Did Quotes (page 233)
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If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?' the king demanded. 'The general, or myself?
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I see it on his face. I hear it when he talks. We look out at the world and we see the same thing: Not Fair. And the only difference between us is Ricky's out there trying to get even. And he knows not trust anybody and he got it straight from me. And he knows not to try and get work, and guess where he got that. He walks around like there's loose boards in the floor, and you know who laid that floor, I did.
Marsha Norman
Emperors per se did not unnerve Miles . . . . Emperor Gregor had been raised along with Miles practically as his foster-brother; somewhere in the back of Miles's mind the term emperor was coupled with such identifiers as somebody to play hide-and-seek with. In this context those hidden assumptions could be a psychosocial land mine.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Squirrels always eat nuts with two hands, always two hands, "arararar", and occasionally, they stop and go, oh, uh, ah, as if they're going, "Did I leave the gas on? No! I'm, no I'm a fucking squirrel!" And occasionally they go, "Fucking nuts! Fed up with them always. I long for a grapefruit.
Eddie Izzard
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock?
Richard Wright
In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their "things," their totems.
Joan Didion
Then I'm a paunchy guy in a room, with a note pinned to his sleeve: "You were alone in the world," it says, "and did a kindness for someone in need. Good for you. Now post this module, and follow this map to the home of Mrs. Ken Schwartz. Care for her with some big money that will come in the mail. Find someone to love. Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold.
George Saunders