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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 047ff4e | So you're saying, we've got a, a shoggoth gap? | mad mutually-assured-destruction shoggoth | Charles Stross | |
| 05d76a9 | One day," he said,"I shall find the right spell and banish the Darkness And on that day I will come to you." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| fe3f5d5 | He had discovered that it was easier - far easier than any one could have supposed - to make oneself mad, but like all magic it was full of obstacles and frustrations. Even if he succeeded in summoning the fairy (which did not seem very likely), he would be in no condition to talk to him. Every book he had ever read on the subject urged magicians to be on their guard when dealing with fairies. Just when he needed all his wits, he would have.. | magic | Susanna Clarke | |
| a082b67 | I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense. | magic magicians | Susanna Clarke | |
| ff756ec | To a magician there is very little difference between a mirror and a door. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 2cd5bf0 | But that is not to say that there might not be someone in the world - I do not say I have seen him yet - whom I would be a little afraid to look at sometimes - for fear that he might be looking sad - or lost - or thoughtful, or - what, you know, might seem the worst of all - brooding on some private anger or hurt and so not knowing or caring if I looked at him at all. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 1325a84 | Yes," agreed Childermass, "very great harm! For while he was in the pantry he ate three meat-pies." "And two cream cheeses," added Lucas. Mr. Norrell was forced to admit to himself that this did not seem much like the actions of a great magician" | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 3db071d | In his madness and his blindness he was Lear and Gloucester combined. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| fdf6855 | Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 8987404 | He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 9a1f0f3 | This young woman," he indicated Miss Wintertowne, "she has, I dare say, all the usual accomplishments and virtues? She was graceful? Witty? Vivacious? Capricious? Danced like sunlight? Rode ilk the wind? Sang like an angel? Embroidered like Penelope? Spoke French, Italian, German, Breton, Welsh and many other languages?" Mr. Norrell said he supposed so. He believed that those were the sorts of things young ladies did nowadays." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 3fdbebb | He shut his mouth again and assumed a supercilious expression; this he wore for the remainder of the night, as if he regularly attended houses where young ladies were raised from the dead and considered this particular example to have been, upon the whole, a rather dull affair. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 956a3a6 | How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose). As for the present Ministry, the Foreign Secretary said that not since the days of Antiquity had the world seen gentlemen so virtuous, so misunderstood and so horribly misrepresented by their enemies. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| a5e4ba8 | Mr Norrell was delighted. He did not believe that anyone had ever proposed such a piece of magic before and begged Sir Walter to convey his compliments to Lord Castlereagh as the possessor of a most original brain. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| c9681af | Where have they gone?" "Wherever magicians used to go. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain." | historical-fiction | Susanna Clarke | |
| 613cef7 | He said, "Were he only like his sister--what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of the silver chain about her neck. Her smile is full of comfort and her eyes are kind and happy! How I long to see her!" "Who, sir?" asked Paramore, puzzled. "Why, his sister, John. His sister." | death eyes lady neil-gaiman sandman sister smile | Susanna Clarke | |
| bbe846c | For this is England where a man's neighbours will never suffer him to live entirely bereft of society, let him be as dry and sour-faced as he may. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 887fa7e | Mr. Norrell did not know a great deal about war, but he suspected that soldiers are not generally your great respecters of books. They might put their dirty fingers on them. They might tear them! They might- horror of horrors!- read them and try the spells! | Susanna Clarke | ||
| a47d0b5 | Yet we ought to kill someone!' said the gentleman, immediately reverting to his former subject. 'I have been quite out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 427e2d5 | Is this how it is for a species that senses it is going extinct? Is there a feeling of loneliness, or unease, each morning, upon awakening? | humanity loneliness | Rick Bass | |
| 687aadb | For an instant he thought he grasped the truth of a terrifying world in which one could not escape horror, in which violence was eternal, the great and only verity, greater than the civilisations it created, greater than any god man worshipped, for it was the only true god. It was as if man existed only to transmit violence to ensure its domain is eternal. For the world did not change, this violence had always existed and would never be era.. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 5c2b2ea | And when I had finished painting & looked at that poor leatherjacket which now lay dead on the table I began to wonder whether, as each fish died, the world was reduced in the amount of love that you might know for such a creature. Whether there was that much less wonder & beauty left to go round as each fish was hauled up in the net. And if we kept on taking & plundering & killing, if the world kept on becoming ever more impoverished of lo.. | nature | Richard Flanagan | |
| 0d61157 | Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations--that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls. | literature reading words writing | Richard Flanagan | |
| b39925c | Later, crying became simply affirmation of feeling, and feeling the only compass in life. Feeling became fashionable and emotion became a theatre in which people were players who no longer knew who they were off the stage. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 6383739 | Dorrigo Evans hated virtue, hated virtue being admired, hated people who pretended he had virtue or pretended to virtue themselves. And the more he was accused of virtue as he grew older, the more he hated it. He did not believe in virtue. Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 0108044 | These days he relied on the increasingly fragile assumption that what he said was right, and what was right was what he said. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 207edfd | Standing in the shower, I feel something on the back of my leg that turns out to be my ass. | memoir | Mary Karr | |
| bb023a1 | He was so proud that she had more going on north of her neck than her hairdo. | Mary Karr | ||
| 861044b | The first night he slept with her, he took a washrag and a jug of wood alcohol to get rid of her makeup, saying he wanted to know what he was getting into. | Mary Karr | ||
| ece84b3 | I couldn't have been more than six, but I was calling her an ignorant little bitch. Her momma stood on the porch step shaking her mop at me and saying there were snakes and lizards coming out of my mouth, to which I said i didn't give a shit. | Mary Karr | ||
| 508e4f9 | The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts. | Mary Karr | ||
| 7296e2d | The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code. | Mary Karr | ||
| e7f69ad | But the boys' bicycle pack also sent a stab of envy through me. If I couldn't yet capture John Cleary with my feminine wiles, then surely I deserved to enjoy the physical abandon he got, liberties I instinctively knew were vanishing. (I know, I know. Psychoanalytic theory would label this pecker envy and seek to smack me on the nose with it. To that I'd say, o please. Of actual johnsons I had little awareness. What I coveted was privilege.) | Mary Karr | ||
| cd6f0af | I exhale a highway of smoke and stare down it, then say, Each day has just been survival, just getting through, standing it. Don't you see how savage that sounds? Like, that's the way men in prison yards think. You live in a rich suburb and teach literature. | Mary Karr | ||
| 1422cd4 | every writer needs two selves--the generative self and the editor self. | Mary Karr | ||
| e4f64ef | If you let yourself tell those smaller anecdotes or stories, the overarching capital-S Story will eventually rise into view. | Mary Karr | ||
| 9e4ab3b | Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him, and so loses respect for himself. And having no respect, he ceases to love. Fyodor Dostoevsky | Mary Karr | ||
| 28cd2fe | In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it's done right. | Mary Karr | ||
| 4a0f246 | Love was not a drink one tasted and then rejected. Love was not something that could be avoided or arranged. Love was a highwayman, standing by the road of life, just waiting to strike at the reckless and the few. | Celeste Bradley | ||
| d0a95fc | Husbands came and husbands went, but dreadful hair lasted forever. | Celeste Bradley | ||
| f48b93f | We ought to talk. Had four words ever put more fear into the heart of men around the world? He'd not heard them before himself, but ancient gender memory recognized them well. He was in for it now. | Celeste Bradley | ||
| f8e3e82 | It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. | William Maxwell | ||
| 39379b5 | Trap. Horrible trap. At one's birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this? | death grief hope | George Saunders | |
| ea7f6f4 | We pretend to catch and eat more pretend bugs than could ever actually live in one cave. The number of pretend bugs we pretend to catch and eat would in reality basically fill a cave the size of our cave. | humor | George Saunders |