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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 81da523 | Die - you can't do that to a cat... Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, | Wisława Szymborska | ||
| cba6a56 | Astonishment Why after all this one and not the rest? Why this specific self, not in a nest, But a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin? Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face? Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days, And why on earth, pinned down by this star's pin? In spite of years of my not being here? In spite of seas of all these dates and faces, These cells, celestials, and coelenterates? What is it really that made me appear Ne.. | Wisława Szymborska | ||
| d15c729 | The retreating tide had transformed the wet sands into a curving silver mirror that reflected the colours that flooded the pale sea and pearly sky in waves of wonder. The far islands had lost their look of shimmering transparency and become silhouettes of violet velvet against the opal sea, and a dimness had crept over the flaming green of the jungle-clad hills; softening and blurring it wiht a blue, grape-like bloom. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 3820dc2 | Like dark hills of water that mounted higher and higher as they neared the shore, their crests and flanks streaked with livid bars of foam, to curl over at last and crash down into acres of boiling surf. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| dc4e648 | The cool, pearly sheen of dawn had warmed in the East to a blaze of vivid rose that deepened along the horizon's edge to a bar of living, glowing scarlet, and bathed the still sea and the dreaming islands in an uncanny, sunset radiance. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| dd2ee7d | And fortunately for me, neither of my parents would have known what you were talking about if you mentioned that modern and grossly overworked epithet 'racist'. To Tacklow, as with the early Greeks and Romans, and in their day the Venetians, all men were 'people' irrespective of race or color: there were good people and bad ones, nice or nasty ones, clever or stupid ones, interesting or boring ones - plus all the degrees that range between .. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| dbf5f72 | Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Little Indiscretions by Carmen Posadas, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, The Sirens Sang of Murder by Sarah Caudwell, and Death in Zanzibar by M. M. Kaye. | Carolyn G. Hart | ||
| 63a6a62 | I can still remember the shock that a small girl, brought up to believe that lying was a major sin, experienced on hearing such a loved and admired grown-up calmly admitting to telling lies as though it did not matter at all! It stood all my ideas of morality on their heads and left me totally bewildered. But it taught me an early and valuable lesson: that people of different nationalities do not necessarily hold similar views or think in t.. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| f7d1923 | I, however, had not been too late. It has been my great good fortune to see India when that once fabulously beautiful land was as lovely, and to a great extent as peaceful and unspoiled, as Eden before the Fall. To live for two years in Peking in an old Chinese house, once the property of a Manch Prince, at a time when the citizens of that country still wore their national costumes instead of dressing up - or down! - in dull Russian-style ".. | memoir-writing reminiscing | M.M. Kaye | |
| c418d00 | Patriotism be damned. That whole concept is merely a combination of self-interest and sentimentality | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 473844e | A man is not responsible for his ancestors, so why should he accept credit or shoulder blame for anything they did? Or, for that matter, be judged in advance by the fact that he happens to have been born on one side or another of some imaginary line? It's an archaic and dangerous idea and it's quite time it became outmoded, since it leads to a deal of trouble. People are people; black, white, yellow or brown. You either like someone or you .. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 105b68f | I saw on the crest a lone pavilion; a little chatri, it's slender pillars and graceful dome dark against the yellow dawn: the last lonely remnant of some forgotten city. And to me at that moment the sight of the little ruined chatri seemed the personification of India and History and Romance. It still does; for I have never forgotten it. But on that particular morning it was also a reminder of all that I was leaving behind; and watching it .. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| a2f35d5 | It is not our practice to meddle in the conduct or politics of other countries, or to become involved in their domestic disputes. We should strive to remain neutral; if not in thought then at least in deed. And to avoid any appearance of taking sides, because once we start doing that we shall find ourselves committed all over the globe. Committed, as the British are, to interference and responsibility, oppression and suppression--and war. T.. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| b2a9a97 | The sun hasn't reached its zenith yet, and it won't sink until every Western nation in turn has done its best to foist its own particular Message onto the older civilizations of the East. And by that time, the lesson will have been learned too well and there will be nowhere left in all the world where a man can escape from Progress and do what he damn' well pleases--or find room to breathe in! | M.M. Kaye | ||
| c8b7906 | One way or another, all our houses are glass | M.M. Kaye | ||
| b940651 | she did not believe that you could stop loving someone because they hurt or disappointed you--however much you might wish to do so | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 5e2b932 | people do things, or don't do them, because there is something in them that pushes them that way and that they are not always strong enough to fight against...something that perhaps they cannot help; heredity, or the wrong sort of teaching. Or strong appetites that need to be satisfied, and which I--I never really understood anything about...before | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 1af12fe | It would not be long before there were twice as many people in the world as there had been when he, Emory Frost, had been born in that quiet old manor house in Kent. And after that three times as many; and then four--and five... There would be more Restrictions, more Discipline, more Laws. And more Tyranny!...all the things he had rebelled against. There would be no escaping them, and he wondered if the world of the next century would be th.. | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 63db35a | You're the one you've got to live wit | M.M. Kaye | ||
| 4d9d7e4 | He wants to believe that Shakespeare wrote all those books, that Lincoln fought the Civil War to free the slaves and the United States fought World War II to rescue the Jews and keep the world safe for democracy, that Jesus and the double feature are coming back. But I'm no Panglossian American. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 18745c7 | To commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick. | Agatha Christie | ||
| b0e6674 | At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how "presidential" the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the "presidential" silverback's name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in t.. | racism-in-america slurs | Paul Beatty | |
| f320736 | One of the many sad ironies of African-American life is that every banal dysfunctional social gathering is called a "function." And" -- | Paul Beatty | ||
| c927714 | No one has, because even in this middle age, he's sensitive, and if you say the wrong thing, he'll show the world just how sensitive he is by crying at your funeral. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 04223a6 | She was thinking about how her middle-school alma mater was now 75 percent Latino, when in her day it was 80 percent black. Thinking | Paul Beatty | ||
| 878d883 | I can think of a more despicable word than 'nigger'", I volunteered. [...] "Like what?" "Like any word that ends in -ess: Negress. Jewess. Poetess. Actress. Adultress. Factchecktress. I'd rather be called 'nigger' than 'giantess' any day of the week." | Paul Beatty | ||
| d9a9da7 | Winston knew better than to give a heartfelt synopsis of a grainy black-and-white film that had inadvertently touched his heart and caused him to empathize with a loafer-shod French boy, Doinel, the young, unloved Parisian, running toward the sea in the last reel. Winston had wanted to chase behind him, clasp him on the shoulder... | Paul Beatty | ||
| dd1491d | Objection! This defendant, evil genius that he is, has through his abhorrent actions managed to racially discriminate against every race all at the same time, to say nothing of his unabashed slaveholding. The state of California feels that it has more than enough evidence to prove that the defendant is in abject violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1871, 1957, 1964 and 1968, the Equal Rights Act of 1963, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth.. | courtroom history humor law | Paul Beatty | |
| 8a9cee6 | It's like the specter of segregation has brought the city of Dickens back together again." I decided to give my new career as City Planner in Charge of Restoration and Segregation another six months. If things didn't work out, I could always fall back on being black." | Paul Beatty | ||
| 686c44a | Blood in, blood out ... Minuo in, minuo sicco. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 3dcfb21 | Call every racially profiled, abortion-denied, flag-burning, Fifth Amendment taker and tell them to demand a retrial, because I'm getting high in the highest court in the land. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 555305b | Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible," he says. "Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn't black enough." | modernity race | Paul Beatty | |
| 55237a5 | I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks. | Paul Beatty | ||
| cffc039 | Sometimes I wish Darth Vader had been my father. I'd have been better off. I wouldn't have a right hand, but I definitely wouldn't have the burden of being black and constantly having to decide when and if I gave a shit about it. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 67885bb | the "bystander effect": the more people around to provide help, the less likely one is to receive help. Dad hypothesized that this didn't apply to black people, a loving race whose very survival has been dependent on helping one another in times of need. So he made me stand on the busiest intersection in the neighborhood, dollar bills bursting from my pockets, the latest and shiniest electronic gadgetry jammed into my ear canals, a hip-hop .. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 43ad790 | jalapeno peppers snapped in half and ground into our lips for saying "fuck" | Paul Beatty | ||
| 4846138 | This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I've never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly, pulled out my gigantic.. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 49aee3b | I suppose that's exactly the problem--I wasn't to know any better. | opening-lines | Paul Beatty | |
| e5d9d2b | But anyone who'd ever been to Tito's Tacos and tasted a warm cupful of the greasy, creamy, refried frijole slop covered in a solid half-inch of melted cheddar cheese knew the bean had already reached genetic perfection. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 00a2905 | Founded in 1868, Dickens, like most California towns except for Irvine, which was established as a breeding ground for stupid, fat, ugly, white Republicans and the chihuahuas and East Asian refugees who love them, started out as an agrarian community. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 487b39b | I think about my own silence. Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it's fear. I guess that's why I'm so quiet and such a good whisperer, | Paul Beatty | ||
| 3987872 | any day when he could personify American primitivism was a good ol' day. It meant that he was still alive, and sometimes even the carnival coon in the dunk tank misses the attention. And this country, the latent high school homosexual that it is, the mulatto passing for white that it is, the Neanderthal incessantly plucking its unibrow that it is, needs people like him. It needs somebody to throw baseballs at, to fag-bash, to nigger-stomp, .. | Paul Beatty | ||
| 5c4f755 | Sometimes it's the nihilism that makes life worth living. | Paul Beatty | ||
| d29f364 | Both dudes wore khakis whose baggy leggings spilled over two pairs of Nike Cortez sneakers so fucking new that if they had taken one shoe off and placed it to their ear like a conch shell, they'd hear the roar of an ocean of sweatshop labour. | Paul Beatty |