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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| b7fe2c6 | I glance around at the nest we have made, at the floorboards polished by our bare feet, at the continents of stain on the ceiling like an old and all-wrong discoverer's map, at the earnestly bloated canvases I conscientiously cover with great streaks straining to say what even I am begining to suspect is the unsayable thing, and I grow frightened. | John Updike | ||
| 62c38b3 | A woman once of some height, she is bent small, and the lingering strands of black look dirty in her white hair. She carries a cane, but in forgetfulness, perhaps, hangs it over her forearm and totters along with it dangling loose like an outlandish bracelet. Her method of gripping her gardener is this: he crooks his right arm, pointing his elbow toward her shoulder, and she shakily brings her left forearm up within his and bears down heavi.. | John Updike | ||
| b557ce5 | When a printed book--whether a recently published scholarly history or a two-hundred-year-old Victorian novel--is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it turns into something very like a Web site. Its words become wrapped in all the distractions of the networked computer. Its links and other digital enhancements propel the reader hither and yon. It loses what the late John Updike called its "edges" and dissolves in.. | Nicholas Carr | ||
| d0e992d | How many more, I must ask myself, such perfect ends of Augusts will I witness? | John Updike | ||
| d0a56be | I like the race, rather than the winning. | Mark Helprin | ||
| 606dc0f | Just the two of us. We're in it together. The pleasure will be ours alone. For the rest of our lives. | Mark Helprin | ||
| 2a24139 | A horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music. | Mark Helprin | ||
| 63319e5 | To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with .. | Marilynne Robinson | ||
| 7dc1330 | Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act. | Mark Helprin | ||
| 6d8cdcf | And Peter Lake knew that these things were nothing in themselves but the means by which to remember those he had loved, and to remind him that the power of the love he had known was repeated a million times a million times over, from one soul to another--all worthy, all holy, none ever lost. He glided through the illusions that flashed bravely on the smoke, and he was touched very deeply by the will of things to live in the light. | Mark Helprin | ||
| b43f59e | The perfect simplicity of salvation is broken up upon these rocks that we have built, and scattered for us to ponder and piece together in a test that tries our patience and understanding. We learn that justice may not always follow a just act, that justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected, that a miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Who.. | Mark Helprin | ||
| ca8b8ba | TO BE mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. | Mark Helprin | ||
| 7d9b247 | The obituary writers drew their incomplete sketches, touring through his life like travelers to England who do not ever see swans, sheep, bicycles, and blue eyes. | blue-eyes england obituary sheep swans travelers | Mark Helprin | |
| 351226b | you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. | Mark Helprin | ||
| f0dd0f3 | The P'lice Department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith. They got him on conspiracy, they were never quite sure who with. | Bob Dylan | ||
| 4899d1d | He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths. He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding wha.. | madness monsters psychology theseus | Troy Denning | |
| ac36496 | Han: "Someone ought to make armor out of those bugs." Leia: "Han! They're sentient beings!" Han: "Fair is fair. If they get to wear it, so should we." - Han and Leia Solo" | Troy Denning | ||
| baa2c58 | Your brother kills you." Fett hopped tpo his feet as lightly as any unarmoured jedi apprentice, the n added," Some things are worsse thean death. I know that better than anyone, except maybe Sintas-and Han Solo. Send your father my sympathies." | Troy Denning | ||
| d057c15 | It is not possible to satisfy women," a friend said. "We are disturbed if we have children too young. Disturbed if we have then later. Disturbed if we don't have children at all." | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| c949514 | It was a dead swan. Its body lay contorted on the beach like an abandoned lover. I looked at the bird for a long time. There was no blood on its feathers, no sight of gunshot. Most likely, a late migrant from the north slapped silly by a ravenous Great Salt Lake. The swan may have drowned. I knelt beside the bird, took off my deerskin gloves, and began smoothing feathers. Its body was still limp--the swan had not been dead long. I lifted bo.. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| c2f323e | Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from both is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges. | voice | Terry Tempest Williams | |
| 2ce993e | Once you know that you have a voice," Louis said, "it's no longer the voice that matters, but what is behind the voice." | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| a53e29a | There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private. | beauty disclusure private privicy silence voice writing | Terry Tempest Williams | |
| a9d5c54 | Reading has not only changed my life but saved it. the right picked at the right time--especially the one that scares us, threatens to undermine all we have been told, the one that contains forbidden thoughts--these are the books that become Eve's apples. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| 6ae7499 | But harboring regrets is making love to the past, and there is no movement here. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| 9eba74c | She is reading Zen, Krishnamurti, and Jung, asking herself questions she has never had the courage to explore. Suddenly, the shackles which have bound her are beginning to snap, as personal revelation replaces orthodoxy. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| 53d8ee1 | What else are we to do with our obsessions? Do they feed us? Or are we simply scavenging our memories for one gleaming image to tell the truth of what is hunting us? | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| 7e0b987 | We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stores and poems. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| a8246a5 | Water is nothing if not ingemination, an encore to the tenacity of life. | water | Terry Tempest Williams | |
| bdb058f | He made his voice low and smug as he thumbed her hardened nipple. Smearing soot in a lewd circle. "Don't play innocent, Miss Highwood. You've been wanting this. A hard, sweaty pounding from the village smith. These strong, dirty hands all over your body. You've been wanting it, haven't you?" "I . . ." He withdrew halfway, then slid deep. "Haven't you?" As he moved in and out, her head bobbed in a subtle nod. "Say it." He thrust hard. S.. | Tessa Dare | ||
| 43d464c | Charley looked over at him. "About how much you and Jesse have in common." Jesse said, "Why don't you tell it, Bob; if you remember." Bob inched forward in his chair. "Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, it is interesting, the many ways you and I overlap and whatnot. You begin with my daddy, J.T. Ford. J stands for James! And T is Thomas, meaning 'twin.' Your daddy was a pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church; my daddy was part-time pastor .. | Ron Hansen | ||
| 1aed5a2 | People always ask me if I hate the nuns. Do I make my movies extra dirty to piss them off? I always say no, that's not the point. To a Catholic, a movie is only dirty if it makes you want to have sex more. If it makes you feel sick, disgusted, ashamed of your own body, then it's not a dirty movie at all. It's a Catholic movie. And I make very Catholic movies. | movies sex | Kevin Smith | |
| 3e8bde6 | In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice that the world keeps shifting so quickly under her feet that she has to keep running just to keep her position. This is our predicament with cancer: we are forced to keep running merely to keep still. | Siddhartha Mukherjee | ||
| a6aa502 | You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!" | Lewis Carroll | ||
| 926415f | When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less. | Lewis Carroll | ||
| dfcb274 | meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. Let the jury consider their verdict." | Lewis Carroll | ||
| 991cb0f | I'm a poor man, your majesty," the Hatter began in a weak voice, "and I hadn't but just begun my tea, not more than a week or so, and what with the bread and butter so thin - and the twinkling of the tea-" "The twinkling of what?" asked the King. "It began with the tea," the Hatter said. "Of course twinkling begins with a T!" said the King. "Do you take me for a dunce?" | Lewis Carroll | ||
| c875306 | You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint--Give me a ham sandwich!' On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement, opened a bag that hung round his neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it greedily. 'Another sandwich!' said the King. 'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger said, peeping into the bag. 'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint whisper. Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. 'Th.. | faint hay like nonsense sandwich | Lewis Carroll | |
| 749d86d | Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. 'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; 'but why do you call it sad? | Lewis Carroll | ||
| 9a5c21d | I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, "I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh, ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it: if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look.. | Lewis Carroll | ||
| e198b78 | A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!" "I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know." "I don't bel.. | alice-in-wonderland eat-eggs girls serpent | Lewis Carroll | |
| 0b3c2cf | Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where--' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '--so lo.. | Lewis Carroll | ||
| aa04759 | The Unicorn's eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round rather instantly, and stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest surprise. `What -- is -- this?' he said at last. `This is a child!' Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice to introduce her. `We only found it today. It's as large as life, and twice as natural!' `I always thought they were fabulous monsters!' said the Unicorn. 'Is it alive?' `It can ta.. | Lewis Carroll | ||
| 46446c2 | How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.' 'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then you'll know why.' Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see what that has to do with it.' 'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft--so that the flowers.. | Lewis Carroll |