Evening Quotes (page 407)
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Oryx,” he says. “I know you’re there.” He repeats the name. It’s not even her real name, which he’d never known anyway; it’s only a word. It’s a mantra. Sometimes he can conjure her up. At first she’s pale and shadowy, but if he can say her name over and over, then maybe she’ll glide into his body and be present with him in his flesh, and his hand on himself will become her hand. But she’s always been evasive, you can never pin her down. Tonight she fails to materialize and he is left alone,...
Margaret Atwood
I got no idea wht a writer of a book should have respect. Or even get the time of day, unless he's a prophet. It's a sign of our present-day hell. Books, think about it, the writer of a book does envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, larceny, greed or what? Oh, vanity. He don't miss a single one of them. He is a peeping Tom, an onanist, a busybody, and he's faking humility every one of God's minutes.
Barry Hannah
I found it very difficult to feel easy around the guy, even once I'd got used to the shock of his presence. It's a strange feeling...the first time you meet him your brain wants to scream, blow a fuse and shut itself down immediately, refusing to accept that he exists. This lasts for a couple of minutes, at which time he's still there and hasn't gone away, and in the end you just accept him because he's standing there and talking to you and after a while it almost seems normal. Almost.
Alan Moore
As for Nigel, she had no wish to burden him with useless remorse even if a note from her would have achieved that object...."Poor old Hilary," he would say, "bad luck"--and it might be that, secretly, he would be rather relieved. Because she guessed that she was, slightly, on Nigel's conscience, and he was a man who wished to feel comfortable with himself.
Agatha Christie
The wicked people were gone, but fear remained. Fear always remains. A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life the cannot destroy fear: the fear, subtle, indestructible, and terrible, that pervades his being; that tinges his thoughts; that lurks in his heart; what watches on his lips the struggle of his last breath.
Joseph Conrad
ll K HamiltonSome days the lion eats you, but some times you shove your arm down it's throat and pull it's visera out through it's mouth and kill it. Of course, sometimes it bites your arm off, and then eats you, but you tried, that's what counts. Some days it's not about winning, but about fighting. If you don't try, the lion will most definetely eat you. But sometimes when you put your all into something, and don't give up even when the odds are so against you, you surprise the lion and...
Laurell K. Hamilton
It was an evening of torment, and I remember only one other thing about it. At some point after everyone was asleep, I wandered away from the inn in a daze and ended up on the sea cliffs, staring out into the darkness with sound of the roaring water below me. The thundering of the ocean was like a bitter lament. I seemed to see beneath everything a layering of cruelty I have never known was there. The howling of the wind and shaking of the trees seemed to mock me. Could it really be that the...
Arthur Golden
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.
Julian Barnes