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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1953dd5 | Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, as as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem t.. | Herman Melville | ||
| f2c5082 | Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! .. | Herman Melville | ||
| 5c21fd3 | I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. | Herman Melville | ||
| d5758c5 | Wish on a star, said a tiny voice in his head from some long-departed day of early childhood: Wish on a star--the cry of pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man. | Susan Cooper | ||
| 489c627 | So it will go," Merriman said. "He will have a sweet picture of the Dark to attract him, as men so often do, and beside it he will set all the demands of the Light, which are heavy and always will be." | Susan Cooper | ||
| 30ea0ca | When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back; Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone; Five will return, and one go alone. | Susan Cooper | ||
| 04082aa | The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has "legs," so to speak. Couple the vulnerability of youth with indifferent parents, dismissive adults, and a world, which, in its language, laws, and images, re-enforces despair, and the journey to destruction is sealed." -- | Toni Morrison | ||
| a072f2c | Things got better but I still had to be careful. Very careful in how I raised her. I had to be strict, very strict. Lula Ann needed to learn how to behave, how to keep her head down and not to make trouble. I don't care how many times she changes her name. Her color is a cross she will always carry. But it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not. Bride I'm scared. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 4f3f9c2 | When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunday dress, and they mashed up and stained my hips. My whole dress was messed with purple, and it never did wash out. Not the dress nor me. I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the field.. | the-bluest-eye toni-morrison | Toni Morrison | |
| bbc0bc5 | And even later, when for the first time in her life she had lain in bed with a man and said his name involuntarily or said it truly meaning him, the name she was screaming and saying was not his at all. | Toni Morrison | ||
| e92fe64 | I didn't even know his name. And if I didn't know his name then there is nothing I did know and I have known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was to know his name so how could he help but leave me since he was making love to a woman who didn't even know his name. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 6f44394 | She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, .. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 826b8e4 | But then Job was a man. Invisibility was intolerable to men. What complaint would a female Job dare to put forth? And if, having done so, and He deigned to remind her of how weak and ignorant she was, where was the news in that? What shocked Job into humility and renewed fidelity was the message a female Job would have known and heard every minute of her life. | religion women | Toni Morrison | |
| 63fd1f4 | Milkman could hardly breathe. Hagar's voice scooped up what little pieces of heart he had left to call his own. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 82cfe4f | You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 0677bd8 | Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be . . . what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness. | happiness love pain relationship sincerity | Toni Morrison | |
| a606e8f | What you want to be when you grow up?" Thomas turned the knob with his left hand and opened the door. "A man," he said and left." | Toni Morrison | ||
| b5169c8 | You your best thing. | Toni Morrison | ||
| c60eca7 | At least she's willing to figure it out, do something, risk something and take its measure. I risk nothing. I sit on a throne and identify signs of imperfection in others. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 4e0b065 | Adults do not talk to us--they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 3af057e | After all that carryin' on just gettin' him out and keepin' him alive he wanted to crawl back in my womb and well...I ain't got the room no more even if he could do it. There wasn't space for him in my womb (71). | Toni Morrison | ||
| 21d9656 | I'm me," she whispered. "Me" Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant. "I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me." Every time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut. "Me," she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, "I want.. | freedom individuality | Toni Morrison | |
| 337a67a | How can I take crime shows seriously where the female detectives track killers in Louboutin heels? | Toni Morrison | ||
| c021002 | It may even be that some of us know what it is like to be actually hated--hated for things we have no control over and cannot change. | Toni Morrison | ||
| e155a3b | A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity. | Toni Morrison | ||
| e13ad4e | Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or w.. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 241224a | But suppose my eyes aren't blue enough? Blue enough for what? Blue enough for...I don't know. Blue enough for something. Blue enough...for you! | Toni Morrison | ||
| ad3d984 | Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? | Toni Morrison | ||
| 1d03a33 | Imagine something. Something that fits in the dark. Say the dark is the sky at night. Imagine something in it." "A star?" "Yes." "I can't. I can't see it." "Okay. Don't try to see it. Try to be it. Would you like to know what it's like to be one? Be a star?" "A movie star?" "No, a star star. In the sky. Keep your eyes closed, think about what it feels like to be one." He moved over to her and kissed her shoulder. "Imagine yourself in that d.. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 0b2a5dc | You have pissed your last in this house . . . and I don't make velvet roses anymore. | Toni Morrison | ||
| cac8a35 | Her color is a cross she will always carry. | Toni Morrison | ||
| 577fbef | Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears. | toni-morrison violet-trace | Toni Morrison | |
| f2b0491 | Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside. | depravity flesh hypocrisy pride selfishness | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| e8aaf93 | The textile industry was the automobile industry of the Middle Ages, | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 64afa73 | If there have been mute inglorious Miltons in rural villages, presumably there have been unrealized Washingtons born in unpropitious times. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| dca08c5 | It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 99d3a1c | For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 96b7dfd | Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another's movements than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 245d07f | The bartender put a notepad and a pencil before me. Breathing hard, the pencil trembling, I wrote: Dear Sinclair Lewis: You were once a god, but now you are a swine. I once reverenced you, admired you, and now you are nothing. I came to shake your hand in adoration, you, Lewis, a giant among American writers, and you rejected it. I swear I shall never read another line of yours again. You are an ill-mannered boor. You have betrayed me. I sh.. | John Fante | ||
| 67c962e | If a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares, and attendant British journalists rejoice, 'You see: the American Cousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are.' But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. they want to see one queen, once, and if another came to town next week, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw more than two small boys and an Anglophile. Americans want to see one movie star, one gir.. | novelty royalty satire | Sinclair Lewis | |
| 97e7d46 | You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General--just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns--'fess up! With your great experience, don't you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps--just maybe--when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes, so that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne'er-do-weels, then maybe, to save.. | warfare | Sinclair Lewis | |
| 250ab36 | Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 7fda970 | To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 40fd1bc | The ministry of the church is a genuine concern for others. We need to stop talking about it and start doing it. Rise. Rise and shine, friend. Everyone you meet today is on heaven's Most Wanted list. | worship | Charles R. Swindoll |