1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
4523
4524
4525
4526
4527
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 |
| 12336d6 | The scent of the tree's flowers can stop conversation. Rohan knows no purer source of melancholy. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 2dcb749 | Tell me,' the man leans forward and says, 'have you heard of a lady called Madeleine? No? In 1996, this lady named Albright Madeleine, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked on television how she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions? Do you know what she said? She said that it was "a very hard choice" but "we think the price is worth it". These are her exact .. | iraq-sanctions madeleine-albright | Nadeem Aslam | |
| f6dd64a | The West wants unconditional love; failing that, unconditional surrender. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| ad7465c | Je kunt het de mensen niet vragen van je te houden, het is te veel gevraagd. Alleen van je moeder mag je dat vragen. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 80c8aa6 | Het vel van de sardines is zo mooi, het is mooier dan het vel van de mens, maar hij moet toegeven dat hij nog nooit heeft gezien hoe menselijk vel eruitziet als je het bakt in een pan. | skin | arnon grunberg | |
| 7c7bdc8 | At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces. Street pedlars of the Faubourg Sain.. | rain | Georges Simenon | |
| 33e0bfa | The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn't mere rain or the wind freezing wind - this was a conspiracy of the elements. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 5b408a5 | He distrusted ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 47ab972 | We're a bit like criminal lawyers. We're the public face of things, but it's the civil lawyers who do the serious work, in the shadows. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 5c397fc | Human tragedies are always simple when we reconsider them in retrospect. | retrospect | Georges Simenon | |
| c04cbca | C'era un'atmosfera da domenica sera, quando ci si sente fiacchi senza aver fatto nulla, invasi da un molle torpore, e i minuti scorrono piu lenti che gli altri giorni. | ozio sunday | Georges Simenon | |
| 78446b5 | He was a big, bony man. Iron muscles shaped his jacket sleeves and quickly wore through new trousers. He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 98b4b8b | The people of North America have little idea of religion, but they have strict public morality. The Latin people are without morality but they are highly religious. | Patrick Marnham | ||
| 22622c3 | She had heard it was easy to blame others for one's own failures. But that wasn't exactly accurate. It was easy to blame herself for what had happened--hard to live with it. | shame | Frank Beddor | |
| 4bf4d4e | She is waiting. Each spring the hard rains come and the creek rises and quickens, and more of the bank peels off, silting the water brown ad bringing to light another layer of dark earth, Decades pass. She is patient, shelled inside the blue tarp. Each spring the water laps closer, paling roots, loosening stones, scuffing and smoothing. She is waiting and one day a bit of blue appears in the bank and then more blue. The rain pauses and the .. | Ron Rash | ||
| d785ed9 | It's a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming into it. Tears from the very start. | Ron Rash | ||
| ebb671f | I listened to time clicking like hooves on pavement. But time isn't something you can rein in. It moves on without pause, taking us with it no matter how much we wish it otherwise. | time | Ron Rash | |
| d54cf51 | She had not remembered then what she remembers now, a memory like something buried in river silt that finally works free and rises to the surface... | Ron Rash | ||
| 43f6a0e | Something Rich and Strange She was less of what she had been, the blue rubbed from her eyes, flesh freed from the chandelier of bone. He touched what once had been a hand. The river whispered to him that it would not be long now. | Ron Rash | ||
| 053d7df | What about you, Snipes?" Dunbar asked. "You think there to be mountain lions up here or is it just folks' imaginings?" Snipes pondered the question a few moments before speaking. They's many a man of science would claim there aint because you got no irredeemable evidence like panther scat or fur or tooth or tail. In other words, some part of the animal in questions. Or better yet having the actual critter itself, the whole think kit and cab.. | courage darkness faith love philosophy science | Ron Rash | |
| f5bf7c3 | One guy has his head on a table, eyes closed, vomit drooling from his mouth. Another pulls out his false teeth and clamps them on the ear of a gal at the next table. An immense woman in a purple jumpsuit is crying while another woman screams at her. And what I'm thinking is maybe it's time to halt all human reproduction. Let God or evolution or wathever put us here in the first place start again from scratch, because this isn't working. | Ron Rash | ||
| d3493d1 | I missed that one,' Henryson said. 'The war, I mean.' 'Don't worry,' Snipes said. 'Another one's always coming down the pike. That's something all your historians and philosophers agree on. A feller over in Germany looks to be ready to set a match to Europe soon enough, and quick as they snuff him out there'll be another to take his place. | Ron Rash | ||
| 4529b03 | He looked right into her and then he said, "In a second I'm going to ask you if you're okay. Your answer is extremely important. If you can keep fighting, or at least keep running, you have to say 'yes'. Otherwise we have to run away and let them win this one. Now. Are you okay?" | David Wellington | ||
| 890ab9c | Hey." He glanced away from her, instead looking down at the coffin. He looked back at her and raised his eyebrows. "Want a peek?" | David Wellington | ||
| 6f17315 | Sometimes we call it 'Extra Chunky,' too." "Why's that?" she finally asked. "Because," DeForrest said, barely able to contain his mirth, "when you run over a hippy with this thing, extra chunky is about all that's left." | David Wellington | ||
| 8c366cb | Say again, over," he announced. "I was saying that I'm going from here on foot," Arkeley told them. "You can follow however you choose but this place was never meant for a military parade." "He's making fun of your truck," Caxton told Captain Suzie." | David Wellington | ||
| a45fcf4 | Caxton crawled into the back while Arkeley took the front passenger seat. His fused vertebrae trumped her sprained ribs, he announced. | David Wellington | ||
| 9cf2008 | My pleasure. Listen," he called after her, "this is as far as I can go. They poisoned the water out there and I can't follow you now. If you do see Powell, will you give him a message for me?" "Sure," she said, turning around. "Tell him I have his boots in my truck. In case he's looking for 'em." Chey smiled. It felt wrong on her face, but she liked it all the same. "I'll do that." | David Wellington | ||
| 6f67fb3 | Nothing lasts forever, not even the horrors in this life. | David Wellington | ||
| 037b33c | One of the women took his arm and smiled into his face until he looked at her. "We're going to dance in the woods later, when the moon comes up. You'll have to join us, of course," she said. She batted her eyelashes and added, "It's a full moon, so we'll go skyclad." Simon frowned, trying to work out what she was saying. "Naked, you mean." His mouth fluttered as if he was trying to decide whether to grin sheepishly or lasciviously." | David Wellington | ||
| 0ccaeac | The halls are full of kids, scrawny ones and fat ones, cool ones and uncool ones, freaks and jocks, cheerleaders and dogs, burnouts and nerds. It's like Berlin, divided, except there are more walls in this city, and they're better guarded. | Brian Malloy | ||
| b9194e1 | Consider how many times you've seen either a crashed plane or a crashed car. It's entirely possible you've seen roughly as many of each--yet many of those cars were on the road next to you, whereas the planes were probably on another continent, transmitted to you via the Internet or television. In the United States, for instance, the total number of people who have lost their lives in commercial plane crashes since the year 2000 would not b.. | Brian Christian | ||
| 32bc427 | No woman who builds a career on hard work and talent will ever compliment a much younger one who uses the shallow gift of her looks. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| 2eae1c2 | She called me a rat.' 'Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close! | Lindsey Davis | ||
| 91ebc7c | Emperors may come and go, bringing more or less chaos, but the bureaucrats keep the wheels turning. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| 7f70c71 | popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| 2eb5897 | But, remember, a tyrant hates to admit he is one,' Faustus said quietly. 'The worse he is, the more he claims - and even believes - that traditional religion and democracy matter to him deeply and determine all his actions. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| db6a679 | Dictators love to talk. It is remarkable how men who wield excessive sole power will be consistent in this: Given a captive audience, they all drone on for hours. And hours. The human brain can only concentrate for twenty minutes, ask any teacher. Dictators have rarely been despatched on a training course to learn that simple fact. Many dictators are completely untrained; tyranny comes to them naturally. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| eec058e | When they speak, everything else stops. Nobody dares interrupt. Everyone sits looking rapt, hanging on these words of wisdom even while they are wondering what the flowing tirade really means. Clearly it is their own inadequacy if they are not transported into astounding inspiration by the demagogue's words of wisdom, so many words, so long in the delivery.... No one can leave. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| 79dba6f | I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| a4ed65d | It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case. | Lindsey Davis | ||
| ae8d939 | It's not any fun in the dark," he said, and she saw his eyes brimming with tears that glistened in the moonlight. She really felt sorry for him--even she. For what could be more pitiful than a voyeur in the dark?" | Shelby Foote | ||
| 685d8ff | Then too, and this was as romantic as the others, Briartree was the only thing she had ever really owned. Everything else had more or less been lent her; so it seemed. But this was hers, earned by blood, the only good she ever got from being kin to her mother. | Shelby Foote | ||
| b6733f0 | There was beginning to be a sense of history, made immediate by the fact that an English king had given up his throne for a woman: "the woman I love," the king said and they thrilled to hear him say it, huddled about their radios as for warmth. Romance wasnt dead, they told themselves. Even in their time such things could happen--and they were on hand, almost a part of it, leaning toward the loudspeakers. Yet there was something weak and so.. | Shelby Foote |