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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| adef689 | A successful thief doesn't depend on things being unlikely to happen," I said." | prepared the-queen-s-thief the-thief | Megan Whalen Turner | |
| 00a1f45 | He reached for a tabletop and ran his hands over it, clutching the edge until his knuckles turned white. He wanted to know that it was solid. Eddis knew that all the world would seem to him insubstantial, as if it might tear away and reveal something else infinitely larger and more terrifying. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 27feffe | Television creates loneliness. This is why sitcoms have added laughter tracks which try to cheat you out of your solitude. Television is a reflection of the world in which we live, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It kills spontaneous imagination and destroys our ability to entertain ourselves, painfully erasing our patience and sensitivity to significant detail. | Paul Cronin | ||
| f40aeeb | He allowed himself to imagine for the first time that the rest of his life might not be shaped by the misery of his past. | Julie Orringer | ||
| 2517ce6 | They both sat in silence for the rest of the journey, as if conscious of having let each other down. | Michel Faber | ||
| e996c45 | There is so little in the New Testament about sexual love, and most of it consists of Paul heaving a deep sigh and tolerating it like a weakness. | paul sexual-love tolerating weakness | Michel Faber | |
| 44fd9c5 | That was the sort of thing crazy people did--instinctively choosing the experiences that confirmed their own negative attitudes. | Michel Faber | ||
| f14e25d | Needs could not bully her. | Michel Faber | ||
| 6c9a53d | God damn God and all His horrible filthy Creation. | Michel Faber | ||
| 128aaf0 | The highway looked different to him now, as they drove on. In theory it was the same stretch of tarmac, bounded by the same traffic paraphernalia and flimsy metal fences, but it had been transformed by their own intent. It was no longer a straight line to an airport, it was a mysterious hinterland of shadowy detours and hidey-holes. Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one's a.. | Michel Faber | ||
| 0af1e94 | Grainger looked exasperated. "Why don't you just come straight out and use the word ? "Because the aliens here." | Michel Faber | ||
| 8110d84 | We are all specialised forms of survivor. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses. | Michel Faber | ||
| c71570d | Can't you see that? Everybody's sentimental, everybody. | Michel Faber | ||
| 88d8dc4 | Few know what year it is, or even that eighteen and a half centuries are supposed to have passed since a Jewish troublemaker was hauled away to the gallows for disturbing the peace | Michel Faber | ||
| 97bc351 | You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. | pop-culture pulp-fiction reading stories writing | Mike Carey & Peter Gross | |
| 2dd7d56 | She held out her hand, like a man. He hesitated, then took the hand and shook it. It was very warm. You could not help but be aware of the wild passage of blood on the other side of its wall, veins, capillaries, sweat glands, tiny factories in the throes of complicated manufacture. [He] looked at the eyes and, knowing how eyes worked, was astonished, not for the first time, at the infinite complexity of Creation, wondering how this thing, t.. | fire hand | Peter Carey | |
| 3d46781 | You have given us a part in a story the bards will sing to our children's children. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 34e0bf7 | I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good. | guilt morality | Jacqueline Carey | |
| 5529994 | Octopus slime is sort of a cross between drool and snot. But in a nice way. And it's very useful. It helps to be slippery if you're squeezing your body in and out of tight places. Slime keeps the octopus moist if it wants to emerge from the water, which some species of octopus do with surprisingly frequency in the wild. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 39a4ce4 | Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways. | inspirational learning self-growth soul species | Sy Montgomery | |
| fac21fa | From a social standpoint the man of science does not exist. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 08e0742 | She would not risk to grow so fond of her home that it was a pain to leave it; she preferred to remain a wayfarer, sauntering through life with a heart keen to detect beauty, and a mind, open and unbiased, ready to laugh at the absurd. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| d3d5eed | Oh, my dear, you musn't be offended just because I've taken away from you the satisfaction of thinking that you have been deceiving me all these months. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 9e8a83c | Perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she could follow the path that now she dimly discerned before her, not the path that kind funny old Waddington had spoken of that led nowhither, but the path those dear nuns at the convent followed so humbly, the path that led to peace. | spiritual | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 1bdf528 | Culture is not something you put on like a ready-made suit of clothes, but a nourishment you absorb to build up your personality, just as food builds up the body of a growing boy; it is not an ornament to decorate a phrase, still less to show off your knowledge, but a means, painfully acquired, to enrich the soul. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 0458dc2 | It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded... | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| b09cbfe | But beauty is not the only thing that makes a woman attractive; indeed, great beauty is often somewhat chilling: you admire, but are not moved. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 4f4586d | Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer," said Lawson. "What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what's in nature and what isn't! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered they were colored, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we choose.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 5515af2 | And what is that going to lead to?" "The acquisition of knowledge," he smiled. "It doesn't sound very practical." "Perhaps it isn't and on the other hand perhaps it is. But it's enormous fun." | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| a6ae826 | I've got no mother, no wife, no kids. I had, but my mother's dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble. Women are bitches. It's hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 16dff11 | I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a pow.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 4ed42ca | Nature has neither love nor hate, and with indifference smiles upon the light at heart and to the heavy brings a deeper sorrow. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 342798e | And you call yourself an English gentleman,' she exclaimed, savagely. 'No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| a7fb3ae | A thing that had always struck her about the child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she realized that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his feelings; he hid himself to weep. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| dac2425 | But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy. There was no describing it. It was manifold and various; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children, and of men for wo.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 6dd7328 | Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only with indifference for the release of death. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 20a783d | He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord. | disappointment humiliation pain power will | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 77e53d5 | They're like little boys, men. Sometimes of course they're rather naughty and you have to pretend to be angry with them. They attach so much importance to such entirely unimportant things that it's really touching. And they're so helpless. Have you never nursed a man when he's ill? It wrings your heart. It's just like a dog or a horse. They haven't got the sense to come in out of the rain, poor darlings. They have all the charming qualities.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| d9faf67 | Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| aaa3290 | Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently,. They were as happy with their wives as are most m.. | characterization human-nature | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 89f3b90 | It is quite as difficult to fit one's practice to one's precepts as to fit one's precepts to one's practice. Most people act in one way and preach in another. When the fact is brought to their notice, they assert that it is their weakness, and that their desire is to act up to their principles. That is pretence. People act according to their inclinations and adopt principles; because these are generally at variance with their inclinations t.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| cc0250b | Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour's meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step. I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and .. | decisions life self-fulfillment | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| e2c6362 | You know, any man can get any woman he wants if he tries hard enough, there's nothing in that, but once he's got her, only a man who thinks the world of women can get rid of her without humiliating her. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| c48740b | Very few people know where to look for happiness; fewer still find it. | W. Somerset Maugham |