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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5340ab7 | All Kellhus could see of his father were two fingers and a thumb lying slack upon a bare thigh. The thumbnail gleamed. "As Dunyain," the disembodied voice continued, "you had no choice. To command yourself, you had to master circumstance. And to master circumstance, you had to bind the actions of the worldborn to your will. You had to make limbs of nations. So you made their beliefs the object of your relentless scrutiny. It was axiomatic. .. | R. Scott Bakker | ||
| 6755a30 | Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence. | R. Scott Bakker | ||
| 7be8698 | Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying. | R. Scott Bakker | ||
| 1c44bc0 | TIME THERE SEEMED TO PASS DIFFERENTLY. WHEN YOU ARE shut off from the world, every day is exactly the same as the one before. This sameness has a way of wearing down your soul until you become nothing but a breathing, toiling, consuming thing that awakes to the sun and sleeps at the dawning of the dark. The emptiness runs deep, deeper with each slowing day, and you become increasingly invisible and inconsequential. That's how I felt at time.. | Suki Kim | ||
| 6c63d09 | It is something only a few know in their lives. It is a vision of something so clear, so true, it can only be a madness. You see what life is worth, and you know what death means. | Raymond E. Feist | ||
| 3b41e6a | Life is what happens, Magnus, no matter what you expect or want. | Raymond E. Feist | ||
| 2f20807 | Immortality, power, dominance, all are illusions. Don't you see? We are simply pawns in a game beyond our understanding.' Pug | Raymond E. Feist | ||
| 24ec033 | Never underestimate the human capacity for stupid, illogical, and petty behaviour. | Raymond E. Feist | ||
| 3d06d40 | on that night you told me you were the author of my current existence. | Raymond E. Feist | ||
| 33b6e97 | There are two kinds of strength. Power and the ability to wield it is obvious, but resilience, the ability to resist power, is the other. | resilience strength | Raymond E. Feist | |
| 7c84785 | I have a better idea,' said she. 'Know that under a mortal name am I mistress of the Palace of Kama in Khaipur.' 'The Fornicatorium, madam?' She frowned. 'As such is it often known to the vulgar, and do not call me 'madam' in the same breath-- it smacks of ancient jest. It is a place of rest, pleasure, holiness and much of my revenue. | Roger Zelazny | ||
| ff21dd4 | Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. | Roger Zelazny | ||
| f4fa6d3 | Your woman is gone and your heart is heavy. Words will not lighten the weight, and what is written is written. But let it also be put down that I grieve with you. ~Hasan~ | Roger Zelazny | ||
| c85d87f | Time, too, is a function of Shadow, and even Dworkin did not know all of its ins and outs. Or perhaps he did. Maybe that is what drove him mad. | Roger Zelazny | ||
| e91ecf6 | You are one of the few successful persons I know." "Me? Why?" "You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well." "But I don't really do much of anything." "And of course the quantity means nothing to you, nor the weight others place upon your actions. In my eyes, that makes you a success." "By not giving a damn? But I do, you know." "Of course you do, of course you do! But it is a matter of style, an awareness of choice--" | fred-cassidy style success will | Roger Zelazny | |
| ebc16ef | Vishnu Vishnu Vishnu regarded regarded regarded Brahma Brahma Brahma... They sat in the Hall of Mirrors. | Roger Zelazny | ||
| 9c3138d | Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don't know where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday? In the invisible city? Inside me? | life melancholy poetry | Roger Zelazny | |
| c04b000 | Enough , you hens!" Niobe exploded. "It's tentative!" Lachesis snorted "As tentative as a pregnancy,girl!" | Piers Anthony | ||
| 148c906 | When we return--when I have delivered our discovery--I will give you a book to read about a thing called wild magic," she said drily. "I wouldn't talk about it in the university. It's supposed to be an old wives' tale. Well, I am an old wife. You might be interested, that's all." | book daine foreshadowing master-sebo numair wild-magic | Tamora Pierce | |
| 48ae655 | How many people similarly spent their lives searching for their own spells--some gratuitous benefit such as a silver tree or political power or undeserved acclaim--when all they really needed was to be satisfied with what they already had? Sometimes what they had was better than what they thought they wanted. | Piers Anthony | ||
| fe62050 | Daine put a hand on her bow. It was loaded, but she didn't want to kill Maura's sister. "I wouldn't call names, if I was you " she retorted. Yolane backed up. "Tirell! Oram! Jemis! To me! Oram, on the double!" Daine shook her head. "Yell all you like, they won't come. They're gone. " "What do you mean, 'gone'?" "I mean it's at an end the king knows what you're up to. The rebellion's uncovered. You'll never be queen. " | Tamora Pierce | ||
| ec2e5bb | The hardest lesson any of us must learn is there's only so much we can do," she informed him, her voice lemon-tart. "We run into it headfirst all the time, knowing what we can do, what we can't, how much we can do. We think of magic as this promise that we will fix anything that comes our way, Keth. We can't." | Tamora Pierce | ||
| c37096b | When I told you don't touch me to wake me, ever, because I've been in a war and I react violently, you respected me." For a plant person, Rosethorn could sound like iron when she made a point with someone stupid. "Evvy was in that same war. She fought as hard as any adult--harder, sometimes. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that she may suffer the same effects." | Tamora Pierce | ||
| 670c876 | At the house, the gathering broke up quickly. Sarai announced that she had a headache and needed to lie down. Without her to hold them together, the young nobles chose to go home. The gloss had been stripped from the afternoon. | Tamora Pierce | ||
| e25ef9f | Don't go thinking you can bounce me all over the ground just because I look like somebody's grandmother," the woman said dryly. "Some grandchildren need more raising than others, and I supply it," she grinned, showing very white teeth. -- Esa Bell, Shang Wildcat" -- | keladry-of-mindelan shang warriors | Tamora Pierce | |
| fdf75cc | Don't make me regret taking you on. If I get irritated, I might drown you a little bit. | magic master-sebo numair teaching | Tamora Pierce | |
| 2a88546 | Ozorne, please don't let him try to make me into a battle mage. I wish you'd told me that's what you wanted." Arram stopped and grabbed his friend by the arms. "I won't do it. I'm not a killer. I'll never be a killer." | battle-mage killer killing morals murder numair ozorne | Tamora Pierce | |
| 86c75c5 | Gods curse it, Kel, you heard what he said!" "I heard a fart," Kel said grimly. You know where those come from. Let it go." -Faleron and Kel" | Tamora Pierce | ||
| cc4b937 | He had learned a great deal while he was there, it was true. In particular, he had found that he wasn't certain he could stay in a country where slavery was practiced. He had always thought he would manage to avoid it somehow when he left the university, or that he would become used to it. Now he understood he could not avoid it. The university managed to live slave-free, but it was a lie. The shadow of slavery lay over it. The arena was on.. | carthak numair slavery slaves | Tamora Pierce | |
| 3e035ab | All these nice clothes, all these jokes and drinks and food, what good does it do? Tomorrow, folk will be poor and starving and dying with a solder's pike in them, and these people will have another celebration, more nice clothes, more jokes, more gems. The suffering is forgotten or ignored - why sorrow? The war victims aren't our people. And then the wheel turns and suddenly they are our people. | Tamora Pierce | ||
| d4f8e7d | I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class. | publishing writing | Piers Anthony | |
| 364faf7 | The soybean itself is a notably inauspicious staple food; it contains a whole assortment of "antinutrients" - compounds that actually block the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals, interfere with the hormonal system, and prevent the body from breaking down the proteins of the soy itself." | safe-eating soybeans | Michael Pollan | |
| e3d0f98 | So much about life in a global economy feels as though it has passed beyond the individual's control--what happens to our jobs, to the prices at the gas station, to the vote in the legislature. But somehow food still feels a little different. We can still decide, every day, what we're going to put into our bodies, what sort of food chain we want to participate in. We can, in other words, reject the industrial omelet on offer and decide to e.. | food responsibility | Michael Pollan | |
| c95b665 | Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us. | Michael Pollan | ||
| a85b691 | I said before that McDonald's serves a kind of comfort food, but after a few bites I'm more inclined to think they're selling something more schematic than that--something more like a signifier of comfort food. So you eat more and eat more quickly, hoping somehow to catch up to the original idea of a cheeseburger or French fry as it retreats over the horizon. And so it goes, bite after bite, until you feel not satisfied exactly, but simply,.. | Michael Pollan | ||
| e8b958c | IN THE MID-1950S, Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, learned about Osmond and Hoffer's work with alcoholics. The idea that a drug could occasion a life-changing spiritual experience was not exactly news to Bill W., as he was known in the fellowship. He credited his own sobriety to a mystical experience he had on belladonna, a plant-derived alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties that was administered to him at Towns Hospita.. | Michael Pollan | ||
| 9ba1fbc | By now you will not be surprised to learn that Gaston Bachelard had a few things to say about the element of air. In a book called "Air and Dreams". he points out that we categorize many of our emotions by their relative weight; they make us feel heavier or lighter. Perhaps because uprightness is the human quality, we imagine human emotions arranged on a vertical scale from ground to sky. So sadness is weighed down and earthbound. joy is ae.. | Michael Pollan | ||
| 08c501a | The bubble logic driving tulipomania has since acquired a name: "the greater fool theory." Although by any conventional measure it is folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter an Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool out there willing to pay even more, doing so is the most logical thing in the world." | greater-fool-theory logic tulipomania tulips | Michael Pollan | |
| 447f07f | is a relatively new strain of the common intestinal bacteria (no one had seen it before 1980) that thrives in feedlot cattle, 40 percent of which carry it in their gut. Ingesting as few as ten of these microbes can cause a fatal infection; they produce a toxin that destroys human kidneys. | cattle factory-farming feedlots | Michael Pollan | |
| e43ae8a | Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. | Michael Pollan | ||
| 2c4619e | We moderns are great compartmentalizers, perhaps never more so than when hungry. | food hunger | Michael Pollan | |
| e6a2ba5 | Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water, and nobody knows what it is." --D. H. Lawrence, Pansies" -- | Michael Pollan | ||
| 7083ff9 | Be the kind of person who takes supplements -- then skip the supplements. | vitamins | Michael Pollan | |
| a7885b7 | our everyday waking consciousness "is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different." | Michael Pollan |