1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
3595
3596
3597
3598
3599
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6bd7b43 | obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination. | Iain M. Banks | ||
| 15297b8 | I]f I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you. | insult | Iain M. Banks | |
| f9f419b | Empires are synonymous with centralized--if occasionally schismatized--hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through--usually--a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society's information dissemination systems and its lesser--as a rule nominally independent--power systems. In short, it's all about dominance. | Iain M. Banks | ||
| ea4bbb4 | one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting--corruption and favoritism, mostly--endemic to the system. | Iain M. Banks | ||
| f93f2b3 | This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called "Gurgeh." The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game." | story | Iain M. Banks | |
| 8bf2d54 | faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence. | Iain M. Banks | ||
| 5908530 | Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It's just that there's no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind. | Iain M. Banks | ||
| d48b0da | Anyone who is known as the Mysterious Marquis ought to have far more interesting reasons for his behavior than a stupid dispute with Sir Hilary. | Patricia C. Wrede | ||
| d8677c6 | If a beauty like Letitia Tarnower couldn't interest Mairelon, and a brilliant wizard like Renee D'Auber hadn't attracted him in all the years they'd known one another, what chance did she, Kim, have? | Patricia C. Wrede | ||
| 3b7094a | She said that time and death are the greatest enemies all of us must face, and the only weapon stronger than they are is love. | Patricia C. Wrede | ||
| 5ea1fc0 | I'm not going to dress in velvet robes with ermine trim when I'm spending the day hanging pictures and cleaning out the attic in the South Tower, no matter how much Willin would like it," Mendanbar said firmly." | mendanbar king | Patricia C. Wrede | |
| b8f6ea2 | You can't discipline the whole country." "Still," Moss said dreamily, "that's what must be done before they can ever accomplish anything." | Paul Bowles | ||
| 21f9722 | Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the.. | solitude existence meaning ennui postwar meaninglessness modernism subjectivity isolation | Paul Bowles | |
| 33987b0 | May Allah bless you." Or had she said: "May Allah burn you?" He was not sure which: the two Arabic words sounded so much alike." | Paul Bowles | ||
| 49cddfe | The Americans are the nature of the future," she would announce in her hearty voice. "Here's to 'em. God bless their gadgets, great and small, God bless Frigidaire, Tampax and Coca-Cola. Yes, even Coca-Cola,darling." (It was generally conceded that Coca-Cola's advertising was ruining the picturesqueness of Morocco.)" -- | Paul Bowles | ||
| 11f013d | a man could scarcely make his writing a reason for living unless he believed in the validity of that writing. | writing | Paul Bowles | |
| c0dc32d | Everything's explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time, and there's no way of even imagining how anything could have been different from what it is. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 1f9c4d4 | Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth--" She hesitated. Port laughed abruptly. "And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then.. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 9944ae0 | I think that's the point of view of an outsider, a tourist who puts picturesqueness above everything else. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 11b5f1b | It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life; she knew that, and she also knew that he loved them more if she could be there to experience them with him. And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that. It was as if always he held the fresh hope that she, too, would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and .. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 693685a | He doesn't know what the world is like today." The thought that his own conception of the world was so different from his father's was like a protecting wall around his entire being. When his father went out into the street he had only the mosque, the Koran, the other old men in his mind. It was the immutable world of law, the written word, unchanging beneficence, but it was in some way wrinkled and dried up. Whereas when Amar stepped out t.. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 0a5e2ba | He knew it was necessary to drive the French out, but he had always imagined that this would be done gloriously, with thousands of men on horseback flashing their swords and calling upon Allah to aid them in their holy mission ... It was hard to see any connection between the splendid war of liberation and all this whispering and frowning. | Paul Bowles | ||
| 49ab112 | You know what?" he said with great earnestness. "I think we're both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason. We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump. Isn't that true?" | Paul Bowles | ||
| f724782 | You know, Lily, people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| a680175 | Again in Russia, we find a tiny group of zealots--calling themselves "the majority" (Bolsheviks)--who planned to control everything from a central authority. Lenin wrote most of the "scientific" program for a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, which was then debated and modified by other communist leaders. Socialism had to be imposed from above, by educated elites. There would be no from-the-bottom-up modifications." | Ann Coulter | ||
| 006d33d | Morality in the general is well enough known by men, but the particular refinements of virtue are unknown by most persons; thus the majority of parents, without knowing it and without intending it, give very bad examples to their children. | morality example parenting young | Anne Robert Jacques Turgot | |
| 0eb097b | was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any.. | William Shakespeare | ||
| 6563059 | He takes the view that mornings happen to other people. I think I once saw him at breakfast, although possibly it was just someone who looked a bit like him who was lying with their head in the plate of baked beans. He likes good sushi, and quite likes people, too, although not raw; he is kind to fans who are not total jerks, and enjoys talking to people who know how to talk. He doesn't look as though he's forty; that may have happened to s.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| f578060 | i started trying to think what the best advice i'd been given over the years was. and it came from stephen king twenty years ago, at the height of the success of sandman. i was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. king liked sandman and my novel with terry pratchett, good omens, and he saw the madness, the long singing lines, all that, and his advice was this: 'this is really great. you should enjoy it.' and i didn't.. | Neil Gaiman | ||
| 03fd899 | The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five. 2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side fo the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And by the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a port.. | bible bugger bugger-all bugger-all-this-bible buggre-alle-this-bible biblical good-omens holy | Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett | |
| 85833f4 | They say you can bear anything if you can tell a story about it. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| e642404 | To do the job which you've got really well; so well that you don't lose your self-respect doing it': | Ray Monk | ||
| db0ac09 | Aunt-Sister said Charleston had a case of the grandeurs. Up till I was eight or so, I thought the grandeurs was a shitting sickness. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 106ff07 | I would like to be free of the part of me that dares too little and fears too much. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 81d86d3 | To be honest, I had been restless...The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor--the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| a02b260 | So we just the same, me and you? That's why you the one to shit in the pot and I'm the one to empty it? | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| c1a2fdf | I sit in my new room and write everything down. My heart never stops talking. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 7200c36 | My mauma was shrewd. She didn't get any reading and writing like me. Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| d70ee32 | in the end, Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divine in female form. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| cd66c1f | The road of 'God alone' struck me with unsettling fear. So I lingered in a kind of limbo. Unable to go back, unable to go on. Uncertain. Tentative. How strange that we tend to stand ankle-deep in the spiritual life even though the grounding depth of intimacy with God is the most nourishing experience of our lives and affirms our very being! | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 380cb63 | This surprised me because it made me realize that what I sought was not outside myself. It was within me, already there, waiting. Awakening was really the act of remembering myself, remembering this deep Feminine Source. | feminine-source remembering | Sue Monk Kidd | |
| 46e1c21 | It's part of our overall Body Negation Program. | Sue Monk Kidd | ||
| 110735a | What matters is giving over to what you love. | love | Sue Monk Kidd | |
| 8559b43 | There's a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course. | Sue Monk Kidd |