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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e076369 | Sandra was fond of an old Russian saying: | S.M. Stirling | ||
| 7ce610b | Likes to fight, does he?" Sandra said thoughtfully. "Oh, yeah. He says there are only two reasons to fight." "Which are?" "Joy and death." Her mother's brows went up. "Joy in death?" "No, no... For joy, to stretch yourself with a friend; or death, to kill as quickly as you can. Nothing in between." | S.M. Stirling | ||
| 4f21b69 | There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any. | S.M. Stirling | ||
| 9f29c29 | Scuse me, lady, but I'm Wisp, 'cause that's all I am, a wisp of a thing, not much good for changing a thing in the world," said the boy for when he stepped inside, the light from the grimy window gave her a good view of his anxious, pointed little face." | Anne McCaffrey | ||
| b25933c | Living was struggling to do something impossible - to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried! | Anne McCaffrey | ||
| 9158685 | A man didn't specialize in mathematics because he had a rare talent for human relationships. | Anne McCaffrey | ||
| c451170 | I had a salad. If I were to say that today's tomatoes were an index of the decline of Western man I should be thought a crank but nations do not, I think, ascend on such tomatoes. | Russell Hoban | ||
| 2c4af6e | Looking at them words going down on this paper right this minim I know there aint no such thing there aint no only my self you all ways have every 1 and every thing on your back. | Russell Hoban | ||
| f48d505 | Iyther you dont know nothing or you know too much it dont seam like theres any thing in be twean. | Russell Hoban | ||
| 0307895 | Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it werent you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn an.. | Russell Hoban | ||
| a89b506 | O what we ben! And what we come to! | progress human-condition | Russell Hoban | |
| 0a291a7 | To Morgan, the disfigurement of his monstrous nose was the touch of God upon him, the assurance of mortality. It was the steadiest assurance he had. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| f44e092 | Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the shore of his Self. | self-awareness salvation immigrant self | E.L. Doctorow | |
| 9d70d37 | Orthodox devotions that do not let in the light of modern knowledge are no more than a form of ancestor worship. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| 64073a1 | Many historians have noted an interesting phenomenon in American life in the years immediately after a war. In the councils of government fierce partisanship replaces the necessary political coalitions of wartime. IN the great arena of social relations -- business, labour, the community -- violence rises, fear and recrimination dominate public discussion, passion prevails over reason. Many historians have noted this phenomenon. It is attrib.. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| b6279d0 | The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. There was a heavy traffic to the spas and sulphur springs, where the purgative was valued as an inducement to the appetite. America was a great farting country. All this began to change when Taft move.. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| 9e73424 | She's some kind of Socialist-anarchist-anarcho-syndicalist-Communist. Unless you're one of them you can't tell exactly what any of them are. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| 357dc00 | On the labour front in 1919 there was an unprecedented number of strikes involving many millions of workers. One of the lager strikes was mounted by the AF of L against the United States Steel Corporation. At that time workers in the steel industry put in an average sixty-eight-hour week for bare subsistence wages. The strike spread to other plants, resulting in considerable violence -- the death of eighteen striking workers, the calling ou.. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| bae92e4 | A stydy today of the products of the animated cartoon industry of the twenties, thirties and forties would yield the following theology: 1. People are animals. 2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain. 3. Life is antagonistic to the living. 4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music. 5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart are destroyed by their own cunning. 6. The smal.. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| b03bcaf | And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own. | E.L. Doctorow | ||
| 1daf46a | This...is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 8aaed1d | Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written... | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| fa9a1ec | I don't drive. Will you kindly go away? I am waiting for my mother. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| cb74b77 | Do you think that I have a problem?" Ignatius bellowed. "The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hairsprays. That why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions." "Ignatius, that ain't true. You remember old Mr. Becnel used to live dow.. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 1e1e973 | You must realize the fear and hatred which my instills in people. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 1a5381b | Whoa! If I'm gonna be a doorman, I gonna be the mos sabotagin doorman ever guarded a plantation. Ooo-wee. The cotton fiel be burn to the groun before I'm through. | toole jones | John Kennedy Toole | |
| 64012f4 | Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed from the front of the house. "What an egregious insult to good taste." | pretentious | John Kennedy Toole | |
| 3330abc | I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this . . . "A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss"." | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 7f3a4fe | but who are we to question the motives of these giants of commerce whose whims rule the course of our nation. | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 06a9e3b | I doubt whether any hack, under pressure, could pen such atrocious melodrama, | John Kennedy Toole | ||
| 10845f1 | Adventure, my dear, is as much a state of mind as anything else. One can travel the world and never find the excitement to be found within arm's reach. Remain true to yourself, but understand happiness may not always be found in the plans we have laid out for ourselves, but rather in the unforeseen turns life takes us. Do not close your mind, or your heart, to the unexpected twists of life. It is those unexpected paths that could well lead .. | the-marriage-lesson | Victoria Alexander | |
| e386931 | You and I have found something few people ever do.Do you not understand, Matthew? I refuse to let your misguided nobility keep us apart.My life as a princess, or a peasant, is not worth living without you in it." "And mine is without you? I'm willing to go to Avalonia and be your blasted lapdog, if that will keep you in my life. Damn it all, Tatiana, I love you. I have loved you from the moment you went up in my balloon. From the moment I s.. | Victoria Alexander | ||
| 8d36502 | Tomorrow at the press conference would be dreadful. She would be surrounded by nice young men who spoke Big Business or Computer or Bachelor on the Make, and she would not understand a word they said." "Short Story: Blued Moon" | Connie Willis | ||
| 4e49c73 | then in a conversational tone said, "I slapped my Aunt Martha. When my fiance died. She told me God needed him in heaven, and I hauled off and slapped her, a sixty year old woman....People say unbelievable things to you. They deserve slapping." | death slapping outrage | Connie Willis | |
| cf60389 | One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober. | Connie Willis | ||
| cb3f6dd | They were a susitute. They were what you did when you couldn't have what you wanted. | Connie Willis | ||
| acfe618 | Civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity--enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence--confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one's own mental powers.... Vigour, energy, vitality: all the great civilisations--or civilising epochs--have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine.. | Thomas Cahill | ||
| b800ada | Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true--in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. | stereotypes generalizations individual individuals evil | David Brin | |
| bb93e1a | The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage. | David Brin | ||
| 1ad63e3 | The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness. | law | David Brin | |
| a8acc74 | He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesn't know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed. Feeli.. | life novel | Jay McInerney | |
| 3dc267d | The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you'd always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they .. | Jay McInerney | ||
| e94473d | Here you are again. All messed up and no place to go. | Jay McInerney | ||
| 811b944 | They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart. | Colum McCann |