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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 93ff6b2 | Homo sentimentalis [...] a man who has raised feelings to a category of value. As soon as feelings are seen as value, everyone wants to feel; and because we all like to pride ourselves on our values, we have a tendency to show off our feelings. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 59b66ed | the less her life resembled that sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 71db68a | the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes (the girl looks back happily on her past or swims faster), love becomes a permanent source of the great torment we call litost. | inspirational-quotes litost love torment | Milan Kundera | |
| 995ff89 | Ich habe nie einen ernsthaften Versuch unternommen, meinem Leben ein Ende zu machen; auch keinen unernsthaften. Ich habe nur oft, in jedem Lebensalter, dran gedacht. | Max Frisch | ||
| 5771257 | Wer sich nicht mit Politik befasst, hat die politische Parteinahme, die er sich sparen mochte, bereits vollzogen: er dient der herrschenden Partei. | Max Frisch | ||
| 0548d78 | A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society. | fame social-criticism society values | Max Frisch | |
| 206ac31 | You had to laugh, if you wanted to survive. | Deborah Spungen | ||
| 1f17846 | She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything. And then, after the regret had flared and burned out, she didn't care. He should know, she thought. She wanted him to know. She felt something for somebody, and she'd told him. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 2833523 | It was as if I were powerless to resist the temptation; my senses were overcome. I could hear the emptiness, and taste the silence, and smell the solitude, and I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything before. | Nick Hornby | ||
| eddbf03 | Even though we get a lot of people into the shop, only a small percentage of them buy anything. The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on a Saturday, even if there's nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag they feel uncomfortable. You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different .. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 582c4bd | The Marie bit is easy enough to understand, then. The Laura thing takes a bit more explaining, but what it is, I think, is this: sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time. Marie's the hopeful, forward part of it - maybe not her, necessarily, but somebody like her, somebody who can turn things around for me. (Exactly tha.. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 78d19bf | They'd been told, several times, by colleagues ... that the sea was warmer over there [abroad], and the skies bluer, and the food was like nothing you could buy in London no matter how much you spent. But none of those colleagues had done what Tony had wanted to do when he got back: grab people by the lapels and shout at them, wide-eyed, until they agreed to book tickets. Most people in England, he thought, had no idea that within a few hou.. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 44471e4 | You see, what I really want, and what I'm getting with Stephen, is the opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch. David's picture of me is complete now, and I'm pretty sure neither of us likes it much; I want to rip the page out and start again on a fresh sheet, just like I used to do when I was a kid and had messed a drawing up. It doesn't even matter who the fresh sheet is, really, so its beside the point whether I like Stephen, or wheth.. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d05150b | What a terrible thing an education was, he thought, if it produced the kind of mind that despised entertainment and the people who valued it. | Nick Hornby | ||
| bbe472a | Because it's a brilliant film. It's funny, and violent, and it's got Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in it, and everything. And a cracking sound track. Maybe there's no comparison between Ian sleeping with Laura and Reservoir Dogs after all. Ian hasn't got Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in him. And Ian's not funny. Or violent. And he's got a crap sound track, judging from what we used to hear through the ceiling. I've taken this as far as it will go.. | Nick Hornby | ||
| abafd2d | Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they described what it was like to be members of Prince's band. They'd sit down, and Prince would tell them what he wanted them to play, and they'd explain that they couldn't--they weren't quick enough, or good enough. And Prince would push them and push them until they mastered it, and then just when they were feeling pleased with themselves for a.. | encouragement learning music prince | Nick Hornby | |
| 43863ba | I know, despite all the gloom and self-doubt that bubbles up from the deep when you get dumped, that you did not represent my last and best chance of a relationship. So, you know. Nice try. Close, but no cigar. See you around. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d8c758f | Ho da poco scoperto che la mia amica Mary, quando finisce un libro, fa passare qualche giorno prima di cominciarne un altro - vuole dare all'ultima lettura un po' piu di respiro, prima che venga soffocata dalla prossima. E una cosa sensata, e mi sembra una linea di comportamento assolutamente lodevole. Noi che leggiamo nevroticamente, tuttavia - per scongiurare la noia e il timore dell'ignoranza e della nostra morte imminente - non possiamo.. | lettura libri | Nick Hornby | |
| 8889400 | I work it out. It is the act of reading itself I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the wold until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already. | Nick Hornby | ||
| b2e8b7e | She was the spare room that never got tidied, the e-mail that never got answered, the loan that never got repaid, the symptom that never got described to a doctor. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 1004c17 | She sat down next to him, took one of his cigarettes, listened to his apologies. He was distraught, of course: he was just the kind of idiot who could only understand what things meant by doing them first. | Nick Hornby | ||
| eb487f2 | Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn't tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d26e974 | A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners. | interests relationships | Nick Hornby | |
| 245e968 | I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey. | cataloging libraries organization | Nick Hornby | |
| 2f78682 | It seems to make a difference to some girls. If you say something that isn't sexist to the right sort ofgirl, she likes you more. Say one of your mates is going on about how all girls are stupid, and you say 'not all girls are stupid,' then it can make you look good. There have to be girls listening, though, obviously. Otherwise it's a waste of time. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d54b3b2 | Someone like my mum would say, Oh, you're just a kid, you don't know what love is.But I didn't think of anything else apart from being with Alicia, and the only time I felt like I was where I wanted to be was when I was with her. I mean, that may as well be love, mightn't it? | Nick Hornby | ||
| 028486b | I didn't make a nuisance of myself, not until the end, anyway, and I never outstayed my welcome, not while there was still a welcome to be outstayed; but I was kind and sincere and thoughtful and devoted and I remembered things about her and I told her she was beautiful and bought her little presents that usually referred to a conversation we had had recently. None of this was an effort, of course, and none of it was done with any sense of .. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 039d67d | And I have to say, books haven't helped much with all this. Because whenever you read anything about love, whenever anyone tries to define it, there's always a state or an abstract noun, and I try to think of it like that. But actually, love is... Well, it's just you. And when you go, it's gone. Nothing abstract about it. | love love-quotes relationships | Nick Hornby | |
| 7b311f1 | This is how I feel, every day, and people don't want to know that. They want to know that I'm feeling what Tom Jones makes you feel. Or that Australian girl who used to be in Neighbours. But I feel like this, and they won't play what I feel on the radio, because people that are sad don't fit in. | Nick Hornby | ||
| 69fcb91 | It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were .. | common-law empowerment fathers feminism feudalism gender guardianship history husbands independence inequality marriage married-life matrimony men misogyny property self-determination social-norms subjugation wedlock women women-s-rights | Antonia Fraser | |
| 2f886db | What she loved was being admired, being wanted, being pursued--but she did not think she wanted ever to be caught. | Alison Weir | ||
| 0dfa78d | I waste so much time sleeping. And time is of all losses the most irrecuperable, for it can never be redeemed. | wasted-time | Alison Weir | |
| 9bad067 | His handsome face is suffused with rage. He stands before me shaking, then to my disgust, bursts into noisy tears; "I shall tell my mother of you!" he sobs and crashes out of the chamber" | funny guilford-dudley innocent-traitor jane-grey | Alison Weir | |
| 2ef3c00 | There were more problems with solitude than just being horny and bored. If you didn't have anyone to talk to for days on end, you didn't have anyone to let you know whether you were going nuts or not. | Tad Williams | ||
| cc68c3c | Because love does not do sums, but instead make choices, and then gives its all. | Tad Williams | ||
| 9d3d5be | If your enemy comes to speak bearing a sword, open your door to him and speak, but keep your own sword at hand. If he comes to you empty-handed, greet him the same way. But if he comes to you bearing gifts, stand on your walls and cast stones down on him. | Tad Williams | ||
| 901aec1 | If we do not reach our hands will always be empty. | Tad Williams | ||
| 1a450b1 | I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they there. Everybody else is just a tourist. Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away f.. | travel venice | Tad Williams | |
| cb4799d | All people know the Greater Hunger...It is the hunger for warmth, for family, for connection to the stars and the earth and other living things..." "For love?" Renie asked. "Yes, I suppose that could be true." | Tad Williams | ||
| 05e48b5 | To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John's kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind... but isn't that what we always think? That all wars are useless--except the one we're fighting now? | Tad Williams | ||
| c236c9d | Fight and live, fight and die, God waits for all. | Tad Williams | ||
| 729f7b1 | And there he lay in his bed, a broken man, worn out by a way of life which had been thrust upon him because of the antics of a wayward pig. | Jean Plaidy | ||
| 98944d6 | Oh, the shame that I suffer now . . . the shame of a vanquished King." And those were the last words of Henry Plantagenet." | Jean Plaidy | ||
| 74478f9 | Kindness is stronger than iron bars. | Margaret George |