1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7297
7298
7299
7300
7301
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1415596 | Yes, Mr. Lee." Superintendent Sugden did not wast time on explanations. "What's all this?" | Agatha Christie | ||
| e03d122 | The character of the victim has always something to do with his or her murder. | Agatha Christie | ||
| b3d8de7 | He is like a cat. And all cats are thieves. | Agatha Christie | ||
| edcb41b | The crime is now logical and reasonable. | Agatha Christie | ||
| e939fc5 | Music has charms to soothe a savage breaste is what the playwright William Congreve actually wrote. But it's part of our mythology: a wild or angry animal calmed or tamed by music. Which makes sense, given all we know about how music can affect the spirits of a human being. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 601df5b | She sometimes has panic attacks before class. Hence the meditation, sometimes supplemented with benzodiazepine. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| dc425f7 | a poet announced to the workshop she was teaching that semester: I may not be here next week. Later, at home, she put on her mother's old fur coat and, with a glass of vodka in hand, shut herself in her garage. The mother's old fur coat is the kind of detail writing teachers like to point out to students, one of those telling details--like how Simenon's daughter got her gun--that are found in abundance in life but are mostly absent from stu.. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 5f6aa84 | I was not the only one who made the mistake of thinking that, because it was something you talked about a lot, it was something you wouldn't do. And after all, you were not the unhappiest person we knew. You were not the most depressed (think of G, of D, or T-R). You were not even - strange as it now sounds to say - the most suicidal. Because of the timing, so near the start of the year, it was possible to think that it had been a resoluti.. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 7abc5ef | Is it true that the literary world is mined with hatred, a battlefield rimmed with snipers where jealousies and rivalries are always being played out? asked the NPR interviewer of the distinguished author. Who allowed that it was. There's a lot of envy and enmity, the author said. And he tried to explain: It's like a sinking raft that too many people are trying to get onto. So any push you can deliver makes the raft a little higher for you... | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| dc131d2 | Death the only god who must come when he's called | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 9e184bb | It is widely believed that although animals don't know that one day they'll die, many of them do know when they're actually dying. So at what point does a dying animal become aware of what's happening? Could it possibly be a long time before? And how do animals respond to aging? Are they completely puzzled, or do they somehow intuit what the signs mean? Are these foolish questions? I acknowledge that they are. And yet they preoccupy me. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 22394da | Is this the madness at the heart of it? Do I believe that if I am good to him, if I act selflessly and make sacrifices for him, do I believe that if I love Apollo - beautiful, aging, melancholy Apollo - I will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead? | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| ba6703d | Another memory. She walks into the kitchen, sits down at the kitchen counter with me, and says, "I just got a very interesting phone call. It was some guy who said he was doing a survey for the Maidenform company, and would I take a minute to answer a couple of questions. So I said sure. And then he started asking things like, was I wearing a bra right now, what kind of bra was it, and what size was it--" "You mean an obscene phone call." S.. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 4963c70 | If I bring him home though, I swear he'll spend the rest of his life waiting by the door. And he deserves better than that, don't you think?' Yes, I think, my heart breaking. | death dogs love | Sigrid Nunez | |
| d0d8970 | I believe we must all retain, throughout our whole lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die .. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 32701e7 | I believe that fear of being a failure plays a large part in goading many women who are ambivalent about motherhood into maternity. That, and the fear of missing out, | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 236eb4e | At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child'" (109)." | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 7c8dcef | Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does more than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read. Rebecca West. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| aa5ee47 | Rather than, say, Toni Morrison, who called basing a character on a real person an infringement of copyright. A person owns his life, she says. It's not for another to use it for fiction. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| f359494 | Socrates to Phaedrus: "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything.")" | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 24aa27f | Once, when we were walking together on a campus outside the city, a chipmunk zipped across our path and dove into a hole at the base of an oak tree. "Oh, look at that," she said. "Just like Walt Disney." | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 1200212 | Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 091e6e9 | You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| b476b96 | It's not uncommon to wish to have known what a person you've come to love was like before you met them. It hurts, almost, not to have known what a beloved was like as a child. I have felt this way about every man I've ever been in love with, and about many close friends as well, and now it's how I feel about Apollo. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 07363fe | Cell phones do not belong in fiction, an editor once scolded in the margin of one of my manuscripts, and ever since - more than two decades now - I have wondered at the disconnect between tech-filled life and techless story. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| e63d950 | What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as we like, who can go outside whenever we wish, and run free - we who have no master constantly needling to be pleased, or obeyed. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 92bc582 | They hold each other tightly for a few moments as the dog, a miniature dachshund, barks and leaps at them. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 74be89c | There's a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog? | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 5d206c0 | Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 47ed61f | Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work. Seek solitude, above all seek solitude." " | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 2158b32 | Why do I think you did it? Because you were trapped upside down in a tankful of water. Because you were weak and in pain. Because you were tired of fighting. | suicide | Sigrid Nunez | |
| 3a69eda | The problem of self-loathing isn't new. What's new is the idea that it's the people with the history of greatest injustice who have the greatest right to be heard, and that the time has come for the arts not just to make room for them but to be dominated by them. | representation writers writing | Sigrid Nunez | |
| 4c86833 | LOL-inspiring thought: Wouldn't it | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| a632b39 | It's always good to start off anything by breaking a rule. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 88ac866 | Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain't worth it either. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| bca3173 | Anthropomorphism, I've decided, is inescapable, and though I might try to hide it I no longer fight it. | dogs grieving love suicide writing | Sigrid Nunez | |
| a808da8 | I Am the Architect of My Own Destiny, | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 40834d8 | Idyllic is how Kundera describes human relationships with animals. Idyllic because animals were not expelled with us from Paradise. There they remain, untroubled by such complications as the separation of body and soul, and it's through our love and friendship with them that we are able to reconnect to Paradise, albeit by just a thread. | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| a2a2ddb | Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| 425be4e | Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who these people? | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| f902b95 | barbarity | Sigrid Nunez | ||
| ac8b0a1 | I like that, well before T.S. Eliot expressed himself on the matter, Samuel Butler stated that the severest test of the imagination was naming a cat. | imagination names naming pets | Sigrid Nunez | |
| cecb080 | Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see. | knowledge observation seeing writing | Sigrid Nunez | |
| f6a0f8c | I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself.... Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world. | animals barbarism cruelty cruelty-to-animals innocence pity | Sigrid Nunez |