1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
3836
3837
3838
3839
3840
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 |
| 05fdd64 | I have to think of all the possibilities, doctor. Even a crime of passion is possible.' 'Passion?' the doctor smiled. 'I am an Englishman. | Graham Greene | ||
| fcd8faf | There are times, aren't there, when Shakespeare is a little dull. | Graham Greene | ||
| da2a8ee | The act of lust and the act of love are the same; it cannot be falsified like a sentiment. | Graham Greene | ||
| 47b3fce | He felt the sad relief of a man who realizes that there is one love at least that no longer hurts him. | Graham Greene | ||
| e57606a | Cuando uno se escapa a un desierto el silencio te grita en los oidos. | Graham Greene | ||
| 80fec7d | In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness. | Graham Greene | ||
| 806cf39 | On the fourth night, just as I was facing the dismal prospect of finishing my only book and thereafter having nothing to do in the evenings but lie in the half light and listen to Katz snore, I was delighted, thrilled, sublimely gratified to find that some earlier user had left a Graham Greene paperback. If there's one thing the AT teaches, it is low level ecstasy, something we can all do with more of in our lives | Bill Bryson | ||
| cc3c9dc | I was baptized one foggy afternoon about four o'clock. I couldn't think of any names I particularly wanted, so I kept my old name. I was alone with the fat priest; it was all very quickly and formally done, while someone at a children's service muttered in another chapel. Then we shook hands and I went off to a salmon tea, and the dog which had been sick again on the mat. Before that I had made a general confession to another priest: it was.. | confession | Graham Greene | |
| 376a889 | I'm not involved, not involved," I repeated. It has been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action - even an opinion is a kind of action." | Graham Greene | ||
| 98dc237 | I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good - in this case postponement in attending to my hurt - for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself. | Graham Greene | ||
| 8aed31a | I know, but it is a pleasant fiction, my dear, and the sheer impossibility of a quest is no reason to abandon it. | Graham McNeill | ||
| 9a911b1 | One should never see a drinking establishment well lit, he thought, it just makes it look even sadder. | Graham McNeill | ||
| 30ed602 | Somebody doesn't know they're not in Kansas anymore,' said Stephanopoulos. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| ecd59bf | Or as my dad always says: it only becomes a social problem when the working man joins in. | hypocrisy lower-class peter-grant rivers-of-london social-criticism social-problems working-class | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| 5e10420 | It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| 1e70238 | Who made the 999 call?" "Dunno," said Purdy. "Mobile, probably." It's officers like Purdy that give the Metropolitan Police its sterling reputation for customer service that makes us the envy of the civilised world." | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| ea0783e | Something round and dirty and white was resting near my foot. It was a skull. I picked it up. 'Is that you, Nicholas?' I asked. 'Put that down, Peter,' said Nightingale. 'You don't know where it's been. | urban-fantasy | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| 051b568 | But Smithy," said Stephanopoulis. "I don't believe in respectable businessmen. I've been a copper for more than five minutes. And the constable here doesn't think you're respectable either, because it happens he is a card-carrying member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party and so regards all forms of property as a crime against the proletariat." That one caught me by surprise and the best I could manage was "Power to the people." | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| 56d35fe | As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there's no point complaining that it's a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit and the name of that limit is 'taking the piss'. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| a91eaaf | Don't get me wrong, I like the countryside. In fact, some of my best friends are geographical features. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| 4a256c9 | A)ny working hypothesis was probably going to involve quantum theory at some point--the part of physics that made my brains trickle out of my ears. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| b6f3efd | She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn't fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned, with black almond-shaped eyes. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps and not just because I've seen too many Japanese horror films. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| dc1c42c | You know there's always things in life that you have to do despite the fact that you know for certain the outcome is going to be messy, painful, humiliating, or all three. | humiliation | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| e6e51cf | The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it's hard work trying to track someone's movements using CCTV - especially if they're on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own syst.. | cameras fantasy mystery police-procedural security-cameras surveillance-society | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| 2a3fbdc | The bouncer scrutinized my face. "Do I know you?" he asked. No, I thought, but you might remember me from such Saturday-night hits as "Would you please put that punter down I'd like to arrest him," "You can stop kicking him now, the ambulance has arrived," and the classic "If you don't back off right now I'm going to nick you as well." | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| 6927bd8 | My milkshake brings all the gods to the yard. | Ben aaronovitch | ||
| f0c4067 | when the government decided that in the light of an increased security threat what London really needed was a smaller police force. | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| fcd6a4c | The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - lik.. | detective | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| a7a1a6b | I offered her the flowers, which she took with a delightful laugh. She pulled my head down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled of cigars and new car seats, horses and furniture polish, Stilton, Belgian chocolate and, behind it all, the hemp and the crowd and the last drop into oblivion." (Tyburn)" | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| 29eb011 | There was also a great absence of people, including behind the mahogany-topped reception desk. Now, there's a time when an unlocked premises is a positive boon to a police officer as in - | police | Ben Aaronovitch | |
| 9818ca8 | I'm working on several theories," I said. "But I'm currently favoring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off." "That's a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life," he said. "Yes it is," I said, and we spontaneously fist" | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| adf7637 | The rise and fall of Teresa Cornelys proves three things: that the wages of sin are high, that you should "just say no" to opera, and that it's always wise to diversify your investment portfolio." | Ben Aaronovitch | ||
| b22d33c | Empathy is also a natural human behavior, and natural to chimps as well. When we see someone hurt, our brains respond to some extent as if we'd been hurt ourselves. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 1c05a12 | Whoever I was before is no one I ever got to know. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 89427dc | My father was himself a college professor and a pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes me want to bite someone. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 58f2c50 | They never reminisced about the time they had to drive halfway back to Indianapolis because I'd left Dexter Poindexter, my terry-cloth penguin (threadbare, ravaged by love--as who amongst us is not) | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 3ddb201 | Like they say, you never know a person till you've done time with them. | know person | Karen Joy Fowler | |
| b54f8f1 | SO NOW IT'S 1979. Year of the Goat. The Earth Goat. Here are some things you might remember. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected prime minister. Idi Amin had fled Uganda. Jimmy Carter would soon be facing the Iran hostage crisis. In the meantime, he was the first and last president ever to be attacked by a swamp rabbit. That man could not catch a break. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| c03c501 | in Chinese, the character for woman was a man on his knees | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 5c553ba | I made tiny newspapers of ant events, stamp-sized papers at first, then a bit bigger, too big for ants, it distressed me, but I couldn't fit the stories otherwise and I wanted real stories, not just lines of something that looked like writing. Anyway, imagine how small an ant paper would really be. Even a stamp would have looked like a basketball court. I imagine political upheavals, plots and coups d e'tat, and I reported on them. I think .. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 2203b40 | The next day I lay out on the grass in our backyard and I looked straight into the sun, the way my mother had told me never to do because it would damage my eyes. I thought that I would grow up to be a famous artist and everything and everyone I saw, everything and everyone I painted, would be blinding to look at. | Karen Joy Fowler | ||
| 0a0352b | Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient,.. | humanity imitation | Karen Joy Fowler | |
| 294a026 | I couldn't fit my whole self into a marriage, no matter who my husband was. There were parts of me that John liked, and different parts for the others, but no one could deal with all of me, So I'd lop some part off, but then I'd start missing it, wanting it back. | marriage relatiionships | Karen Joy Fowler | |
| 6b0d233 | Grandma Donna passed the oyster stuffing and asked my father straight out what he was working on, it being so obvious his thoughts were not with us. She meant it as a reprimand. He was the only one at the table who didn't know this, or else he was ignoring it. He told her he was running a Markov chain analysis of avoidance conditioning. He cleared his throat. He was going to tell us more. We moved to close off the opportunity. Wheeled like .. | conditioning family fish thanksgiving | Karen Joy Fowler |