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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 63e7dc6 | I kept thinking, as I was telling Didi, that somehow what was in my head--in my memory, in my thoughts--was not being translated fully into the world. I felt as though three-dimensional people and events were becoming two-dimensional in the telling, and as though they were smaller as well as flatter, that they were just for being spoken. What was missing was the intense emotion that I felt, which, like water or youth itself, buoyed these .. | Claire Messud | ||
| 6403178 | Don't ever let anyone tell you that the imaginary is equivalent to the real: your skin, your vast breathing skin, will insist otherwise. | Claire Messud | ||
| 751ff26 | Death and his zealous minions--dread, despair, disease--can find you anywhere at all, and the armor plate of youth will no longer protect you. | Claire Messud | ||
| 788c813 | who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding. Maybe I've learned it's a mistake to reveal her at all. | Claire Messud | ||
| b7a1823 | Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realization. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknow.. | john-banville literature | John Banville | |
| 01a9e71 | Halfway up the drive there was God these tedious details. Halfway up there was a... | John Banville | ||
| b5e7b8f | These things that were between us, these and a myriad others, a myriad myriad, these remain of her, but what will become of them when I am gone, I who am their repository and sole preserver? | John Banville | ||
| d3fcced | I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self. | self-discovery soul | John Banville | |
| c3e56ea | But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 6ae11ab | Thirty years - almost all of them really happy. That's a lifetime, it's incredible. Most people don't get that. But maybe this is just over, you know? Maybe it's over... | Zadie Smith | ||
| dff0657 | But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuing us, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, and the true professionals begin to tire of that old catchphrase "What you looking at?" begin to tire of that old catchphrase "What you looking at?" and move into more exotic territory. Take Mad Mary. Oh, the principle's still the same, it's still all about eye contact and the dan.. | Zadie Smith | ||
| a614653 | Travel had seemed the key to the kingdom, back then. One dreamed of a life that would enable travel. Howard looked through his window at a lamp-post buried to its waist in show supporting two chained-up, frozen bikes, identifiable only by the tips of their handlebars. He imagined waking up this morning and digging his bike out of the snow and riding to a proper job, the kind Belseys had had for generations, and found he couldn't imagine it... | Zadie Smith | ||
| f6de10c | Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 051634b | We were the first generation to have, in our own homes, the means to re- and forward-wind reality: even very small children could press their fingers against those clunky buttons and see what-has-been become what-is or what-will-be. | Zadie Smith | ||
| d943731 | But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the I have to worry about the truth that can be And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is mad.. | future honesty past pregnancy relativism sanity talking truth worrying | Zadie Smith | |
| 6dfdb33 | The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers ended ten years ago. For ten years Mickey had been saying, "The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers is over." And that's what Archie loved about O'Connell's. Everything was remembered, nothing was lost. History was never revised or reinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed. It was as solid and as simple as the encrusted egg on the clock." | Zadie Smith | ||
| e266ed9 | Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets... one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to becoming uninvolved. | relationships | Zadie Smith | |
| 515bde7 | Maybe luxury is the easiest matrix to pass through. Maybe nothing is easier to get used to than money. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 4ce1370 | il tutto in diverse sfumature di grigio, celeste, verde scuro, perche in base a una ricerca, questi sono i colori che la gente associa a "scienza e tecnologia" (il viola e il rosso evocano le arti, l'azzurro scuro sta a significare "qualita e/o merci scelte")..." | italian italiano zadie-smith | Zadie Smith | |
| c50cf1c | Secondo l'esperienza di Archie, qualunque cosa dotata di memoria lunga mantiene i rancori, e non va per niente bene tenere animaletti domestici con ragioni di rancore (quella volta mi hai dato il cibo sbagliato, quell'altra mi hai fatto il bagno). | denti-bianchi italian italiano zadie-smith | Zadie Smith | |
| 6137d07 | If she was more curt with her own family than a homeless man this only suggested that generosity was not an infinite quantity and had to be employed strategically where it was most needed. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 91f97c8 | when all the time it was that grand tree, taking up half the garden with its roots and not allowing anything else to grow. | Zadie Smith | ||
| ff321f4 | Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 2a428f9 | 21. Jane Eyre "When being bullied Keisha Blake found it useful to remember that if you read the relevant literature or watched the pertinent movies you soon found that being bullied was practically a sign of a superior personality, and the greater the intensity of the bullying the more likely it was to be avenged at the other end of life, when qualities of the kind Keisha Black possessed- cleverness, will-to-power- became 'their own reward,.. | Zadie Smith | ||
| fb17c33 | Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 0ba498c | The choice one makes between partners, between one man and another, stretches beyond romance. It is the choice between values, possibilities, futures, hopes, arguments (shared concepts that fit the world as you experience it), languages (shared words that fit the world as you believe it to be) and lives. | Zadie Smith | ||
| a30e4fd | He promised them a class that would challenge their own beliefs about the redemptive humanity of what is commonly called 'Art'. 'Art is the Western myth,' announced Howard, for the sixth year in a row, 'with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 5e7ff80 | The shit is *not* the shit (this was Mo's mantra,) the *pigeon* is the shit. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 0476b5a | It was a machine that required constant feeding- Henry hated the machine, and he hated himself for wanting the sort of admiration it promised, as if he had no worth unless someone was there to applaud it | Libba Bray | ||
| e3c188e | People can live with only so much honesty. And sometimes, people can surprise you. | Libba Bray | ||
| 400d62c | Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things. | Libba Bray | ||
| 40a0240 | She has a scent that is familiar and comforting, like all the things you wish you could take with you on your travels to make you feel less alone. | Libba Bray | ||
| 5d1fdcb | I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I'm made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats." "You are officially the most annoying unreal creature ever." "Meet a lot of us, do you?" | Libba Bray | ||
| 2bdca21 | I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven." True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more." | Libba Bray | ||
| 852ae58 | The hand you hold the longest is your own. | Libba Bray | ||
| bda7055 | Quick answers often lead to quick regrets. | Libba Bray | ||
| bd664ed | Just ducky! | Libba Bray | ||
| 185e7b9 | the mural, there were painted lines for the Underground, like scars stretched across the skin of the infected nation. There were wounds and then there were wounds. | Libba Bray | ||
| e325d65 | History was haunted by the ghosts of buried crimes, which required periodic exorcisms of truth. Actions had consequences. Will | Libba Bray | ||
| 70825b1 | Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out. | humor pageant | Libba Bray | |
| 5f97b72 | The wind whistles down into the skyscraper-bound canyons, across the broad expanses of the avenues and the narrow confines of the streets, where lives unfolded in secret, day in, day out: Sometimes a man sighs for want of love. Sometimes a child cries for the dropped lollipop, its sweetness barely tasted. Sometimes the girl gasps as the train screams into the station, shaken by how close she'd allowed herself to wander to the edge. Sometime.. | Libba Bray | ||
| fee5867 | There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn't pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoa.. | Libba Bray | ||
| 9c03fd3 | In this life, you have to work with people you dislike. You find compromises. But sometimes you find that a person's beliefs are so harmful that you must speak against them. You can't let such harmful statements stand without challenge. They have a tendency to grow into tumors. | Libba Bray | ||
| 21e7903 | People want to be safe, not free. | people safety way-of-life | Libba Bray |