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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ddc70b1 | Cat. No doubled vision: it's a cat, singular. A solitary diurnal ambush hunter with good hearing and binocular vision and a predilection for biting the neck of its prey in half while disemboweling it with the scythe-like claws on its hind legs. Basically it's a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right | Charles Stross | ||
| 3f43621 | He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| b1116f1 | Without warning a lady appeared. She came from the direction of Friday-street, for she had just been with Mr. Newbolt. She strode capably through the snow. She wore a black silk gown and something very queer swung from a silver chain about her neck. Her smile was full of comfort and her eyes were kind and happy. She was just as Mr. Newbolt had described. And the name of this lady was Death. | death neil-gaiman sandman | Susanna Clarke | |
| a81d939 | It was as if a door had opened somewhere. Or possibly a series of doors. There was a sensation as of a breeze blowing into the house and bringing with it the half-remembered scents of childhood. There was a shift in the light which seemed to cause all the shadows in the room to fall differently. There was nothing more definite than that, and yet, as often happens when some magic is occurring, both Drawlight and the lady had the strongest im.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 87b20b9 | If other magicians think differently from you, then you must battle it out with them. You must prove the superiority of your opinions, as I do in politics. You must argue and publish and practise your magic and you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| d35f8fe | Captain Harcourt-Bruce was not only dashing, handsome, and brave, he was also rather romantic. The reappearance of magic in England thrilled him immensely. He was a great reader of the more exciting sort of history - and his head was full of ancient battles in which the English were outnumbered by the French and doomed to die, when all at once would be heard the sound of strange, unearthly music, and upon a hilltop would appear the Raven Ki.. | humor magic magician tea | Susanna Clarke | |
| 14ebc3e | Could soldiers read? Mr Norrell did not know. He turned with a look of desperate appeal to Childermass. Childermass shrugged. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| ead5959 | The sky spoke to him. It was a language he had never heard before. He was not even certain there were words. Perhaps it only spoke to him in the black writing the birds made. He was small and unprotected and there was no escape. He was caught between earth and sky as if cupped between two hands. They could crush him if they chose. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 94c78db | Being a politician, he was never dissuaded from giving any body his opinion by the mere fact that they were not inclined to hear it. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| f77a6a6 | You were always cheerful - tho' often left to your own devices. You were hardly ever out of temper - tho' often severely provoked. Your every speech was remarkable for its wit and genius - tho' you got no credit for it and almost always received a flat contradiction. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| a221d54 | Bonifazia murmured appeals to the Virgin and several saints. Aunt Greysteel, who was equally alarmed, might well have been glad of the same refuge, but as a member of the communion of the Church of England, she could only exclaim, "Dear me!" and, "Upon my word!" and "Lord bless me!" - none of which gave her much comfort." -- | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 7c413f4 | She so cheerfully resigned to his neglecting her that he could not help opening his mouth to protest | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 1edd15e | Long, long ago, (said the voice), five hundred years ago or more, on a winter's day at twilight, a young man entered the Church with a young girl with ivy leaves in her hair. There was no one else there but the stones. No one to see him strangle her but the stones. He let her fall dead upon the stones and no one saw but the stones. He was never punished for his sin because there were no witnesses but the stones. The years went by and whenev.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 6f1991b | All magicians lie and this one more than most, | Susanna Clarke | ||
| dca2b52 | He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| ee91a19 | Whenever I wish to do something, I simply speak to the air - or to the stones - or to the sunlight - or the sea - or to whatever it is and politely request them to help me. And then, since my alliances with these powerful spirits were set in place thousands of years ago, they are only too glad to do whatever I ask. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 157c737 | It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take notice of this except his fellow human being. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at this skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. | intellectual philosophy | Susanna Clarke | |
| b03e08d | When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic. | magic writing | Susanna Clarke | |
| 36a7865 | But now there were ten bells. And the bell for Lost-Hope was ringing violently. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 419c6cf | Even his dearest friends would have admitted that he possessed not a single good quality. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 1e45076 | But, curiously, though Mr. Norrell was able to work feats of the most breath-taking wonder, he was only able to describe them in his usual dry manner, so that Sit Walter was left with the impression that the spectacle of half a thousand stone figures in York Cathedral all speaking together had been rather a dull affair and that he had been fortunate in being elsewhere at the time. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 720eedb | I shall advise all the good-looking women of my acquaintance not to die | Susanna Clarke | ||
| e2ac9d9 | I cannot recall an instance of anything very dreadful happening at half-past one | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 1b0438f | She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption. | self-absorbtion | Lan Samantha Chang | |
| fd90bd9 | Haven't we all, as time continues, found that we must be kind to ourselves and listen to our thoughts, because fewer and fewer of those remain who know what is most real to us? | Lan Samantha Chang | ||
| 45d1026 | It's because of the way you are. It's why you're happy reading novels. You're only comfortable with a piece of the world that you can hold in your hand. | reading | Lan Samantha Chang | |
| 40285b7 | There's the slightly intoxicating feeling that accompanies the largest blizzards--the realization that there's a chance, increasing by every second, that you are about to be trapped by beauty. | Rick Bass | ||
| be22dbc | Slater used to be a poet, he's nothing now, and he sort of looks on Robby and me with awe because we aren't nothing yet, we haven't given up yet, awed at me because I'm thirty-one and haven't given up yet, and at Robby because he's young and has potential. Most people stop wanting to be a writer around the age of sixteen. | writing | Rick Bass | |
| 6d485ac | The thing about nature is that each species does what it's best at. That's why it's all so locked together. I'm certain that at its center is some kind of peace or unity or harmony - the white light people speak of having when they come back from "the dead." And what does our species do best? We construct artificial systems wherein we are mighty predators, or mighty thinkers, or sagacious, benevolent rulers of the universe - allies with God.. | Rick Bass | ||
| a0eac5e | And one thing, as they sometimes do, led not to another, but shattered a world. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 85e8b86 | But what reality was ever made by realists? | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 67035f1 | A world of dew and within every dewdrop a world of struggle. ISSA | Richard Flanagan | ||
| dd39c15 | In trying to escape the fatality of memory, he discovered with an immense sadness that pursuing the past inevitably only leads to greater loss. To hold a gesture, a smell, a smile was to cast it as one fixed thing, a plaster death mask, which as soon as it was touched crumbled in his figures back into dust. | loss memory time | Richard Flanagan | |
| fa30115 | When forging money, I had always salved my conscience by concluding that I was merely extending the lie of commerce. | money | Richard Flanagan | |
| c9ee77d | she, armed with both & abandoning the joys of reason that had meant so much to her as well as me, made a suitably advantageous marriage with an ironmonger with a face like an anvil & a soul like a slag, & so I never saw her freckles fade, her auburn hair dull, never had to watch our love turn to that non-colour, white. -pg 115 | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 4905a54 | Under the influence of mercury, which he administered to himself daily as a salve for his syphilis, & laudanum, which he drank each evening in imprecisely measured amounts to enable him to sleep, because of all things, this brave man feared only his dreams, opiate-enhanced nightmares that gave him no respite & which always ended in flames from which he rose phoenix-like just before dawn each morning, to recommence building what was already .. | life | Richard Flanagan | |
| c71bf06 | Memory's only like justice, because it is another wrong idea that makes people feel right. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 3ca5137 | to judge us all through the machine of the Commandant's monstrous fictions! As though they were the truth! As though history & the written word were friends, rather than adversaries! | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 7b8bf79 | in the back seat the three now silent, soot-smeared children absorbed it all--the choking creosote stench, the roar of wind and flame, the wild rocking of a car being driven that hard, the heat, the emotion so raw and exposed it was like butchered flesh; the tormented, hopeless feeling of two people who lived together in a love not yet love, nor yet not; an unshared life shared; a conspiracy of affections, illnesses, tragedies, jokes and la.. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 85a07ed | Maybe we have lost the ability, that sixth sense that allows us to see miracles and have visions and understand that we are something other, larger than what we have been told. Maybe evolution has been going on in reverse longer than I suspect, and we are already sad, dumb fish. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| fdd38db | He felt more soft raindrops, saw bright-red oil against the brown mud, heard his mother calling again, but it was unclear what she was saying, was she calling him home or was it the sea? There was a world and there was him and the thread joining the two was stretching and stretching, he was trying to pull himself up that thread, he was desperately trying to haul himself back home to where his mother was calling. He tried calling to her but .. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 898acc6 | Like all immigrants, he seemed to have an unerring instinct for the oldest, truest words in his new language. The way he said the word, it felt free of the treacherous weight of mate | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 4a17e70 | Because in the end history--like the Berlin Wall--shapes people, had shaped her, but would not in the end determine her, because in the end it cannot account for the great irrational--the great human--forces: the destructive power of evil, the redeeming power of love. | Richard Flanagan | ||
| 1cabea9 | He had the sourdough smell of age. His chest sagged into shrivelled teats; his lovemaking was unreliable, yet she found it strangely wholesome in a way that defied sense. | Richard Flanagan |