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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 74c9d28 | He's also able to accept death. He's not happy about it, but he's perfectly calm. When I stop all this treatment, it will be because it's time to stop. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 5fcb5fa | There's never a good excuse for not doing anything-- | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 0cff661 | In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views--I just didn't think about religion." | believing-in-god god religion | Will Schwalbe | |
| f8d8b53 | Mom would often talk about a refugee boy she'd met in a hospital in Afghanistan. He was the victim of a land mine and had lost a leg. She said to him that she brought greetings to him from schoolchildren in New York. "Tell them not to worry about me," this little boy told her from his hospital bed. "I still have one leg." | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 6b68a46 | When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter--they wanted books for their children. (quoting his mother) | Will Schwalbe | ||
| dec78cc | That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 6b146b2 | That there's great joy in thanking. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 0ea3bcc | Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 476fd32 | We were terrified to stop, stop anything, and admit that something was wrong. Activity, frenzied activity, seemed to be the thing we all felt we needed. Only Dad slowed down, and that wasn't until he was trapped in a hospital getting intravenous antibiotics. Everything would be all right, everything would be possible, anything could be salvaged or averted, as long as we all kept running around. | running-away-from-problems stop terrified | Will Schwalbe | |
| b4582d2 | I realized then that for all of us part of the process of mom's dying was mourning, not just her death, but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don't really lose the person who has been. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 56dbdeb | I particularly like that last phrase," Mom said. "About protecting your own happiness." | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 4ec5074 | Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 5b66553 | I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that edu.. | stay-at-home-moms working-moms | Will Schwalbe | |
| 499455d | The thing about Americans," she said, "is that you're very concerned about everything all the time." | worry | Will Schwalbe | |
| 73bace0 | His point: you don't have to travel the world to see the ways we mistreat one another; it's as close as the street outside our windows. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| c8feed1 | Why did I always need to do something, like referring one person to another, just for the sake of doing something, when sometimes, perhaps, it was better to do nothing? | Will Schwalbe | ||
| 76432ba | joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they've realized and achieved, or how they are remembered. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| d0f3201 | And reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it's a way of becoming more fully human and more humane. | Will Schwalbe | ||
| e721f88 | One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, what is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?" | question | Will Schwalbe | |
| ad0248b | Every time you behold the Blue Ridge Mountains, every time you feel a snowflake on your eyelashes, every time you see a frog on a lily pad, every time a friend gives you his hand, Brooks, God loves you. You're surrounded by His love. We look for it in all the wrong places as we pray for worldly success. We say that must be proof of God's love. Some people pray not for material success but for an easy life." He shook his head. "No, even our .. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| 91e65d5 | At least Jennifer was beyond being tormented by itchy dresses. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| 8648367 | Because the real worship is not one man, one vote, it's one man, one dollar. Commerce drives democracy, not vice versa. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| ca201b7 | That's animals, same thing doesn't happen to people does it? That's gonna happen to me someday, too? No, not me. I ain't dying. I don't care what they say, I ain't dying. I'm not lying on my back under the ground in everlasting darkness. Not me. I'm not closing my eyes. If I close my eyes, I might not open them. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| d085c2a | Then you stay in that root cellar until Jesus comes back. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| 681a914 | You can't pee in front of little Lord Jesus, go back to the hills. | Rita Mae Brown | ||
| 6f30ddd | On this Very Street in Belgrade" Your mother carried you Out of the smoking ruins of a building And set you down on this sidewalk Like a doll bundled in burnt rags, Where you now stood years later Talking to a homeless dog, Half-hidden behind a parked car, | Charles Simic | ||
| 85d040d | The Something" Here come my night thoughts On crutches, Returning from studying the heavens. What they thought about Stayed the same, Stayed immense and incomprehensible. My mother and father smile at each other Knowingly above the mantel. The cat sleeps on, the dog Growls in his sleep. The stove is cold and so is the bed. Now there are only these crutches To contend with. Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one With difficulty, Swaying on th.. | Charles Simic | ||
| b7ae650 | This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird's foot Worn around the cannibal's neck. As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: | Charles Simic | ||
| f8d6bbd | Immigration, exile, being uprooted and made a pariah may be the most effective way yet devised to impress on an individual the arbitrary nature of his or her own existence. Who needed a shrink of a guru when everyone we met asked us who we were the moment we opned our mouths and they heard the accent? The truth is, we had no simple answers. Being rattled around in freight trains, open trucks, and ratty ocean-liners, we ended up being a puzz.. | identity immigration | Charles Simic | |
| abd29e8 | Everyone vain, dull, peevish, and sexually frustrated dreams of legislating his impotence. Mao's uniforms: a billion people dressing the same and shouting from his little red book continues to be the secret hope of new visionaries. | Charles Simic | ||
| 30cb13a | There was a pause, while I fought against this other, lesser kind of death that was creeping over me - this death called strangeness, this snapping of all the customary little threads of cause and effect that are our moorings at other times. Slowly they all drew back from me step by step, until I was left there alone, cut off. ("All At Once, No Alice")" | strangeness | Cornell Woolrich | |
| c492bf5 | I got another chestful of air in, tore loose with it. 'Somebody help me! You people standing around looking, isn't there one of you will help me? I brought my wife here last night; now she's gone and they're trying to tell me I never -' ("All At Once, No Alice")" | Cornell Woolrich | ||
| 9abe81c | She was ready to be a fugitive with him for the rest of her life - 'Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people' - and when a Parisienne is ready to leave Paris behind forever, that's something. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")" | parisienne | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 41364af | Evans made himself their spokesman. "Charlie and Joe," he offered. "Remember us? We brought a friend back with us this time." Girls evidently didn't count in this little subdivision of the underworld; a miscalculation many a shady character has made." | noir noir-fiction | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 24004ce | She turned and walked down the musty, dimly-lighted corridor, along a strip of carpeting that still clung together only out of sheer stubbornness of skeletal weave. Doors, dark, oblivious, inscrutable, sidling by; enough to give you the creeps just to look at them. All hope gone from them, and from those who passed in and out through them. Just one more row of stopped-up orifices in this giant honeycomb that was the city. Human beings shoul.. | death despair hopeless loneliness | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 180c556 | The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there's suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it. A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that alre.. | walking-dead zombie | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 3a9f6e8 | One of the two owners, the man who had been sitting in the front room, was stretched out in there asleep, stockinged-toes pointed at the ceiling, one hand backed defensively against his eyes to ward off the light. He'd taken off his vest and shoes, and that strap that wasn't straight enough to be a suspender-strap was dangling now around one of the knobs at the foot of the bed. It ended in a holster, with a black, cross-grained slab of meta.. | crime-thriller noir noir-fiction | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 57e1fb9 | The remaining chain swung down, he wrenched the door out and he was free. The last thing he heard behind him was the oncoming stomp of running feet. Now began flight, that excruciating accompaniment to both the sleep-dream and the drug-dream as well. Down endless flights of stairs that seemed to have increased decimally since he had come up them so many days before. Four, fourteen, forty - there seemed no end to them, no bottom. Round and r.. | chased crime-fiction crime-thriller noir noir-fiction pursuit | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 1482faa | His fear-inflamed mind sent the control-signal to his finger-joint to fold back. The trigger sliced back. The blast seemed to lift the booth clear off the floor, drop it down again. A pin-wheel of vacancy appeared in the glass, flinging off shards and slivers. | crime-thriller gun gunplay guns noir noir-fiction pistol shooter shooting shootings | Cornell Woolrich | |
| d00da30 | I saw her sign the register, but her name isn't on it any more. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now they've got me so I'm scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Won't you men help me?' 'We'll help you' - said the lieutenant in charge. Slowly, awfully slowly; I didn't like that slowness - 'if we're able to.' And I knew what he meant; if we find any evidence that your story is true. ("All At Once, .. | evidence police | Cornell Woolrich | |
| ae5e039 | The shears found his throat this time. He fell down on top of them and was silent. Something dark like mucilage glistened where he lay. She had jumped back - not in remorse, but to keep the bottom of her skirt clear of his blood. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")" | dress murder | Cornell Woolrich | |
| f8206b6 | The big weekend rush is on. The big city emptying itself out at once. Just a skeleton crew left to keep it going until Monday morning. Everybody getting out - everybody but me, everybody but those who are coming here for me tonight. We're going to have the whole damned town to ourselves. ("New York Blues")" -- | Cornell Woolrich | ||
| 6a8f0d3 | He handed me something done up in paper. 'Your mask,' he said. 'Don't put it on until we get past the city-limits.' It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a mask but a hood for the entire head, canvas and cardboard, chalk-white to simulate a skull, with deep black hollows for the eyes and grinning teeth for the mouth. The private highway, as we neared the house, was lined on both sides with parked cars. I counted fif.. | horror pulp secret-society secret-societys | Cornell Woolrich | |
| 07ead82 | The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled one from around the racketeer's collar. Tereshko is trembling with his anger. 'Now him again!' he protests, as though at an injustice. 'All they do is die and then get up and walk around again! What'sa matter, you guys using spitballs for slugs? .. | mobsters noir | Cornell Woolrich |