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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 40b32fd | Che cos'e l'Ottocento? Un'epoca nella quale la donna era sacra, e si poteva comprare una ragazza di tredici anni per poche sterline, o pochi scellini se la si voleva soltanto per un'ora o due. Nella quale si costruirono piu chiese che in tutta la precedente storia del paese, e a Londra una casa su sessanta era un bordello (la proporzione moderne sarebbe pressappoco una su seimila). Nella quale la santita del matrimonio (e della castita prem.. | John Fowles | ||
| df4cdcb | If you are wise, you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did. | John Fowles | ||
| 8f47f48 | She died." I had to prompt him. "Soon after?" "In the early hours of February the nineteenth, 1916." I tried to see the expression on his face, but it was too dark. "There was a typhoid epidemic. She was working in a hospital." "Poor girl." "All past. All under the sea." "You make it seem present." "I do not wish to make you sad." "The scent of lilac." "Old man's sentiment. Forgive me." There was a silence between us. He was staring into th.. | John Fowles | ||
| 53d8260 | What is the most beautiful place you've ever seen?" Dragging his gaze from the beauty of the gardens, Ian looked down at the beauty beside him. "Any place," he said huskily, "were you are." He saw the becoming flush of embarrassed pleasure that pinkened her cheeks, but when she spoke her voice was rueful. "You don't have to say such things to me, you know-I'll keep our bargain." "I know you will," he said, trying not to overwhelm her with a.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 663d456 | In the center of the room Elizabeth stood stock still, clasping and unclasping her hands, watching the handle turn, unable to breathe with the tension. The door swung open, admitting a blast of frigid air and a tall, broad-shouldered man who glanced at Elizabeth in the firelight and said, "Henry, it wasn't necess-" Ian broke off, the door still open, staring at what he momentarily thought was a hallucination, a trick of the flames dancing i.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| dbb5c7d | Sam Littleton was a beautiful woman who would try to play women's games. That meant that if he asked her if she was upset with him about something, she would do what women all do at such times: She would deny that anything was wrong, then continue acting as if something was wrong, in hopes that he would do what men always do at such times -beg for an explanation, agonise over the answer, ask for hints, and agonise a little more. | men women | Judith McNaught | |
| 389aeea | The fortune of the man who sits also sits | Philip José Farmer | ||
| 2ae1d08 | I was the ref. I was the ref they didn't know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win | divorce-separation-children | Roddy Doyle | |
| f4ec1b1 | To see some truths you must stand outside and look in. | Janna Levin | ||
| 4b19e21 | You're going up against powerful people here, and the odds are not in your favour.' 'Sounds very Hunger Games... | Robert Bryndza | ||
| ded2978 | The theories that drunkenness, laziness or inefficiency are the causes of poverty are so many devices invented and fostered by those who are selfishly interested in maintaining the present states of affairs, for the purpose of preventing us from discovering the real causes of our present condition. | Robert Tressell | ||
| 5b6f3b5 | In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers. | story writing | Pat Conroy | |
| f42d984 | No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 11f3867 | Writers of the world, if you've got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath. My soul will dance with pleasure, and it'll change the quality of all my waking hours. You will hearten me and brace me up for the hard days as they enter my life on the prowl. I reach for a story to save my own life. Always. It clears the way for me and makes me resistant to all the false promises signified by the ring of power. I.. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 22615d5 | She pronounced each word carefully, as though she was tasting fruit. The words of her poems were a most private and fragrant orchard. | Pat Conroy | ||
| c6541d5 | The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it. | courage pride | Pat Conroy | |
| 4791d3c | I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked g.. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 7d7e214 | I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it. | servant-leader | Pat Conroy | |
| 0f81e20 | An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before. | perception writing | Pat Conroy | |
| 1b9f43f | Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry. | plagiarism | Pat Conroy | |
| 4da01f7 | I dislike poor teachers. They are criminals to me. I've seen so much cruelty toward children. I've seen so many children not given the opportunity to live up to their potential as human beings. | Pat Conroy | ||
| db964ef | it had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow , but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress . | dreams | Pat Conroy | |
| 1292373 | I had come to Charleston as a young boy, a lonely visitor slouching through its well-tended streets, a young boy, lean and grassy, who grew fluent in his devotion and appreciation of that city's inestimable charm. I was a boy there and saw things through the eyes of a boy for the last time. The boy was dying and I wanted to leave him in the silent lanes South of Broad.I would leave him with no regrets except that I had not stopped to honor .. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 03922ed | College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts. | education humility maturity | Pat Conroy | |
| 1123d66 | I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligrap.. | nature south-carolina southern-fiction | Pat Conroy | |
| 68c389c | Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood. | humility magnanimity | Pat Conroy | |
| 59fa807 | The words "I love you" could contain all the bloodthirsty despair of the abattoir, all the hopelessness of the most isolated, frozen gulag, all the lurid sadness of death row." | manipulation | Pat Conroy | |
| 405aaf2 | And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 1df42a7 | If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. | Pat Conroy | ||
| cd6adac | Even then, her interior life was far more important to her than her external one. | Pat Conroy | ||
| dc6343e | It both surprised and angered me that {they} had reached a consensus of agreement against me. The way I looked at the world, enemies criticized and friends affirmed. | Pat Conroy | ||
| 84de06c | Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name. | Pat Conroy | ||
| e6f2b5e | You might be interested in his economic philosophy, Mr. Mason. He believed men attached too much importance to money as such. He believed a dollar represented a token of work performed, that men were given these tokens to hold until they needed the product of work performed by some other man, that anyone who tried to get a token without giving his best work in return was an economic counterfeiter. He felt that most of our depression trouble.. | Erle Stanley Gardner | ||
| 3597232 | The really destructive feature of their relationship is its inherent quality of boredom. It is quite natural for Peter often to feel bored with Otto - they have scarecely a single interest in common - but Peter, for sentimental reasons, will never admit that this is so. When Otto, who has no such motives for pretending, says, "It's so dull here!" I invariably see Peter wince and looked pained. Yet Otto is actually far less often bored than .. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| 908f68a | A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!' And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is.. | playing-roles rituals self-delusion | Christopher Isherwood | |
| 6d7f6d8 | And again and again I have to remind myself the whole art of life is to lean on people, to involve oneself with them quite fearlessly and yet -- when the props are kicked away -- remain leaning, as it were, on empty air. Like levitation. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| 5bf47e6 | He pictures the evening he might have spent, snugly at home, fixing the food he has bought, then lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself slowly sleepy. At first glance this is an absolutely convincing and charming scene of domestic contentment. Only after a few instants does George notice the omission that makes it meaningless. What is left out of the picture is Jim, lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, .. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| fdd6d6f | You don't even have a cat or a dog or anything?" "You think I should?" George asks, a bit aggressive. The poor old guy doesn't have anything to love, he thinks Kenny is thinking. "Hell, no! Didn't Baudelaire say they're liable to turn into demons and take over your life?" | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| a3df77d | All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect ... If you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| ca9dea3 | In Antartica, The Wright and half a dozen other valleys in the Central Transantarctic Mountains are collectively referred to as the dry valleys. It has not rained here in two million years. No animal abides, no plant grows. A persistent, sometimes ferocious wind has stripped the country to stone and gravel, to streamers of sand. The huge valleys stand stark as empty fjords. You look in vain for any conventional sign of human history- the ve.. | nature wisdom | Barry Lopez | |
| 9afd37a | Can you spell everything?" asked Milo admiringly. "Just about," replied the bee with a hint of pride in his voice. "You see, years ago I was just an ordinary bee minding my own business, smelling flowers all day, and occasionally picking up part-time work in people's bonnets. Then one day I realized that I'd never amount to anything without an education and, being naturally adept at spelling, I decided that--" | spelling | Norton Juster | |
| 8b92453 | Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way...for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer. | Norton Juster | ||
| c980140 | as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself. | Norton Juster | ||
| ecc2aa0 | You'll find," he remarked gently, "that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort." | Norton Juster |