grasped, is a destination, like strawberry Fields. Once you find the way in, there you are, and you'll never feel low again. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 7526952 | To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 989b012 | I know," Attolia soothed him. "I did not say that I am afraid. He is, though, I think. Afraid of his own desire for power. He is not unused to wielding power, but it has always been in secret. I could, of course, command him to be king. He will give me anything I ask." "That would only confirm your sovereignty, not his," Relius objected. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| f46272b | It was a race between the tortoise and the hare, but the tortoise had just enough head start, and he had the magus to drag him along. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 3dbc158 | I never understood why she didn't marry you." The king settled further into the seat with a snort. "Maybe the prospect of being driven out of her mind put her off." | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 0bfeb0f | I woke to find I had not been murdered in my sleep. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 32be093 | Damn him, damn him, damn him. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 54c5675 | if you tease a dog, it bites. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 68ff459 | My god is not a ten-devotee-to-the-average-dozen, got-a-priest-on-every-corner kind of god who is always being badgered by his worshipers. He keeps a very close eye on me, and what may look completely stupid to you is merely a demonstration of my faith. | god | Megan Whalen Turner | |
| 7ccb273 | Depending on the inflection, ah bon can express shock, disbelief, indifference, irritation, or joy - a remarkable achievment for two short words. | Peter Mayle | ||
| f9f4234 | Sunglasses must be kept on until an acquaintance is identified at one of the tables, but one must not appear to be looking for company. Instead, the impression should be that one is heading into the cafe to make a phone call to one's titled Italian admirer, when--quelle surprise!--one sees a friend. The sunglasses can then be removed and the hair tossed while one is persuaded to sit down. | Peter Mayle | ||
| 519fcdd | A connoisseur of woe needs fresh worries from time to time, or he will become complacent. | Peter Mayle | ||
| 6f17a24 | There is nothing wrong with you. God asks the most of those he loves best. | Julie Orringer | ||
| 46f319e | How strange it was to be inside a machine again! All his life he'd been inside machines, whether he realised it or not. Modern houses were machines. Shopping centres were machines. Schools. Cars. Trains. Cities. They were all sophisticated technological constructs, wired up with lights and motors. You switched them on, and didn't spare them a thought while they pampered you with unnatural services. | services | Michel Faber | |
| d7bd4e9 | There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT. | emergency red-button wall | Michel Faber | |
| 724427e | This is a street where the weaker souls crawl into bed as soon as the sun sets and lie awake listening to the rats. | Michel Faber | ||
| 822437e | to her, all familiar responses smell of entrapment. Sharing an old joke, singing an old song - these are admissions of defeat, of being satisfied with one's lot. In the sky, the Fates are watching, and when they hear such things, they murmur amongst themselves: Ah yes, that one is quite content as she is; changing her lot would only confuse her. | Michel Faber | ||
| ddc5283 | The variety of shapes, colours and textures under her feet was, she believed, literally infinite. It must be. Each shell, each pebble, each stone had been made what it was by aeons of submarine or subglacial massage. The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the unfairness of human life into perspective. | Michel Faber | ||
| 3505222 | It does no good to run. And it does no good to hide. But I know what it's like. Your brain shuts down, and you follow your instincts. Or, at least, you you do. But you know what you're really doing? When you flee through the night, or crawl into your little bolt-hole? You know what's really guiding you? Controlling you? Pushing you on? . | crawling genre-conventions hiding instincts running the-night | Mike Carey & Peter Gross | |
| 7805d91 | for the keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 69ed8c7 | I don't think, before that moment, that he truly grasped the nature of what I was. He knew, of course; had always known, and had been the one person who'd never cared for what, but only who I was. I saw him comprehend it now, and feared. It could change everything between us. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 4112b05 | Greet the sky and live, blossom!... Yet even as the wind stirs your petals, flowers fall. My flowers are eternal, my songs live forever. I lift them in offering; I, a singer. I cast them to the wind, I spill them. The flowers become gold, they come to dwell inside the palace of eternity. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| a3a9f80 | To fail and persevere is a harder test than any you will meet on the practice-field. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 4265fbb | I discovered that we liked each other. But I was fearful of giving free rein to my emotions. Fearful that all those emotions and longings I suppressed would spill forth, rendering me bitter and cruel. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| dd7c42b | She's looking right at you," Scott says. As I hold her glittering gaze, I instinctively reach to touch her head. "As supple as leather, as tough as steel, as cold as night," Hugo wrote of the octopus's flesh; but to my surprise, her head is silky and softer than custard. Her skin is flecked with ruby and silver, a night sky reflected on the wine-dark sea. As I stroke her with my fingertips, her skin goes white beneath my touch. White is the.. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| fa59b54 | Hormones and neurotransmitters, the chemicals associated with human desire, fear, love, joy, and sadness, "are highly conserved across taxa," Jennifer said. This means that whether you're a person or a monkey, a bird or a turtle, an octopus or a clam, the physiological changes that accompany our deepest-felt emotions appear to be the same. Even a brainless scallop's little heart beats faster when the mollusk is approached by a predator, jus.. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| ccfe895 | Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 1a3f8da | I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it. | William Morris | ||
| 636343f | There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 206b73e | I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| a42d46c | It's dreadful, isn't it?" "What? Death?" "Yes. It makes everything else seem so horribly trivial. He doesn't look human. When you look at him you can hardly persuade yourself that he's ever been alive. It's hard to think that not so very many years ago he was just a little boy tearing down the hill and flying a kite." | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 0470e20 | The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 862d838 | I was growing stale in London. I was tired of doing much the same thing everyday. My friends pursued their course with uneventfulness; they had no longer any surprises for me, and when I met them I knew pretty well what they would say; even their love-affairs had a tedious banality. We were like tram-cars running on their lines from terminus to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within small limits the number of passengers they woul.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 878ac01 | I can't afford to let my judgement be clouded by any feeling that I might have for a human being. You are the only person I've ever cared for in the world, Charley. I shan't rest till I know in my bones that if it were necessary to put you against a wall and shoot you with my own hands I could do it without a moment's hesitation and without a moment's regret. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| c9dfff0 | peace of mind: Thou shalt have it only, the answer seemed to come to me, when thou has ceased to desire it. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 8c5ea14 | The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent. | women | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 644ec21 | The first time he talked in that way he said something that I've never forgotten, because it horrified me; he said that the world isn't a creation, for out of nothing nothing comes, but a manifestation of the eternal nature; well, that was all right, but then he added that evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good. They were strange words to hear in that sordid, noisy cafe, to the accompaniment of dance tunes on the mechanical.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 381002c | He seemed to see his fellow creatures grotesquely, and he was angry with them because they were grotesque; life was a confusion of ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fit subject for laughter, and yet it made him sorrowful to laugh. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 7aeda92 | Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 47b9213 | Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a.. | W. Somerset Maugham |