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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e333978 | as his mother told Grandma Marie, there are no words for some | Chris Abani | ||
| 2ebab40 | Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? | Bertrand Russell | ||
| 7c7c714 | Something that had the quality of a dimly lit stage set just before the curtains rise on opening night. There was a rhythm to it, a beckoning, and a bittersweet tear in time. | Chris Abani | ||
| b58f6de | Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, Fire said, a sideshow is a confrontation. | Chris Abani | ||
| c36fa08 | Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression-how long before the pot boiled over. | Chris Abani | ||
| 7ff6713 | Do you think anything ever changes, Salazar asked. That we can make a difference? That we will become a better species? I don't know, I'm not sure if it even matters. I think all that matters is that we don't shrink away from the truth and that we keep trying, Sunil said. I like that. Push the stone up the fucking hill because we should. Yes, | Chris Abani | ||
| 4c9ba5a | I would say it is because the striving and the power keep you from realizing just how helpless you really are. It protects you from facing the fact that others are manipulating you, that regardless of what you might claim, your philosophy is simply a way to rationalize what you do for others too afraid to do their own dirty work; that you are in a way also a victim of the apartheid state. You | Chris Abani | ||
| 0d0c53a | It is easy to forget the decadence of glass. How some of us find it only in fragments. The glass between us and the world is often the measure of our wealth. Looking out at the world through it colors the hunger beyond. | Chris Abani | ||
| bf99d2f | I watch what happens below and I am grateful that I can smell my smell, smell my smell and live while below me it happens, it happens that night bright as day, but I cannot name it, those things that happened while I watched, and I cannot speak something that was never in words, speak of things I cannot imagine, could never have seen even as I saw it, and I hide and am grateful for my smell crouched like an animal in that dark hot space | Chris Abani | ||
| a4b0505 | There are no easy ways to speak these words. No way to honor love and truth without something getting lost in translation. It is made even more complex when one party is dead, silent to this world. And how do you tell a story that is commonplace and felt by all without giving in to sentimentality? But the thing is that, in the end, we each must decide how comfortable we are with how much we hurt other people. | Chris Abani | ||
| 86ce5c7 | Elvis, take de passport. You know I myself no go ever go America,' Redemption said. 'Why?' 'Because dis na my home. I be area boy, alaye. I no go fit for States. | Chris Abani | ||
| f5fce6b | blacks. As in any free market, the coloreds were the middle classes, as it were--those who would give their lives to maintain the status quo, a life they knew they could never improve but which had meaning only because there were those who suffered worse; that in fact, a larger population suffered worse. | Chris Abani | ||
| 8bd14f8 | There was a revealing moment in the first presidential debate in September 2008, moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates, ''Are you willing to acknowledge, both of this financial crisis is going to affect the way you rule the country as president of the States?''Neither McCain nor Obama objected to Lehrer's phrasing. Both, it seemed, perfectly comfortable with the idea that it's the president's job to ''rule the country. | presidential-debates us-politics us-presidency | Gene Healy | |
| 6d24d0c | Mr. Halstead. I'm going to go spread the great news. Dr. Tonganoxie and Dr. Severy and everybody else will be so pleased. | Jim Lehrer | ||
| 042637a | Here was an entry - a serious one - which he hadn't crossed out in years. He couldn't remember where it came from. He never recorded the writer or the source: he didn't want to be bullied by reputation; truth should stand by itself, clear and unsupported. This one went: 'In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster once you give yourself over to it entirely.' Yes, that deserved to stay. He liked the proper inclusivity of .. | love marriage | Julian Barnes | |
| 3e77b95 | naperenoto mi bezrazlichie se prev'rna v'v vbeseno unizhenie. V'ztsari se angliisko m'lchanie - takova, prez koeto i dvete strani idealno razbirat vsichki neizrecheni dumi. Legnakh si i se narevakh. Poveche ne se spomena za tozi sluchai. | Julian Barnes | ||
| a472d5a | Learnt how to pass the time. That's one of the things about life. We're all just looking for a place of safety. And if you don't find one, then you have to learn how to pass the time. | Julian Barnes | ||
| fd25c1c | To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name. | Bertrand Russell | ||
| bca5b1d | And even in circumstances less critical, women were almost always welcomed in new enterprises that hadn't yet become either prestigious or profitable--whether it was early radio or early cattle drives. | Gail Collins | ||
| 8da9ca3 | Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. | Bertrand Russell | ||
| 705c6c8 | In art [the Chinese] aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable. | Bertrand Russell | ||
| 4215d31 | I have this theory actually, that after an absence you discover in that first glimpse what you really think and feel about another person. You know things you couldn't know before | Anne Rampling ; Anne Rice | ||
| a4659c3 | I have this theory that actually, after an absence you discover in that first glimpse what you really think and feel about another person. You know things you couldn't know before. | Anne Rampling ; Anne Rice | ||
| 57e5387 | What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 25b7a42 | The government had been talking about sexually transmitted disease. But it was the same with words: they too could be sexually transmitted. | sex | Julian Barnes | |
| 3d8ef7e | Perhaps a sense of death is like a sense of humour. We all think the one we've got - or haven't got - is just about right, and appropriate to the proper understanding of life. It's everyone else who's out of step. | humour julian-barnes | Julian Barnes | |
| 89bab13 | the romantic, spendthrift moral act is ultimately the practical one--the practical, expendient, cozy-dog move is the one that comes to grief. | Anton Myrer | ||
| 663ada0 | La principal caracteristica del remordimiento es que no tiene remedio: que ha pasado el tiempo de las disculpas o enmiendas | Julian Barnes | ||
| 7927b96 | How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves. Dear | Julian Barnes | ||
| 31fecfb | If the statistics of happiness depend on personal reporting, how can we be sure that anyone is as happy as they claim to be? What if they aren't telling the truth? No, we have to assume that they are, or at least that the testing system allows for lying. So the real question lay beneath: assuming that those canvassed by anthropologists and sociologists are reliable witnesses, then surely 'being happy' is the same as 'reporting yourself happ.. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 8cc972d | I didn't want to press Veronica. I thought I'd wait for her to get in touch this time. I checked my inbox rather too assiduously. Of course, I wasn't expecting a great effusion, but hoped, perhaps, for a polite message that it had been nice to see me properly after all these years. Well, perhaps it hadn't been. Perhaps she'd gone on a trip. Perhaps her server was down. Who said that thing about the eternal hopefulness of the human heart? | Julian Barnes | ||
| 7aed1c5 | My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it's not pointless in terms of pleasure. | reading | Julian Barnes | |
| 399afce | He never married, and he never learned to dance. He was so resistant to dancing that most of the principal male characters in his novels take sympathetic action and refuse to dance as well. | Julian Barnes | ||
| d8d613a | The present looks back at some great figure of an earlier century and wonders, Was he on our side? Was he a goodie? What a lack of self-confidence this implies: the present wants both to patronise the past by adjudicating on its political acceptability, and also to be flattered by it, to be patted on the back and told to keep up the good work. | present self-confidence | Julian Barnes | |
| f201e11 | Belki de her turlu ortak motifi ortadan kaldiran keder daha da fazlasini ortadan kaldiriyor: ortak motiflerin var olduguna olan inanci. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 3f8ba74 | It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, | Julian Barnes | ||
| 461d037 | Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn't love. I don't know what you call it instead, but it isn't love. | Julian Barnes | ||
| d61a296 | When it comes to the dead, it is hard to retain, or posthumously acquire, treasuredom. Being a Great Writer in itself has little to do with the matter. The important factors are: 1) An ambassadorial quality, an ability to present the nation to itself, and represent it abroad, in a way it wishes to be presented and represented. 2) An element of malleability and interpretability. The malleability allows the writer to be given a more appealing.. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 3e89ac0 | We all know objective truth is not obtainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a multiplicity of subjective truths which we assess and then fabulate into history, into some God-eyed version of what 'really' happened. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 6b39984 | Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. | Bertrand Russell | ||
| ac6263f | For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 0073b09 | We were essentially taking the piss, except when we were serious. He was essentially serious, except when he was taking the piss. It took us a while to work this out. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 4d34dd5 | Dingen die eenmaal weg zijn, kunnen niet teruggehaald worden, dat wist hij nu wel. Een klap, eenmaal uitgedeeld, kan niet worden ingetrokken. Woorden, eenmaal uitgesproken, kunnen niet onuitgesproken worden gemaakt. We mogen verdergaan alsof er niets verloren, niets gedaan, niets gezegd is, we mogen beweren het allemaal te vergeten, maar ons diepste wezen vergeet niet, omdat we voor altijd veranderd zijn. | relationships | Julian Barnes | |
| 25390a8 | I can see there might be a positive side to this wilful averting of the eye: ignoring the bad things makes it easier for you to carry on. But ignoring the bad things makes you end up believing that bad things never happen. You are always surprised by them. It surprises you that guns kill, that money corrupts, that snow falls in winter. Such naivety can be charming; alas, it can also be perilous. | Julian Barnes |