Doing Quotes (page 1050)
Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft. The metal point's gone from my pen, there's nothing left but the feather.
Gutman: That may be true. But what can you do about it?
Byron: Make a departure.
Gutman: From yourself?
Byron: From my present self to myself as I used to be!
Gutman: That's the furthest departure a man could make!
Tennessee Williams
Life would have been quite another matter for them both if they hadlearned in time that it was easier to avoid great matrimonialcatastrophes than trivial everyday miseries. But if they had learnedanything together, it was that wisdom comes to us when it can nolonger do any good.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pearl was hurring around my apartment, sniffing everything, including Rich Beaumont and Patty Giacomin, which neither of them like much."Can you get Pearl to settle down?" Paul asked."I could speak to her, but she'd continue to do what she wants, and I'd look ineffectual. My approach is to endorse everything she does."Susan said, "Come here, Pearl." And Pearl went over to her, and Susan gave her a kiss on the mouth, and Pearl wagged her tail; and lapped Susan's face, and turned and went back...
Robert B. Parker
I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put...
Virginia Woolf
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Father! Whom I do not know! Father! who filled all my soul and who has now turned His countenance away from me! Call me to You! Be silent no longer! Your silence will not stay this thirsting soul—and could a person, a father, be angry whose son, unexpectedly returning, threw himself on his neck and cried: Father! I have come back! Don’t be angry that I am breaking off the travels that you meant for me to endure longer. The world is everywhere the same, in effort and work, reward and joy, but...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I expected so much from life and if I had not seen it so close, I would to this day be expecting something. What treasures I discovered in my own soul - where are they all? I have exchanged them for the world's coin, given my frankness, my first passion - and for what? For bitter disillusionment, for the knowledge that all is deception, all is brittle, that one can place trust neither in oneself nor in others - and I have come to fear both others and myself. I have not been able, along with...
Ivan Goncharov