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ccb2a78 As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn. You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life. Timothy Findley
d5af55e As death approaches me, I regret this most, Pilgrim--aside from my loss of you. I regret that I blamed, so often, others--for faults and problems of my own making. And, if not of my own making, certainly of my own tolerance. That men could not love men--or women, women--that poverty was the fault and responsibility of the poverty-stricken (how can I have thought so!)--and that 'good' was something that could be decreed by governments, as if.. Findley Timothy
624fb49 no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore. Timothy Findley
704104c I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond -- only younger, darker, and possibly better paid. spywallah Mohsin Hamid
abed5ef In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker. Mohsin Hamid
94c3979 Glaring is something we men of Lahore take seriously... Mohsin Hamid
d8b2cb7 not one of these worthy restaurateurs would consider placing a western dish on his menu. No, we are surrounded instead by the kebab of mutton, the tikka of chicken, the stewed foot of goat, the spiced brain of sheep! These, sir, are predatory delicacies, delicacies imbued with a hint of luxury, of wanton abandon. Not for us the vegetarian recipes one finds across the border to the east, nor the sanitized, sterilized, processed meats so comm.. Mohsin Hamid
5f47589 But while fear was part of what kept them together for those first few months in Marin, more powerful than fear was the desire that each see the other find firmer footing before they let go, and thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermit.. Mohsin Hamid
38b5cf9 In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make pos.. Mohsin Hamid
957510e But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. 'The world's a sphere, everyone,' I wanted to say. 'The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on.. new-york-city passion sphere superficiality surfaces writing Mohsin Hamid
c2f9ad0 I was saddened to find it in such a state- no, no more than saddened, I was shamed. This was where I came from, this was my provenance, and it smacked of lowliness. But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed. I was looking about me with the eyes of a foreigner, but that particular type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so anno.. Mohsin Hamid
d4ab8f4 Is getting filthy rich still your goal above all goals, your be-all and end-all, the mist-shrouded high-altitude spawning pond to your inner salmon? Mohsin Hamid
52330aa She is here. And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, ad there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, yo.. death inspirational life love old-age poignant self-help Mohsin Hamid
57db855 I have this thing about friends and secrets. Sometimes when I meet a person I like, I tell them a secret they don't know me well enough to be told. It lets me judge their potential as a friend. friendship judge judging-others judging-people loyalty secrets sharing-secrets trust trustworthiness Mohsin Hamid
0bdbdef Oh, yes, let's bless the imagination. It gives us the myths we live by. Let's bless the visionary power of the human-- the only animal that's got it--, bless the exact image of your father dead and mine dead, bless the images that stalk the corners of our sight and will not let go. Philip Levine
fd57119 WE THINK, sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. We think sometimes that ours is an age past frontiers, past adventures. Destiny, it's way over the horizon; glowing shadows galloped past long ago, and gone. What a pleasure to be wrong. Richard Bach
5ccbb6f O oposto de solidao nao e companhia, e intimidade. Richard Bach
115b873 Every choice is made in the uncaring blind, no guarantees from the world around us. Richard Bach
f3ab9a2 Mine's a free life, but it does get lonely sometimes. Richard Bach
123eb41 I wanted to say, for the love of God, if you want freedom, can't you see it's not anywhere outside of you? Say you have it, and you have it! Act as if it is your's, and it is! Richard, what is so damned hard about that? But they didn't hear, most of them. Miracles - like going to auto races to see the crashes, they came to see miracles. First it's frustrating and then after a while it just gets dull. I have no idea how the other messiahs co.. Richard Bach
87935e4 If I've learned one lesson in all my days, it's this: Life starts new, every sunrise. Richard Bach
bada0b8 One of the timeless secrets to a long, happy life is to love your work. The golden thread running through the lives of history's most satisfied people is that they all loved what they did for a living. When psychologist Vera John-Steiner interviewed one hundred creative people, she found they all had one thing in common: an intense passion for their work. Spending your days doing work that you find rewarding, intellectually challenging and .. Robin S. Sharma
31e7167 Don't be so damned patronizing. Your performance so far has been a little less than dazzling." "I didn't mean no harm," I said and kissed her. "That a new dress?" "Ah! Changing the subject, you coward." coward funny humorous patronizing Dashiell Hammett
1c50568 When he awakened again he could stand, and did. He doused his head in cold water and drank four glasses of water. The water made him sick and after that he began to shake with a chill. He went into the bedroom and lay down on the bare blood-stained mattress, but got up almost immediately to go stumbling and staggering in haste back to the bathroom, where he got down on hands and knees and searched the floor until he had found the rusty razo.. Dashiell Hammett
3d2990a He did not smile. "I don't believe in anything, but I'm too much of a gambler not to be affected by a lot of things." Dashiell Hammett
163c260 It's probably polite to pretend you don't see people coming out of pawnshops, anyhow. humor pawn-shop polite Dashiell Hammett
f95fc3c A moment later, the world's first all-purpose human being strode eastward, whistling. 'A tasty world,' it reflected cheerfully. 'A very tasty world.' 'You said it, Cornelius! Michael Moorcock
808de79 Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you ma.. Norman Maclean
df5e1c1 You look like you're about to puke," he observed, pushing his cart forward. With a quick, inner shake she gathered herself and cut him off to take her rightful position as lead cart. "I was trying to imagine you as a kid. It was horrifying." Linda Howard
59e0a6c It takes strength to participate in life. Linda Howard
a55542f It's not the heat," came his return mutter. "It's a critical buildup of sperm"." Linda Howard
abd06bc He didn't believe in miracles. If he'd had any philosophy in life in ran along the lines of the classic shit happens. Usually it was bad shit, sometimes it was good shit, but it was always random shit. You lived your life, & when the run was ended, that was it. Nothing. Linda Howard
5cb30d8 For a long time that had seemed to her to be the key to life: Life--real life--was just a solitude waiting to be transfigured. Kevin Brockmeier
910c0c4 Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum. Kevin Brockmeier
4b18cf4 Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tom.. pain Kevin Brockmeier
c0884cf Faced with public discontent about the statist agenda, the Condescendi look out the window at the unlovely mob in their "Don't treat on me" T-shirts and sneer, "The peasants are revolting." You oppose illegal immigration? You're a xenophobe. Gay marriage? Homophobe. The Ground Zero mosque? Islamaphobe. If that's the choice, I'd rather be damned as a racist and sexist. The evolution from -isms to phobias is part of the medicalization of diss.. Mark Steyn
824a14c But, in an "Islamophobic" West, the new ground rules were quickly established: Islam trumped feminism, trumped homosexuality, trumped everything. In speeches around the globe, the 44th President of the United States affected a cool equidistance between his national interests and those of others. He was less "the leader of the Free World" than the Bystander-in-Chief, and thus the perfect emblem of a western world content to be spectators in .. Mark Steyn
b84ec44 At first, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance professed to be pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-whatever's-your-bag secularists; the other half were homophobic, misogynist, anti-any-groove-you-dig theocrats...it made no sense. But in fact what they had in common overrode their superficially more obvious incompatibilities, both the secular Big Government progressive and the.. Mark Steyn
46bd04c Tinkerers built America. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, all were tinkerers in their childhood. Everything from the airplane to the computer started in somebody's garage. Go back even further: the Industrial Revolution was a revolution of tinkerers. The great scientific thinkers of eighteenth-century England couldn't have been less interested in cotton spinning and weaving. Why would you be? It was left to a bloke on the shop .. Mark Steyn
40b0201 After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren't prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia - a Europe it would not be necessary to die for. But sometimes you die anyway. Mark Steyn
b2119fd Kazete da ste neshvaceni mladi prijatelju. Pablo Picasso
486a994 You can't crawl back in the dollhouse - You've gotten to o big to get in. You've got to live here Like the rest of us do. You've got to walk roads That are winding and new. But oh, I wish I could Crawl back with you Into the dollhouse again. Shel Silverstein
b490c16 mn khwshHlm khh khwdm hstm zyr shbyh tw nystm tw hm khwshHl bsh khh khwdt hsty chwn Sl shbyh mn nysty bry hmyn st khh my twnym b hm dwst bshym w chh khwb dwsty dwt adm mthl m Shel Silverstein
1cb585e William tell, William tell, Take your arrow, grip it well, There's the apple- - aim for the middle- - Oh well ... you just missed by a little. Shel Silverstein