Grounds Quotes (page 18)
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning - I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this faade—this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no...
Walt Whitman
Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why?
Because, she said.
You know that's no answer. You're spoiling your pretty looks, pet. Come here.
She did not move. He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge and laughed.
Come here, he said again, softly.
So she went.
Angela Carter
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.
Chinua Achebe
Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.
Haruki Murakami
That so many of the well fed young television-watchers in the world's most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising. "Free as a bird", we say, and envy the winged creatures for their power of unrestricted movement in all the three dimensions. But alas, we forget the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without...
Aldous Huxley
In one horrible moment the last piece of the prophecy became clear. So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, As life may be death and death life again reaps. He had to leap, and by his death, the others would live. That was it. That was what Sandwich had been trying to say all along, and by now he believed in Sandwich. He put on a final burst of speed, just like the coach taught him in track. He gave everything he had. In the last few steps before the canyon he felt a sharp pain in...
Suzanne Collins
I'm not a child, Dad. And I'm not grounded anymore, remember?'
'Oh yes, you are. Starting now.'
'For what?'
'Because I said so.'
'Do I need to remind you that I'm a legal adult, Charlie?'
'This is my house, you follow my rules!'
My glare turned icy. ' If that's hoe you want it. Do you want my to move out tonight? Or can I have a few days to pack?'
Charlie's face went bright red. I instantly felt horrible for playing the move-out card.
I took a deep breath and tried to make my tone more...
Stephenie Meyer
The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on"-- only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.
Gustave Flaubert