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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| bbc82ec | It's a terrible thing, what we did," said Francis abruptly. "I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It's a shame. I feel bad about it." | Donna Tartt | ||
| fc045d2 | swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 9cc6168 | It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 294d71b | The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on himself. | survival | Richard Matheson | |
| c480500 | Yet, despite all, it is a difficult thing to admit the existence of ghosts in a coldly factual world. One's very instincts rebel at the admission of such maddening possibility. For, once the initial step is made into the supernatural, there is no turning back, no knowing where the strange road leads except that it is quite unknown and quite terrible. ("Slaughter House")" | horror supernatural | Richard Matheson | |
| 2bfdd3c | I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed. | Richard Matheson | ||
| 7cdeb19 | But it's so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated. | Richard Matheson | ||
| 4a83aec | Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible. | Richard Matheson | ||
| 460c5be | That was a story, too; they all had stories. | Naomi Novik | ||
| fc65f7a | The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third--that fools should recognize neither. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 997b487 | Out ahead of them, Arkady began something very like a marching song, chanting lines answered by the other ferals, their voices ringing out across the sky, each to each. Temeraire added his own to the chorus, and little Iskierka began to scrabble at his neck, demanding, "What are they saying? What does it mean?" "We are flying home," Temeraire said, translating. "We are all flying home." | home journey teammates | Naomi Novik | |
| 93b276e | And to crown the whole, you must needs come back and make a martyr of yourself, so now anyone who cares a farthing for your life must watch you hanged; that is, if they do not decide to make a spectacle of it and draw and quarter you in the fine old style. I suppose you would go to it like Harrison, 'as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.' Well, I should not be damned cheerful, and neither should anyone else who loved you, and s.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| beb6c4d | You are not wrong," Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check-- to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected. "But if we have more liberty than we ought," Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, "it is because they have not enough: the dragons.. | inspirational temeraire | Naomi Novik | |
| 470e821 | Because that's what the story's really about: getting out of paying your debts. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 8ef513e | As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip," he bit out, "we've already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices." | Naomi Novik | ||
| 5f5d46d | He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite; but at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking--after ten minutes, or perhaps five--very nearly five--Temeraire coughed; then he coughed again, a little more emphatically, and Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, "So you are not leaving, I suppose?" "Oh," Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, "I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deli.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 6dd2b5e | The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father's house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I'd had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I'd never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life. | fantasy retellings | Naomi Novik | |
| 56bf2de | He is mine, too. | fantasy retellings | Naomi Novik | |
| e793196 | I thought I could smell the sorcery in him, a sharp pungent mix of cinnamon and pepper and resin of pine, and deep below it burning woodsmoke. | sorcery | Naomi Novik | |
| 342f741 | Darby, sir, but Janus they call me," the seaman said, "on account of a surgeon we shipped in the , a learned bloke, saying I saw both ways like some old Roman cut-up by that name." | Naomi Novik | ||
| a8caef5 | I worked very hard after that. I took as much of Da's work as I could. I didn't want to make a row of dead babies and die. | Naomi Novik | ||
| f898aed | and it came out that this King Arthur and his knights had done nothing of real note but to kill innocent dragons all around Britain: almost certainly a pack of lies, as Forthing admitted they had not possessed even any guns at the time, and unpleasant lies at that. | king-arthur temeraire | Naomi Novik | |
| 8ac55a7 | No, my dear," he said at last, softly, knowing it was only the truth. "I would rather have you than any ship in the Navy." | Naomi Novik | ||
| f721764 | I started to murmur my own spell, but I found myself thinking not of roses but of water, and thirsty ground; building underneath his magic instead of trying to overlay it. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 48e9edb | He could not help a certain resentment that a conscience seemed to be so very expensive, and yet had no substantial form which one might admire, and display to one's company. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 08b9274 | I will never let Berkley commit treason, ever," Maximus said, "but if he did, I would step on anyone who tried to hang him." | Naomi Novik | ||
| afdd668 | However, I must disagree with you very strongly that providing ordinary and reasonable care in any way constitutes coddling, and I have always found that deprivation and hardship, when necessary, can be better endured by men who have not been subjected to them previously for no cause. | Naomi Novik | ||
| a9b380c | Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed. | Naomi Novik | ||
| d8bd0f4 | Allow your attention to gently alight on your belly, as if you were coming upon a shy animal sunning itself on a tree stump in a clearing in the forest. Feel your belly rise or expand gently on the inbreath, and fall or recede on the outbreath. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| c1d5b6e | we all come into and go out of this world as passing gatherings of structured energy. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| 5bf15e9 | Because of this inner busyness, which is going on almost all the time, we are liable either to miss a lot of the texture of our life experience or to discount its value and meaning. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| bf9d18d | Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes use of thinking, honoring its value and its power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught up in them in reality. | meditation thinking-vessel | Jon Kabat-Zinn | |
| 51de0c7 | The challenge of mindfulness is to work with the very circumstances that you find yourself in--no matter how unpleasant, how discouraging, how limited, how unending and stuck they may appear to be--and to make sure that you have done everything in your power to use their energies to transform yourself before you decide to cut your losses and move on. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| b08fd16 | Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| f38b8a9 | Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature... But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma. | buddhism destiny karma | Jon Kabat-Zinn | |
| cabeb49 | Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| 3c6315b | Pablo Neruda, "Keeping Quiet." Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language, let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare.. | Jon Kabat-Zinn | ||
| f40bb55 | If you want to master the art of the sentence, you must first accept a somewhat unpleasant truth--something a lot of writers would rather deny: The Reader is king. You are his servant. You serve the Reader information. You serve the Reader entertainment. You serve the Reader details of your company's recent merger or details of your experiences in drug rehab. In each case, as a writer you're working for the man (or the woman). Only by knowi.. | June Casagrande | ||
| 1ae077a | Your health is probably good if you have just been reinstantiated, and is likely to remain good for some time. Most diseases are curable, and in event of an incurable ailment or injury, a new body may be provided--for a fee. (In the event of your murder, you will be furnished with a new body at the expense of your killer.) | Charles Stross | ||
| 620165e | Americans think we Brits drink tea because we're polite and genteel or something, whereas we really drink it because it's a stimulant and it's hot enough to sterilize cholera bacteria.) | Charles Stross | ||
| 16ff054 | They never tell you how heavy a corpse is in training school. | Charles Stross | ||
| 86efaaa | Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life. | Charles Stross | ||
| e2600b0 | All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night. | Charles Stross | ||
| ee91c28 | programming is a job where Lovecraft meets tradecraft, all the time. | Charles Stross |