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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1a742a6 | No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals. | Lois Lowry | ||
| dca96e4 | now he knew that there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing. From being kept from knowledge. | Lois Lowry | ||
| 9d22fa1 | Henry glared at Anastasia. 'You quit planning on a rich husband, Anastasia. You're gonna get rich on your own. You and me, if we husbands, fine. But we won't them. Like our mothers. My mom could do just fine being a waitress, and your mom could do just fine being an artist. They got husbands 'cos they them. That Bambie, now maybe need a husband. But not you and me. Got it? | Lois Lowry | ||
| 0391e00 | Kira closed her eyes, thought, and said them aloud. "Madder for red. Bedstraw for red too, just the roots. Tops of tansy for yellow, and greenwood for yellow too. And yarrow: yellow and gold. Dark hollyhocks, just the petals, for mauve...." "Broom sedge," she added, still remembering. "Goldy yellows and browns. And Saint Johnswort for browns too, but it'll stain my hands. "And bronze fennel--leaves and flowers; use them fresh--and you can e.. | herbs | Lois Lowry | |
| 893f3eb | We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences. {...} We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others. | Lois Lowry | ||
| c376bf2 | and I want you all to remember--that you must not dream yourselves back to the times before the war, but the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one. That is the great gift our country hungers for, something every little peasant boy can look forward to, and with pleasure feel he is a part of--something he can work and fight for. Surely that gift--the gift of.. | Lois Lowry | ||
| a3527f3 | Why do you and I have to hold these memories?' 'It gives us wisdom. | wisdom | Lois Lowry | |
| 3c440e9 | Call me The Giver," he told Jonas." | Lois Lowry | ||
| 5fda23d | Author | Lois Lowry | ||
| 2e2d1e0 | Henrik, you need a wife," Mama scolded him. Uncle Henrik laughed and joined Mama on the steps near the kitchen door. "Why do I need a wife, when I have a sister?" | Lois Lowry | ||
| e33f89e | Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, and the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted their wish that the border be closed so that 'we' (Matty shuddered at the use of 'we') would not have to share the resources anymore. 'We need all the fish for ourselves. Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own. They can't even speak right. We can't understand them.. | Lois Lowry | ||
| e736b49 | Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained too, an understanding of solitude and its joy. | Lois Lowry | ||
| e125bc5 | And he could see as well that they had not yet approached the worst of it. | Lois Lowry | ||
| 0049d43 | It's his gift. You see ahead. He sees beyond. And I . . ." Matty fell silent. He raised one hideously swollen arm and looked listlessly at the pus that seeped through the fabric of his sleeve. Then he laughed harshly. "I can fix a frog." | Lois Lowry | ||
| 01cd2c5 | with a rhythmic sound of languid water lapping hypnotically against a beach nearby. | Lois Lowry | ||
| 8edd80f | He had waited a long time for this special December. Now that it was almost upon him, he wasn't frightened, but he was . . . eager, he decided. He was eager for it to come. And he was excited, certainly. All of the Elevens were excited about the event that would be coming so soon. | Lois Lowry | ||
| 8f38a0d | Walter cares more about what a book has to say than he does about whether he can turn it into a stuffed animal or a calendar or a movie. | Lois Lowry | ||
| 02e8e79 | A stage adaptation of The Giver has been performed in cities and towns across the USA for years. More recently an opera has been composed and performed. And soon there will be a film. Does The Giver have the same effect when it is presented in a different way: It's hard to know. A book, to me is almost sacrosanct: such an individual and private thing. The reader brings his or her own history and beliefs and concerns, and reads in solitude, .. | movies | Lois Lowry | |
| cfd2a34 | Genghis Khan had well-founded and unshakable faith in his daughters and the other women around him. "Whoever can keep a house in order," he said, "can keep a territory in order." As the military campaigns grew longer, the division of labor solidified into a division of command authority. At its heart, the dual-shaft system functioned quite simply. She ruled at home; he served abroad. Even" | Jack Weatherford | ||
| ac01e88 | Although there are many things you can rely on, no one is more reliable than yourself, | Jack Weatherford | ||
| ae1dd87 | Although many people can be your helper, no one should be closer to you than your own consciousness. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| fd5a309 | The Chinese noted with surprise and disgust the ability of the Mongol warriors to survive on little food and water for long periods; according to one, the entire army could camp without a single puff of smoke since they needed no fires to cook. Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gr.. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| 6a15002 | The royal Mongol women raced horses, commanded in war, presided as judges over criminal cases, ruled vast territories, and sometimes wrestled men in public sporting competitions. They arrogantly rejected the customs of civilized women of neighboring cultures, such as wearing the veil, binding their feet, or hiding in seclusion. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| 0f48dd0 | Khatun Temur, literally "Queen Iron," and Khatun Baatar, "Queen Hero." | Jack Weatherford | ||
| d349329 | Outlawing the sale or barter of women marked Genghis Khan's first important departure from tribal practices regarding marriage, and gradually through a series of such changes he transformed the social position of his daughters, and thereby of all women, within his burgeoning empire. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| 5e7bc3e | In preparing the psychological attack on a city, Genghis Khan began with two examples of what awaited the people. He offered generous terms of surrender to the outlying communities, and the ones that accepted the terms and joined the Mongols received great leniency. In the words of the Persian chronicler, "whoever yields and submits to them is safe and free from the terror and disgrace of their severity." Those that refused received excepti.. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| 9fc8930 | You may conquer an army with superior tactics and men, but you can conquer a nation only by conquering the hearts of the people. | Jack Weatherford | ||
| d6cf52d | It's a different story depending on where you start: who's good, who's bad, what it all means. Each of us shapes our stories so they make sense of who we think we are. I can begin when Cassie and I were best friends; or I can begin when we weren't anymore; or I can begin at the dark end and tell it all backward. | Claire Messud | ||
| 1035ba7 | I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up. | Claire Messud | ||
| 9c90824 | The novel is describing a time in which she felt hope, beauty, elation, joy ,wonder, anticipation-these are things these friends gave to her and this is why they mattered so much. Her rage corresponds to the immensity of what she has lost. It doesn't matter in a way whether all these emotions were the result of real interactions or of fantasy, she experienced them fully. And in losing them, has lost happiness. | Claire Messud | ||
| 0676f64 | I've finally come to understand that life itself is the Fun House. All you want is that door marked EXIT, the escape to a place where Real Life will be; and you can never find it. | Claire Messud | ||
| ce5f0b2 | But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there's no telling what I might do. I could film my anger and sell it, I could do some unmasking of my own, beat the fuckers at their own game, and on the way I could become the best-known fucking artist in America, out of sheer spite. Yo.. | Claire Messud | ||
| 8688d40 | This was the fall of 2004. The wider world was deeply fucked, and home also. Two American wars raging--bloodbaths each, bloodbath major and bloodbath minor, ugly, squirrelly hateful clandestine wars marked by betrayal, incompetence and corruption. Don't get me started. | Claire Messud | ||
| faf6723 | When you're the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all. It's a small thing, you might think; and maybe it depends upon your temperament; maybe for some people it's a small thing. But for me, in that cul-de-sac outside Aunt Baby's, with my father and aunt done dissecting death and shuffling off to bed behind the crim.. | Claire Messud | ||
| 460396e | He didn't much like reading novels - he preferred history or philosophy - or poetry, although he could read only a little poetry at a time, because when a poem "spoke to him" it was as if a brilliant, agonizing light had been turned upon some tiny, private cell of his soul." | reading | Claire Messud | |
| 65726b1 | Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying--valiantly, fruitlessly--to eradicate. | Claire Messud | ||
| 0af1602 | The whole world seemed a maze of shifting mirrors in which I wandered alone, looking always and frenziedly for the exit back into my real life, where people had substance, did as they said they would, and were whole. | Claire Messud | ||
| 4fe8e11 | My motivation, even in anticipated shame, lay always in others. You can take the woman out of the upstairs, but you can't take the upstairs out of her. | Claire Messud | ||
| f07cc51 | So: now a new year, a new beginning. I've vowed not to complain. I'm too good at it, and need to practice other skills. I've also vowed to work very hard... | Claire Messud | ||
| e1b2dff | I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it's a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck. I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and underlinings they are irreplaceable; but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish. ~ Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Child. | Leah Price | ||
| 71147e1 | Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes? | John Banville | ||
| d960eea | In the city of flesh I travel without maps, a worried tourist: and Ottilie was a very Venice. I stumbled lost in the blue shade of her pavements. Here was a dreamy stillness, a swaying, the splash of an oar. Then, when I least expected it, suddenly I stepped out into the great square, the sunlight, and she was a flock of birds scattering with soft cries in my arms. | sex | John Banville | |
| d0ba59b | Time and age have brought not wisdom, as they are supposed to do, but confusion, and a broadening incomprehension, each year laying down another ring of nesience. | John Banville | ||
| aa09d3a | When he was young, the lesson learned from his mother, as much by cuffs as caresses, was that love is action--what you do, not what you feel--but perhaps, he thinks now, it was a false lesson, and that love is something else altogether, something he knows nothing of. He sees it, this love, hovering like the Paraclete above the heads of a fig-leafed Cranach couple, streaming divine grace down upon them in burning rays. Where was his soul whe.. | John Banville |