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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0a93ee3 | You weren't supposed to choose me," he said. Behind them, Ira approached, stunned and speechless for what must have been the first time in his life. He helped lift Samuel, whose cheeks had blanched as well. Camille prodded Oscar's arms and stomach and face. It was truly him. The unbearable grief over losing him flipped inside out. Her joy ran so deep and strong she thought she might burst from it. "The night the went down, you rowed to me.. | Angie Frazier | ||
| 4b45f5a | Mas como era extraordinaria aquela sala cheia de gente -- ou melhor, de animais -, a olhar na mesma direccao, para outros animais mascarados e treinados para representar num palco, para animais cobertos de tecido e bocados de peles, ornamentados com pedras e de rostos e garras pintados. Toda a gente acabara de comer um animal de qualquer especie; as peles que se viam por toda a parte, apesar de a noite estar quente, provinham de animas que .. | conscience life | Doris Lessing | |
| dd83c90 | For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not. | Doris Lessing | ||
| 36481b7 | If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I'm cracking up? And if I were to crack up, what form would it take? | Doris Lessing | ||
| 7b791fd | Standardisation of intellectual and emotional patterns had become extreme. A main mechanism for achieving this was a device that supplied identical indoctrinational material simultaneously into every living or working unit, whether that of a single person, a family, or an institution, through a whole country. These programmes were standardised, particularly for children. At best they reinforced a low level of ethic--kindness to animals, for.. | Doris Lessing | ||
| 2f99e84 | She thought secretly that there is no more dangerous item in the world than a pretty young woman on the loose. Luckily, the older woman thought, when we are girls we don't know that we are like sticks of dynamite or like fireworks in a box too close to a fire. | Doris Lessing | ||
| e8a2690 | What does it matter if two brains are isomorphic, or quasi-isomorphic, or not isomorphic at all? The answer is that we have an intuitive sense that, although other people differ from us in important ways, they are still 'the same' as we are in some deep and important ways. It would be instructive to be able to pinpoint what this invariant core of human intelligence is, and then to be able to describe the kinds of 'embellishments' which can .. | science | Douglas R. Hofstadter | |
| 2e6330b | As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to u.. | chemistry science | Bill Bryson | |
| 1a7ab8b | Perhaps there are many "nows" of varying duration, depending on just what it is we are doing. We must face up to the fact that, at least in the case of humans, the subject experiencing subjective time is not a perfect, structureless observer, but a complex, multilayered, multifaceted psyche. Different levels of our consciousness may experience time in quite different ways. This is evidently the case in terms of response time. You have proba.. | now physics time time-passing | Paul Davies | |
| 3ac097b | It seemed necessary just then to touch base with the Lord. Shutting my eyes, I leaned into the horse. I prayed in words for a little while . . . and then language went away and I prayed in a soft high-pitched lament any human listener would've termed a whine. We serve a patient God. . . . Andreeson, who I'd despised, now appeared to my mind as he might've to a worried brother. Talk about an unwelcome change. There in the cold, curled agains.. | Leif Enger | ||
| fef8bf3 | In times of dread it's good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse. | Leif Enger | ||
| 643c88a | I'm going to have to go out there. She had a mother and a brother. See who's still around and can look at this thing." "Harry, you sure you--" "You think I have a choice?" | Michael Connelly | ||
| 22b1110 | Sometimes the bad guys don't win. | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | ||
| 4de64e5 | I know, but if I feel this bad for Gramps, how am I going to feel when it's Dad?" Tyler told me. "You'll feel even worse, of course, but you'll carry on, because happiness has a way of creeping in again. It really does," I said." | strength-of-character | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | |
| ece28a9 | Sexually active? Sexually ? Patrick and I hadn't even learned the fine points of kissing yet! I marched on down. 'For your information,' I said from the doorway, as both Dad and Lester jerked to attention, 'I am about as sexually active as a bag of spinach, and if you want to keep me on the porch and not out in the park somewhere behind the bushes, you'll keep the stupid porch light off when I come home with a boy. | boys bushes father father-daughter-relationship funny humerous kissing light love outrage park porch sex sexually-active spinach stupid teen teenage teenage-girl yelling | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | |
| 4e6ea58 | I hate that phrase: move on. Like no matter what happened or what you did, you just "move on," and that's supposed to make everything all right." | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | ||
| 4773926 | The civilized people in the world, the ones who hide behind culture and art and politics... and even the law, they're the ones to watch out for. They've got that perfect disguise goin' for them, you know? But they're the most vicious. They're the most dangerous people on earth. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 14193c2 | Michael grinned. "Daideo, that woman is going to be my bride. She's going to give you an entire brood of great-grandchildren. She just doesn't know it yet." | Abbie Zanders | ||
| 98fe6b4 | The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies. "Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?" "You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys." .. | brothels degradation exploitation marketing prostitution slavery women | Michael Connelly | |
| e7ed70c | it's like the laws of physics--for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you. You then have to decide what to do with it. How to keep yourself safe from it. How to keep it from hollowing you out. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 0f00f6c | Nobody in this world is who they say they are. Nobody. Not when they're in their own room with the door shut and locked. And nobody knows anybody, no matter what they think... The best you can hope for is to know yourself. And sometimes when you do, when you see your true self, you have to turn away. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 71f0630 | There was still chicken on the bone but sometimes you just have to push the plate away. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 8e86870 | Everybody counts or nobody counts. | Michael Connelly | ||
| aa9817b | Bosch counted twenty-two names and it made him miss the old Los Angeles Times. In 1993 it was big and strong, its editions fat with ads and stories produced by a staff of some of the best and brightest journalists in their field. Now the paper looked like somebody who had been through chemo--thin, unsteady, and knowing the inevitable could only be held off for so long. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 7d93aef | There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at. | opportunism pandering power | Michael Connelly | |
| c1a3b64 | Politicians could talk about building walls and changing laws to keep people out, but in the end they were just symbols. Neither would stop the tide any more than the rock jetties at the mouth of the port did. Nothing could stop the tide of hope and desire. Bosch | Michael Connelly | ||
| 6398ec9 | I put my hand down below the table to check my zipper. You have to stand before a jury only once with your fly open and it will never happen again | humor zipper | Michael Connelly | |
| 9d98fcd | Everybody's got a cage that keeps out the sharks. Those who open the door and venture out do so at their own risk. | Michael Connelly | ||
| b0837a6 | Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story. | Michael Connelly | ||
| b28748b | You build a city in the desert, water it with false hopes and false idols, and eventually this is what happens. The desert reclaims it, turns it arid, leaves it barren. Human tumbleweeds drift across its streets, predators hide in the rocks. | Michael Connelly | ||
| d505487 | Swag?" "Scientific wild ass guess." | Michael Connelly | ||
| 24aebf9 | The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation. | Michael Connelly | ||
| 8631a5c | Two solid weeks of beautiful weather. Clear sunny days, low humidity, temperature in the seventies, air so brisk and clean you could read E PLURIBUS UNUM on a dime across the street. Clear cloudless nights, temperature in the fifties, the sky a great soft raven's breast, an immense bowl of octopus ink salted with a million hard white crystalline stars and garnished with a huge moon pulsing with white light. It was disgusting. | Donald E. Westlake | ||
| 24b7d7c | Story ideas had never been a problem for him, there'd always been more ideas than time to write them, he'd reject one perfectly good notion because he fell more simpatico toward a different one. But of course he could never go back to any of those ancient story stubs, they wouldn't still have juice in them. For him, creating a novel was like gardening; you choose your seed, you treat it exactly the way the package says, and gradually a thin.. | Donald E. Westlake | ||
| b73fa4e | Novelists, when their characters drive cars, never feel compelled to describe precisely what the physical actions are of hands, feet, eyes, knees, elbows. Yet many of these same novelists, when their characters copulate, get into such detailed physical description you'd think they were writing an exercise book. We all know the interrelation between the right ankle and the accelerator when driving a car, and we needn't be told. | Donald E. Westlake | ||
| 6aa0ff7 | You'd be better served if you gave me a moment to regain my self-control and let me remove my boots. It's the least a gentleman can do." "And you're such a gentleman." "Not with you, love. But I'm trying." | Anne Stuart | ||
| 53f1e79 | Just show me where you want him. You can take the first shower, princess." "How very thoughtful of you. But I imagine Samuel and his wife have more than one shower in this lovely house." "I'll be in a back bedroom, out of sight. Don't be squeamish. Madame Lambert. I promise your virtue is safe with me." "I'm relieved to hear it." | Anne Stuart | ||
| 3b746b6 | And there was nothing left between them but love, neither pure nor simple, but love it was. | Anne Stuart | ||
| 48da3b3 | Finn) "You're sure you're not a sister?" he tossed back at her, his voice little more than a growl on the night air. She was closer than he thought, making decent enough headway on the steep hill. "I'm an only child." Stupid, he thought. "I'm asking if you're a holy nun." "I told you, I'm not a nun, holy or otherwise." Okay, she met the criteria for fuckable." | Anne Stuart | ||
| cc4675c | He's a terrible man, miss," Nanny Maude said. "Consorts with devils, he does, and drinks blood, and..." "He was at " Lydia blurted out. "He was not even twenty years old, fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie, and he saw his entire family slaughtered. He barely escaped with his life." There was a shocked silence. And then Nanny Maude cleared her throat. "I always said there was good in the lad. Indeed, and I tied to tell you so. Handsome, too.. | Anne Stuart | ||
| 2968acb | Revenge was a dish best served cold. | Anne Stuart | ||
| 5ee8557 | And then he saw the tears begin to slide down her bruised face. "How badly are you hurt?" He should have checked her chart on the way in, but he'd wanted to get out of sight as quickly as possible. "Nothing interesting," she said, sounding faintly disgruntled. "Just a sprained ankle and some bruises. It's my heart." "Your heart?" he echoed, panicked. "Do you have internal injuries...?" "It's broken," she said, soft, plaintive, the tears sti.. | Anne Stuart | ||
| 5b17d6d | She swam to the shallow end of the pool and stood up, yanking the shrinking top of the bathing suit up to a more demure level. "That's a shame," Peter Jensen's cool voice emerged from the shadows. "I was hoping gravity would win." | Anne Stuart | ||
| 4f34072 | He was accustomed to women wanting him. What shocked him was the simple fact that he wanted her. Not hot, energetic sex. Not a blow job from a novice. He wanted her with a perplexing intensity he hadn't felt in years. He was the King of Death, and she was his consort. And no amount of common sense could distract him. | Anne Stuart |