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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 16dc01f | I dropped a word from the string of negative adjectives that had trailed behind me like tin cans behind the village idiot. Unappreciated, unloved, unmarried. But no longer unpublished. | Francine Prose | ||
| 2878c39 | There it sat under my skull with my mind gripped in its tentacles. Sometimes dormant. Sometimes awakening and squeezing. Again I would react, | Francine Prose | ||
| bb78550 | I discovered how reading a book can make you want to write one. | Francine Prose | ||
| 9627eeb | she lacks the nonchalance for conducting deep discussions; | Francine Prose | ||
| 2b6395e | That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. | Francine Prose | ||
| d65330e | she takes me so seriously, much too seriously, and then thinks about her queer little sister for a long time afterwards, looks searchingly at me, at every word I say, and keeps on thinking: 'Is this just a joke or does she really mean it? | Francine Prose | ||
| e195d11 | also discovered my inward happiness and my defensive armor of superficiality and gaiety. | Francine Prose | ||
| 58bee6d | Literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none. | Francine Prose | ||
| 3a5e682 | words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. | Francine Prose | ||
| c4094be | The irony, as Slate's Amanda Marcotte has observed, is that conservatives are surely maddest at and most threatened by powerful single women--the privileged, well-positioned women who earn money, wield influence, enjoy national visibility, and have big voices: Anita Hill, Murphy Brown, Sandra Fluke, Lena Dunham. | Rebecca Traister | ||
| f44d1e7 | The lawyer was a short, ugly, little man. He stood about three feet taller than his desk's two foot eight inch frame and he had dark eyes. Lois couldn't tell if they were black or an extremely dark brown. His hair was dirty blonde and very messy. He looked as if he had just crawled out of bed. His white button up shirt was tucked in on only one side and the other side hung out freely. He wore a pair of tan khakis and a pair of black loafers.. | crawl creepy frumpy funny khakis lawyer lazy loafers pants sleazy unprofessional | Rebecca McNutt | |
| aa7ede2 | The office of my daughter's house is my new home. I sleep on something called a futon. I can sleep comfortably enough. When I wake up in the morning and the light is coming in the window, the painting that she made of koi fish in a pond looks like it is golden and shining. When I lie down on my futon bed in the afternoon or the evening, the gold and shine are gone. Sometimes something looks one way for a time and then becomes another thing... | Rebecca L. Brown | ||
| be4eb26 | Today an estimated 13 percent of birds are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. So are 25 percent of mammals and 41 percent of amphibians, in large part because of human activity. Hydropower and road construction imperil China's giant pandas. The northern bald ibis, once abundant in the Middle East, has been driven almost to extinction by hunting, habitat loss, and the difficulties of doing conservati.. | Rebecca Skloot | ||
| 25b3986 | Letisha also misses New York, and what it offered her as a single mother, even at the same time that it made it impossible for her to stay. "In New York, everybody on the corner knew who I was," she said. "Oh, that's the brown woman with the baby and the dog." This sense of community was comforting, and felt safe, even in the neighborhoods that she understood to be unsafe. One of her apartments, Letisha recalled, was "right next to a shady .. | Rebecca Traister | ||
| 799e786 | I am here to help her learn," Tansy said, "not to keep her from it." -- | learn school teach | Richard Peck | |
| 83375f9 | Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats. | Richard Peck | ||
| 867ec66 | At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. . . . She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do. | Richard Peck | ||
| c0e1fc5 | Then a lady flounced up and perched on the seat opposite. She had a full bird on the wing sewn to the crown of her hat, and she was painted up like a circus pony, so we took her to be from Chicago. | Richard Peck | ||
| 71885ec | We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their wat.. | Richard Peck | ||
| 45c7d8e | Hayseeds we might be, but we meant to be informed hayseeds. | Richard Peck | ||
| b53226c | But later when I was a teacher, an English teacher naturally, my students preferred fiction to reality. They were in junior high, and so they preferred ANYTHING to reality. | Richard Peck | ||
| 6c11dc9 | You are everything that's ever been my favorite thing," she wanted to tell him. "You are my love song, my birthday cake, the sound of ocean waves and French words and a baby's laugh. You're a snow angel, creme brulee, a kaleidoscope filled with glitter. I love you and you'll never catch up, because I've gotten a head start and my heart is racing at light speed." Someday" | Lisa Kleypas | ||
| c7f40c2 | The Louvre's much restored three wings or pavilions, the Sully, Denon, and Richelieu, were once the galleries where courtiers enjoyed royal hospitality and entertainments (and The Princesse de Cleves her secret surges of immoral passion). On a quiet un-crowded evening visit to the Louvre, it's easy to imagine the masked and dancing couples in these pavilions, the rustle of silk, the whisperings of lovers, the royal entourage. The Louvre's a.. | Susan Cahill | ||
| 081ee5e | Whatever I thought right seemed bad to others; whatever seemed wrong to me, others approved of. I ran into feuds wherever I found myself, I met disfavor wherever I went; if I longed for happiness, I only stirred up misery; so I had to be called "Woeful": Woe is all I possess." | Caleb Carr | ||
| b1bb12b | The hateful relationship between Japheth Dury and his mother must, we reasoned, have spilled over into self-hatred, as well--for how could any boy despised by his mother fail to question his own worth? | Caleb Carr | ||
| 18dd4ef | But my cognitive brain fought back hard, telling me that I knew these scenarios were unlikely, that whatever rationalizations she might have for the staging of the four deaths we knew of, to say nothing of her manipulations of other people, including me, would prove inadequate. I even tried the habit that Mike and I consistently warned our students against, listening to my gut; but all my gut told me was that I had fallen in love with a gir.. | Caleb Carr | ||
| 366d3e6 | It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and the temerity to style themselves "New York Society." | Caleb Carr | ||
| ee5a92e | No, since we began this case, another possibility has presented itself to me--the thought that, although my mother cared for her children, their welfare was simply not her first priority. And the real question is not why that should have been so, but why it should have been such a difficult theory to either formulate or accept--why, indeed, it should have taken a murder case to make me think of it. After all, a man who makes his children of.. | Caleb Carr | ||
| b45e226 | troubled than my own--had fallen off a Boston boat and drowned. A lengthy autopsy revealed what I could have | Caleb Carr | ||
| 1148039 | They were members of Maine's very small money class. Their business, as they ridiculously called it, didn't make a cent, but they didn't need to make money; they were born rich. Their needless enterprise consisted of taking people to the wilderness and creating for them the sensation that they were lost there; they also took people shooting down rapids in frail rafts or canoes, creating for them the sensation that they would surely be bashe.. | John Irving | ||
| 139aff9 | The only reason for something to happen in a novel is that it's the perfect thing to have happen at that time. | John Irving | ||
| ebb409e | Candy took the bathing suit from her and used the suit to wipe the tears from Rose Rose's face. "You're fine, you're just fine," Candy said to the girl. "And you're going to feel better. No one's going to hurt you." | John Irving | ||
| 2fd3a40 | I can't read Tess of the d'Urbervilles!" I cried. "It's too hard!" "YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION," he said. "BUT IT'S NOT TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES THAT'S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE'S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND--HE'S OBVIOUS, HE TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO KNOW." "He tells me more than I want to know!" I cried. "YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM," said Owen Meany. "I.. | John Irving | ||
| 8dedcea | You remember how I used to tell you that I was Doctor Larch's helper?" Homer asked Angel. "Right," said Angel Wells. "Well, I got very good--at helping him," Homer said. "Very good. I'm not an amateur" | John Irving | ||
| bc18556 | It had been a startling day for young Copperfield: most of the morning confined in an enema-bag carton; his first attempt at flight; his long fall through the weeds; and then sitting on that dead man's face. | John Irving | ||
| ecd3984 | but I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar--you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace. | John Irving | ||
| 573db8f | We can afford the workers' compensation, Harry--he'll watch what he says the time next, won't he?" Nils would say. "The 'next time,' Nils," Grandpa Harry would gently correct his old friend." | John Irving | ||
| 8b5b6b6 | When the ship suddenly pitched more steeply, the bookworm lost his grip. He came skipping over the toilet seats--his ass made a slapping sound--until he collided with my father at the opposite end of the row of toilets. "Sorry--I just had to keep reading!" he said. Then the ship rolled in the other direction, and the soldier sallied forth, skipping over the seats again. When he'd slid all the way to the last toilet, he either lost control o.. | John Irving | ||
| 91141a5 | Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise. | John Irving | ||
| addd49b | Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays - well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life." | John Irving | ||
| 5b14590 | Ciocia Marta (....) w obronie demokracji potrafila stac sie tyranem. | John Irving | ||
| 90cf2ac | His expression I remember from the first time I met him. Open, direct. But no longer anonymous. I know certain telling details now. Like he can't stand his brother and he gets one haircut a year. He likes Raymond Chandler and John Irving, Wallce Stegner and Joan Didion. That he loves the blues and songs that tell stories. Riding the ferries just to be on water. His favorite flavor is caramel. | Judi Hendricks | ||
| 450a867 | Homer Wells non si sentiva in salvo. Chi mai, innamorato e insoddisfatto per come il suo amore e ricambiato, chi mai si sente in salvo? Al contrario, Homer Wells si sentiva preso di mira e perseguitato in modo speciale. | John Irving | ||
| e7d8b9d | Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. --FREDERICK BUECHNER | John Irving |