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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2297a98 | In the eyes of God, all men and women are naked. Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul. | Michel Faber | ||
| dc105f3 | People and their dwellings were such a thin dust on the surface of the globe, like invisible specks of bacteria on an orange, and the feeble lights of kebab shops and supermarkets failed utterly to register on the infinities of space above. If it weren't for God, the almighty vacuum would be too crushing to endure, but once God was with you, it was a different story. | Michel Faber | ||
| 694a2fb | Let's not go there.' 'That's what people always say about places where they already are. | Michel Faber | ||
| 3f05ef9 | These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It's not like that anymore. | Michel Faber | ||
| b7503f7 | God preserve us from fuddle-headed young men who want money for building cloud-castles! | Michel Faber | ||
| 57c9a6c | Reading, by its very nature, is an admission of defeat, a ritual of self-humiliation: it shows that you believe other lives are more interesting than yours (Michel Faber, The Apple) AND SO IS WRITING...(My own addition) | Rose Vane | ||
| 8305594 | Men! Armchair heroes the lot of them, while women were sent out to do the dirty work. | Michel Faber | ||
| 00f123f | One of Lucy's admirers took to her, apparently." "Took to her?" echoes William, his own feelings for Sugar causing him to construe the phrase benignly. "Yes," said Bodley "With her own riding crop." "Beat her very severely." "Particularly about the face and mouth." "I understand all the fight's gone out of her now." "Well, as you can imagine," he says. "Madam Georgina doesn't have high hopes. Even if she's willing to wait, there will be sca.. | puns | Michel Faber | |
| ea26a29 | The opulence of Bedford Square and the British Museum may be only a few hundred yards away, but New Oxford Street runs between there and here like a river too wide to swim, and you are on the wrong side. | Michel Faber | ||
| 1dcc0ec | Last week,' she says, 'I was in the city, on my way to visit a wretched family I'd visited before, to plead with them once more to listen to the words of their Saviour. I was tired, I felt disinclined to walk far. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in the Underground Railway, pulled by an engine, mesmerised by the alternation of darkness and light, speeding through the earth at the cost of a sixpence. I spoke to no one; I might as well h.. | Michel Faber | ||
| c8b3e9b | Caroline stands at the window, watching Nellie Griffiths and old Mrs Mulvaney trot down the street on their way to the jam factory. Poor ugly biddies: they spend their daylight hours drudging in the scalding heat for next to nothing, then come home to drunken husbands who knock them from one wall to the other. If this is what it means to be 'upright', and Caroline is supposed to be 'fallen'...! What did God make cunts for, if not to save wo.. | Michel Faber | ||
| c349b9d | no, I thought, only what it makes you do, clawing at the trees, splintering the bark like a tomcat, the blind and violent need of it, a joy, but who would not want to be relieved of it. I pity | Peter Carey | ||
| b2af2fe | it was born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice... | Peter Carey | ||
| 55ebe71 | And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the .. | Peter Carey | ||
| 6178158 | Peter speaks of a church at Babylon; Paul proposed a journey to Spain, and it is generally believed he went there, and likewise came to France and Britain. Andrew preached to the Scythians, north of the Black Sea. John is said to have preached in India, and we know that he was at the Isle of Patmos, in the Archipelago. Philip is reported to have preached in upper Asia, Scythia, and Phrygia; Bartholomew in India, on this side the Ganges, Phr.. | William Carey | ||
| 30e6330 | The camera observed me, but there was nothing in my bag except a pashmina, purse, and Lorazepam. I carried emptiness. Doors opened. Another camera recorded my progress. Doubtless there were thousands of my days repeated thus, interred digitally in limbo. I ascended two steps with nothing to look forward to, | Peter Carey | ||
| 011842f | One exhibition to which Tom Norman became particularly attached was his family of midgets. It consisted of two midgets, billed as man and wife and always brought into town in a specially constructed miniature coach drawn by ponies. In each town on the tour he made a point of closing the show down for a few days so as to allow the lady midget to 'give birth to her baby'. A new-born infant would then be hired to stand in for the hypothetical .. | Peter Ford | ||
| ae85f6e | Pritcha za peperudata: Biakh v Bogota i chakakh da doide edna moia priiatelka. Biakh vliuben, beshe predi mnogo-mnogo godini. Chakakh tseli tri dni. Biakh gladen, no ne smeekh da izliaza za khrana, da ne bi tia da doide, a men da me niama. I togava, na tretiia den, se pochuka. Spusnakh se po stariia koridor, no v'n, na sl'nchevata ulitsa, niamashe nikoi. - Samo - kaza Vins Dzhoi - edna peperuda otlitashe. | Питър-Кари | Peter Carey | |
| 32ded51 | Said he the fact of the matter is I am a rat charmer. Thats very nice but do you want the flour or not I can't stand here all day discussing it. I'll give you my two pennies said the old fellow and the benefit of my rat charming. I have no rats. Thats for me to know. What do you mean by that you stinky old galoot do you think I do not know my own house and what is in it? Never you mind what I mean my name is Kevin the Rat Charmer and that i.. | Peter Carey | ||
| 1039e7f | Democracy] is as without plans as it is without energy, as incapable of harm as it is incapable of good. It is powerless and passive. It lets society marcher tout seul without trying to direct it. Well, in the present state of affairs, it is perfect, no? In order to prosper? America does not need either leadership or deep-laid plans or great efforts, but liberty and still more liberty. The reason for this is that no one yet has any interest.. | Peter Carey | ||
| ac1a57c | Whenever we describe the genome we talk about it in very two-dimensional terms, almost like a railway track. Peter Fraser's laboratory at the Babraham Institute outside Cambridge has published some extraordinary work showing it's probably nothing like this at all. He works on the genes that code for the proteins required to make haemoglobin, the pigment in red blood cells that carries oxygen all around the body. There are a number of differ.. | Nessa Carey | ||
| 27eb06f | You're discussing recreational drugs?" He stood and shut the door and came back looking very serious indeed. I was chastened, as I should have been. "Sorry. What have I never minded about?" "Well, I have truthfully always imagined it was my talent, my gift to introduce my friends to each other. Not one I could ever use for my own happiness, I must say." | Peter Carey | ||
| d429a2d | Harry saw his death as if it was someone else's. He watched himself from outside his body and he wasn't scared at all... he found that he could slide between the spaces in the air itself. Ecstasy touched him. He was stroked by something that felt like trees, cool, green and leafy. It occurred to him that he died, and he got scared. He felt walls like membranes which shivered with pain and a sound, a terrible sound which promised meaningless.. | Peter Carey | ||
| fb358ea | I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago. I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather apron, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then. He said, "You will have been resp.. | Peter Carey | ||
| 0ae547c | fulfilled with the grand opening there, on 3 September 1883, of the Gaiety Palace of Varieties. | Peter Ford | ||
| edb3eb4 | A mother can have no secrets in a settler's hut but she cannot so much as break wind and all her children must hear what she has done but now she were far away from Fifteen Mile Creek and no longer could I guess her life. I were told she took laundry and perhaps she did but I am sure she only did what she must do. She had a mother and father and brothers and sisters but in the end she were a poor widow and she had 7 children and all of them.. | Peter Carey | ||
| 417ced7 | So far as the facts in the case are concerned, Dr Howell and I had called our book a 'true' history. | Peter Ford | ||
| cf63910 | On October 11 Peter died. "Peter dead!" screamed Dolly. How much more could she suffer? William soon learned. It was not enough that there was no faithful Kitty there to comfort her in her grief - not friends of any kind in Mudnabati - but William himself was completely distracted by problems with the burial. For it seemed no one would help. "I can't get the carpenters at the plant to make us a coffin," William told Felix out of Dolly's hea.. | Sam Wellman | ||
| 34ac4f8 | And for Peter... well, sometimes cruelty is kindness in disguise. Sometimes pain is the best teacher. Sometimes it does you no harm to realize that there's a limit to what you can get away with. | pain life | Mike Carey | |
| 8c49a4b | All Butcher's previous politeness was revealed as so much bad milk floating in a cup of welcome tea... | Peter Carey | ||
| bd8b481 | Joel was only twenty-six but there was about him the sense of something over-ripe and gone to seed. He was not tall, and not exactly fat. But once noticed, immediately, those large red lips, which hovered on that balancing point where sensuality becomes greed. His fleshy face was a trifle too smooth and the skin glistened like a suspect apple which had been waxed to give it extra sales appeal. | Peter Carey | ||
| eb0da4b | Sex makes a man dishonest with himself, as is well known. I feared the slippery ambiguity of false feeling, of expediency, of things not being exactly true. | Peter Carey | ||
| a338d72 | Remember, this is the country of the duck-billed platypus. When you are cut off from the rest of the world, things are bound to develop in interesting ways. | peter-carey | Peter Carey | |
| 5243667 | He would never believe, in his wildest dreams ,that she no longer loved him. She had said it once, but he would dismiss these sorts of things as "temperament" or "wine" as if a bottle contained an infusion of foreign thoughts with which she had innocently poisoned herself." | Peter Carey | ||
| 20c4961 | She could see herself still blushing and he was looking at her with those big dark eyes, as if he knew. But that was a trick of his, not an intentional trick but a misleading sign. He saw nothing.It looked as if he could see everything and people always gave him credit for it. | Peter Carey | ||
| 37091c1 | At the end of the day the fence were still not complete but my family had witnessed my new strength and they I could be the man | Peter Carey | ||
| 92116d6 | He held back nothing of himself in his effort to please his audience | don-t-hold-back no-holding-back performing please-like-me please-others selflessness | Peter Carey | |
| 4259b79 | People feel ashamed of being depressed, they feel they should snap out of it, they feel weak and inadequate. Of course, these feelings are symptoms of the disease. As far as the depressive being weak or inadequate, let me drop some names of famous depressives: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sigmund Freud. Terry Bradshaw, Drew Carey, Billy Joel, T. Boone Pickens, J. K. Rowling, Brooke Shields, Mike Wallace. Charles .. | Richard O'Connor | ||
| 6bdbd8b | Another time, the souls of a husband and wife came through to validate their presence to their daughter with a very specific shtick. The dad had me yell, "Bingo!" at which point Mom's soul said, "They don't have bingo on TV. It's !" The daughter laughed so hard and said that game show was her parents' favorite. She used to call them when they were alive, and they'd say, "We need to call you back. The Big Deal is on right now!" When the dau.. | Theresa Caputo | ||
| fdbc2c3 | I went to him unhesitatingly. He drew me against him, his lean body clad in black velvet doublet and breeches, with the de Morhban crest on his shoulder. I felt the dark tide of desire loose in my marrow, as one hand clasped hard on my buttocks, pressing me to him, and the other grasped the nape of my neck, entangled in the mesh caul, drawing my head back. He kissed me, then, hard and ruthlessly. I had chosen this. For what had happened bef.. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 2a655ea | Lifting his head, Quincel de Morhban looked at me with something like awe. "It's true," he whispered. "What they say ... Kushiel's Dart. It's all true." "Yes, my lord," I murmured; if he'd told me the moon was locked in his stables, I'd have said the same, at that moment. De Morhban released me, turning away to pluck a great silvery rose, mindful of its thorns. "You see this?" he asked, placing it in my hand and folding my fingers about the.. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| f425d90 | Those who are too rigid in their beliefs will break rather than bend with fortune's blows. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| bb6f43b | I aspire to wisdom, my lady. I do not believe I possess it, not yet. But my lord Ptolemy Solon holds that happiness is the highest form of wisdom." I made a broad gesture. "Today the sun is shining and we are engaged in a pleasant pursuit in the company of friends. If that is wisdom, let us be content." | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 233e122 | I had grown to love the very city in all its decrepit grandeur. I had walked every inch of it by now. I knew it in the soles of my feet, in the sturdy muscles of my calves. Surely the finding mattered more than the losing. | Jacqueline Carey |