Big Quotes (page 57)
... we contemplated the stars beyond the Moon, big as pieces of fruit, made of light, ripened on the curved branches of the sky, and everything exceeded my most luminous hopes, and yet, and yet, it was, instead, exile. I thought only of the Earth. It was the Earth that caused each of us to be that someone he was rather than someone else; up there, wrested from the Earth, it was as if I were no longer that I, not she that She for me.
Italo Calvino
Back to the books. The world’s largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang—it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that planning, all those expectations—then nothing. Now it just sits there in Russia, a big metallic symbol of failure. I have a moment of silence for the silent bell.
A. J. Jacobs
Automobile in America, Chromium steel in America, Wire-spoke wheel in America, Very big deal in America! Immigrant goes to America, Many hellos in America, Nobody knows in America, Puerto Rico's in America! I like the shores of America! Comfort is yours in America! Knobs on the doors in America! Wall-to-wall floors in America!
Stephen Sondheim
if Jesus had stooped to play politics he might have become a key man in Roman Judea, a big operator. It was because he was indifferent to politics, and made his indifference clear, that he was liquidated. How to live one's life outside politics, and one's death too: that was the example he set for his followers.
J. M. Coetzee
614246"... in an airport in '64, Goldwater said, 'Well, keep punching, Hubert' during a chance meeting there. By the end of 1977, it became increasingly clear that the Boss (Hubert Humphrey) would not be around much longer. And on the Senate floor one day, Barry Goldwater walked across the aisle and enveloped Hubert Humphrey. Goldwater was so big and Humphrey so frail that Humphrey almost disappeared. The two men stood for a long moment, locked in a hug, and I could see that both men were...
Joe Biden
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.
Tennessee Williams
The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface; he would never leave the bottom of this shaft, and he would go mad there drinking blood and eating human flesh, without ever being able to die. Up there, against the sky, there were good angels with ropes, and bad angels with grenades and rifles, and a big old man with a white beard who waved his arms but could not save him.
Italo Calvino