And Off Quotes (page 41)
-
-
-
The last time I wore an animal hide; but this time I settled for this." Eric had been wearing a long trench coat. Now he threw it off dramatically, and I could only stand and stare. Normally, Eric was a blue-jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy. Tonight, he wore a pink tank top and Lycra leggings[...]They were pink and aqua, like the swirls down the side of Jason's truck.
Charlaine Harris
She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain time. Asked me, was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri...
James Joyce
I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter - there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one. . . A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch. . . oh, there are loads of rules. (pg. 88-9)
Nick Hornby
Oh, Charlotta dear, I'd have told you all about it if it were my secret...but it's Miss Lavendar's, you see. However, I'll tell you this much...and if nothing comes of it you must never breathe a word about it to a living soul. You see, Prince Charming is coming tonight. He came long ago, but in a foolish moment went away and wandered afar and forgot the secret of the magic pathway to the enchanted castle, where the princess was weeping her faithful heart out for me. But at last he remembered...
L. M. Montgomery
Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would...
Penn Jillette
Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.
David Sedaris
This is the mythosphere. It's made up of all the stories, theories and beliefs, legends, myths and hopes, that are generated here on Earth. As you can see, it's constantly growing and moving as people invent new tales to tell or find new things to believe. The older strands move out to become these spirals, where things tend to become quite crude and dangerous. They've hardened off, you see.
Diana Wynne Jones
this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from...
Neal Stephenson
Within the Nation, he [Malcolm] explained that his purpose was to present the views of Elijah Muhammad and to challenge distortions about their religion. In fact, his objectives were to turn upside down the standard racial dialectic of black subordination and white supremacy, and to show off his rhetorical skill at the expense of white authorities and Negro integrationists.
Manning Marable
For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust.
Mary Gordon
It is a merciful provision my dears, for it takes three or four women to get each man into, through, and out of the world. You are costly creatures, boys, and it is well that mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters love their duty and do it so well, or you would perish off the face of the earth,' said Mrs. Jo solemnl?
Louisa May Alcott
As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration'...
John Gardner