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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a0c50be | A library of books is the fairest garden in the world, and to walk there is an ecstasy. --The Arabian Nights | Ellery Adams | ||
| 193f208 | The wound is the place where the light enters you. --Pablo Neruda | Ellery Adams | ||
| b5e7cee | That's my main priority when it comes to food. Other people are obsessed with calories, nutritional value, antioxidants. I look at food and wonder: Can I eat that without having to put my book down? | Ellery Adams | ||
| c29d874 | She also managed to save Gilbert Stuart's masterpiece portrait of George Washington, one of the few works of art to survive the ensuing fire. | Thomas R. Flagel | ||
| ee72dc9 | Stuart Mill wrote, 'It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. | Daniel Gilbert | ||
| 142a9b5 | The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost." - Gilbert K. Chesterton" | Julia Stuart | ||
| d744715 | An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood. | Aldous Huxley | ||
| 234d55c | Surely, she says, encouraging others to lie on our behalves must be a worse sin than lying ourselves. | Miriam Toews | ||
| f476d3d | The city was spread out in the soft darkness, calm after the big thunder and hail storm, still moist and warm like a woman very satisfied in love. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 7efeffb | It cost something: it cost almost more than she could manage to fight, and to keep on fighting, by this time. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| aa70470 | Perhaps we need to know more specifically what we are fighting to achieve (not only what we are fighting to destroy), and what actions would be required for such an achievement, even after the fight has been won, if it is won. | miriam toews | ||
| 877bf7d | He says it's a condition of our relationship that I don't smoke, she says. We laugh. We are tired. Too tired to confront conditions. | Miriam Toews | ||
| d86f32a | Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation? | Aldous Huxley | ||
| d893451 | Bob Marley says it too but he says every little thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 19c1c97 | She went sideways through the doorway and her stomach grazed the man's penis. Then she stopped in the middle, right there between the man and the woman, she didn't hurry through at all, she was savouring it. She looked up at the naked man's face, into his eyes, he was expressionless, and she smiled at him and nodded. She was greeting him, politely. Then she somehow turned around in that tight space to face the woman and she looked into her .. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 5dba244 | I feel safe in the car, alone and protected. I can see people milling about in the parking lot but they can't see me. Well, they can but they think I'm insane so they look away which is the same as being invisible. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 4735021 | During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay. | life loss love | Miriam Toews | |
| 746bfff | My mother and I were on a plane. Before we left I talked with Elf. She didn't talk at all. I told her things would be okay, truly, that I needed her, that I understood her, that I loved her, that I'd miss her, that I'd be back for her, that being together in Toronto for a while would be amazing, that Nora was really looking forward to it too, that I understood that just because she didn't want to live didn't mean that she necessarily wanted.. | grief sadness sisters | Miriam Toews | |
| 8f0cf2e | You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cle.. | sharing sisters writing | Miriam Toews | |
| 541205b | Will carried Zoe on his back and zoomed around on the sidewalk and she laughed and bounced up and down and lost one of her flip-flops so we had to go back and retrace our steps in the dark which I suppose is the meaning of life. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 7a29ca1 | Elf explained to me that she was exactly like this guy she'd read about in the paper, a guy who was blind from birth and then at the age of 40-something he had a corneal operation and could suddenly see, and although he was told that life would be amazing for him then, after the operation it was awful. The world depressed him, its flaws, its duplicity, its rot and grime and sadness, everything hideous now made manifest, everything drab and .. | Miriam Toews | ||
| bdce917 | and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she's talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 650811a | someday you'll be gone, you'll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There's no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it. | Miriam Toews | ||
| d55c4d6 | I think she was smiling the same kind of real smile that Tash had smiled just before she left. It's a scary smile. It's a smile that means there is nothing left to lose. That you are free, | Miriam Toews | ||
| ae92cd8 | I want her face to feel at home on an ancient coin, he said. I want her eyes to harm me. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 8c411b2 | No, no, said the librarian, forgiven for being alive, for being in the world. For the arrogance and the futility of remaining alive, the ridiculousness of it, the stench of it, the unreasonableness of it. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 1d952d3 | He got up to put on a record, vinyl was his thing now. He liked the step-by-stepness of it, the process. He held the record the way people hold records, not with his fingers but with his palms. He blew on it. The music was a soft whisper, one acoustic guitar, no voices. When he came back to the table he asked me to look at his eyes. They're seeping, he said. Like I have an infection or something. Pink eye? I asked. I don't know, he said. Th.. | Miriam Toews | ||
| abf053c | you still have to eat. | Miriam Toews | ||
| cb660aa | She lived in her head and that's why it glowed. | Miriam Toews | ||
| e432bde | It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder--everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched.. | Miriam Toews | ||
| c49cf7a | People here just can't wait to die, it seems. It's the main event. The only reason we're not all snuffed at birth is because that would reduce our suffering by a lifetime. | Miriam Toews | ||
| dd5871b | I said. I'm a maid. I'm a dancer, she said. She stuck her elbows out and snapped her fingers. Well, I said. I get paid. Well, she said. I get applause. Well, I said. I get paid and with that money I rent an apartment and buy food. And a television. Well, she said. I get applause and with that affirmation of my amazing talent I feel happy and confident and cool. Well, I said. Enjoy your life as a dancer. Well, she said. Enjoy your life as a .. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 85fec9c | Our dreams are little stories or puzzles that we must solve to be free, Sebastian said. He was reading out loud from Wilson's notebook. My dream is me offering me a solution to the conundrum of my life. My dream is me offering me something that I need and my responsibility to myself is to try to understand what it means. Our dreams are a thin curtain between survival and extinction. | dreams sleep | Miriam Toews | |
| db1a63c | I could see my mother's beater Chevy way down below in the parking lot and I pushed the green button on her automatic starter to see how far away I could be from something to make it come to life. Nothing happened, no lights came on. | Miriam Toews | ||
| bca58ca | the idea of "working well" was a relative one for us and that in the context of our present lives my mother was right, it was absolutely fine, no problem." | Miriam Toews | ||
| 0d985f6 | Everything in life, except her kids, made her impatient. She had tried to do a million things. She'd wanted to be a documentary filmmaker and then a painter and then a tiny-ceramic-figure maker. None of it panned out. She'd be full of enthusiasm at first, full of big ideas and energy and drive, but it would all gradually evaporate and disappear. She could never maintain the momentum or the concentration or the confidence she needed to get a.. | mental-illness | Miriam Toews | |
| 65eecca | Tash had warned me about running. It's for idiots and children. | Miriam Toews | ||
| cbdbcc9 | None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. | motherhood | Miriam Toews | |
| a0f5001 | When she looked at me she saw a child surrounded by flames, screaming. And that must have been hard for her. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 79702cd | But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf. | Miriam Toews | ||
| d060bd9 | The truth is, I don't have a catchy method of conversing and yet unfortunately suffer of a minute to minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 2f2f3f3 | Listen, I said, I don't think you understand. I don't want to be presumptuous, but really how could you understand what another person's suicide means? My friend asked the waitress for more coffee. I said that actually, now, I'd begun to measure a person's character and integrity by their ability to kill themselves. | Miriam Toews | ||
| e7388df | I find it curious that she hasn't been excommunicated. Are her small acts of rebellion a convenient outlet for Peters, a type of performance that satisfies the colonists' need to assert themselves, and that allows Peters to act with impunity on a larger scale? | religion | Miriam Toews | |
| dbe3f8c | Perhaps all of us are crazy, Ona says. Of course we're all crazy, says Mejal. How can we not be? | feminism religion | Miriam Toews |