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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c96bc5d | Garp didn't want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me. | John Irving | ||
| 8db97eb | Things often are as they appear. First impressions matter. | John Irving | ||
| ec3879b | Before about 1900, there is little discernible trace in American cultural conversations of the phrase 'American dream' being used to describe a collective, generalisable national ideal of any kind, let alone an economic one. The phrase does not appear in any of the foundational documents in American history-it's nowhere in the complete writings of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. It's not in Hector St. John Crevecoeur .. | Sarah Churchwell | ||
| 12ba460 | As often as I feel certain that God exists, I feel as often at a loss to say what difference it makes--that He exists--or even: that to believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents answers. Thus, when I am feeling my most faithful, I also feel full of a few hard questions that I would like to put to God--I mean, critical questions of the How-Can-He, How-Could-He, How-Dare-You variety. | John Irving | ||
| 45322ea | I read the passage Owen had underlined most fervently in his copy of St. Thomas Aquinas--" Demonstration of God's Existence from Motion." I read the passage over and over, sitting on Owen Meany's bed. Since everything that is moved functions as a sort of instrument of the first mover, if there was no first mover, then whatever things are in motion would be simply instruments. Of course, if an infinite series of movers and things moved were .. | John Irving | ||
| 9239c43 | It was Owen Meany who taught me that any good book is always in motion--from the general to the specific, from the particular to the whole, and back again. Good reading--and good writing about reading--moves the same way. | John Irving | ||
| 64fa587 | We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly - as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth - the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives. | John Irving | ||
| 07ae355 | We all know the elementary form of politeness, that of the empty symbolic gesture, a gesture-an offer-which is meant to be rejected. In John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, after the little boy Owen accidentally kills John's-his best friend's, the narrator's-mother, he is, of course, terribly upset, so, to show how sorry he is, he discreetly delivers to John a gift of the complete collection of color photos of baseball stars, his most pre.. | Slavoj Žižek | ||
| 557e85c | Unless you were high up in a building or happened to glimpse it at the end of one of the big avenues going east-west, all you knew of the sunset was a darkening in the air. No wonder people in New York were so unbalanced. They were totally untouched by the rhythms of nature. You were only aware of nature when something extreme happened, like a snowstorm or heatwave. | Susan Minot | ||
| ff10cfe | So many things in this world were cracked and sad, and still a glowing showed through and moments came when everything was lit and love happened. Every tree stood where it belonged, each bird had perfect feathers folded against its tiny body, each holding a heart beating madly. Life was a vibration of light and dark, and love illuminated that life. Then darkness descended and your heart was ripped apart. So that was part of it, a requiremen.. | Susan Minot | ||
| 510f724 | When a person you love moves by you with flat eyes that will not see you, it is a shock to believe it. | Susan Minot | ||
| 54633e8 | Tinhas ar de quem nao precisava de ninguem, disse ela. Mas sao esses os que mais precisam, retorquiu ele. Entao nao sabes disso? Agora ja sei, disse ela. Tarde de mais. O saber nunca vem tarde de mais!, exclamou ele. Talvez nao, respondeu ela. Mas pode vir tarde de mais para nos servir para alguma coisa. | Susan Minot | ||
| bf22424 | Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| 412e6fe | People had stances, they threw out opinions, they made ferocious noises, but decisions were often made in a flurry of competing silences, and what was not said mattered more than what was. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| ff8b146 | 'There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?' The voice laughed--'Why you know already; look in your hands. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| bfc906c | human beings were stupid, they circled round and around and finally came back to where they started, as if pulled back by the steady tug of an inescapable cord. But | Vikram Chandra | ||
| 194ba53 | The reactions of others were actually another lesson she'd learned about change. When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against. | Rachel Simon | ||
| f31a9af | I realize, as the tightness yields in my shoulders and hips and feet, that Beth might well have wanted me to meet her drivers because I needed them, too." p 167" | Rachel Simon | ||
| 542fa22 | Martha giggled; the baby was holding her. Astounding. A person comes into the world with a fist--and a grasp, she thought. Yes, we are built to fight one another, but also to embrace. How cleverly we are created. | Rachel Simon | ||
| e395b2c | Martha sat back. She felt her chest heaving, and in the silence that followed, she looked into Julia's eyes and saw, past the challenging stance, the self-loathing, the effects of the wine, Lynnie. And Martha knew, as she hadn't until now, why she couldn't tell Julia the whole story. It wasn't only because Martha wanted to restrain herself from teaching Julia a harsh lesson or because she wanted Julia to be grateful for her sacrifices. It w.. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 23113ec | There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 8a561e4 | And she'd felt an opening in her chest where she hadn't known anything was closed. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 315b142 | Looking back in time was very exciting to me. But looking forward is more challenging--nothing unfolds as you anticipate, and it's the small things, not the huge geologic shifts, that make or break you. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 3afcbf8 | We should torture language to tell the truth. | torture | Rachel Kushner | |
| 157c27d | Looking at someone who is looking at you was a drug as strong as any other. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 67b760c | It was good to be a stranger in Los Angeles. It was bad to be a stranger in Los Angeles with the company of another stranger in a loud shirt. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 55d2876 | And if someone did remember them, someone besides me, that person's account would make them less real, because my memory of them would have to be corrected by facts, which are never considerate of what makes an impression, what stays in the mind after all these years, the very real images that grip me from the erased past and won't let go. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 87d4f4f | You have time. Meaning don't use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don't rush to meet it. Be a conduit. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| cd20e6a | I was not likely to join a cult. That was not the danger I felt in glimpsing the feet of the dead, the bucket from which they drank. It was the proven fact, in the photographed feet, that you could drink death and join it. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 85d2a52 | I trusted the need for risk, the importance of honoring it. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 1d64084 | At the end of Th Brother's K, Alyosha asks the children to always remember the good feeling they share, in praising and celebrating the life of their beloved dead friend, the lost child. Remember this always, Alyosha says, and he means, as an antidote. Retain the innocence of the most wholesome feeling you ever had in your life. Part of you stays innocent forever. That part of you is worth more than the rest. | Rachel Kushner | ||
| 1f43903 | it is easier to like difficult people when they are leaving, or already gone. | likability people | Rachel Kushner | |
| 7b60b39 | It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity. | women-in-history womens-rights | Karen Essex | |
| 9314bdf | Are you ready to be rejoined for all time with your fellow gods? Oh yes, she explained, For not only was he a god, but so were all mortals gods in disguise, divorced from their divine lineage, their true identities, shrouded from their earthly selves. That is what she now revealed to him; He had been one of the rare humans who had not forgotten the connection with his divine self, and had lived like a god his mortal life. | gods immortality julius-caesar | Karen Essex | |
| 49afe84 | I am telling you that the child will not out live the buildings. Do you understand that wheras women may touch the immortal by giving birth, men--great men-- must build monuments and seek fame? | immortality men-vs-women seeking-fame | Karen Essex | |
| 0e7b551 | One must either rule side by side or be subdued entirely. | kleopatra | Karen Essex | |
| 5e0bcc3 | I was a married woman! she said. Why does every generation believe it is the discoverer of pleasure? Your father was a spectacular lover. Even through the wall, I could hear the triumph in her voice. | marital-satisfaction mothers-and-daughters pleasure | Karen Essex | |
| df18d8e | No rational person would intentionally commit an act of evil, for everyone knows that it would bring the wrath of the community upon him. (Socrates) | evil evil-people rational-thought socrates | Karen Essex | |
| b373788 | You must never deprive the people of their belief in the power of the gods, and you must never deprive yourself of it either. | religion-spirituality | Karen Essex | |
| f5debe3 | In the beginning, there was the voice. That was how it began on that first evening, with a masculine voice calling out to me in my sleep; a disembodied voice slithering into my dream, a voice of deep timbre and tones, of sensuous growls, and of low hollow moans- a voice laden with promise and with love. It was as familiar to me as my own, and yet I knew not whether it came from inside my head, from outside me, or from somewhere not of this .. | Karen Essex | ||
| 3d442fa | Ci sono persone che si sentono in imbarazzo di fronte al dolore altrui e temono di dire la cosa sbagliata; a costoro dico che non si sbaglia nell'offrire conforto, mai. Una parola gentile, un abbraccio consolatorio... queste cose sono sempre bene accette. | conforto dolore parola-gentile | Jacqueline Carey | |
| 3692f55 | I love you, and I would choose to be with you whether in a slum or a cave or a palace. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| f942292 | Pride, desire, compassion, cleverness, belligerence, fruitfulness, loyalty... and guilt. But above it all stands love. And if we desire to be more than human, that is the star by which we must set our sights. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 0e285e8 | being defenseless didn't preclude attack. | Megan Whalen Turner |