Hands Up Quotes (page 17)
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How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose."It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow."Where do the lead?"To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall."Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.
Haruki Murakami
A long time back, she thought, I dreamed a dream, and was enjoying it so much when someone wakened me, and that day I was born. And now? Now, let me see...She cast her mind back. Where was I? she thought. Ninety years...how to take up the thread and the pattern of that lost dream again? She put out a small hand. There...yes, that was it. She smiled. Deeper in the warm snow hill she turned her head upon her pillow. That was better. Now, yes, now she saw it shaping in her mind quietly, and with...
Ray Bradbury
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
Seth Godin
Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's...
Barbara Kingsolver
sometimes i'd wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. i'd get out of bed, go to the kitchen, and pour myself a whiskey. glass in hand, i'd look down at the darkened cemetary across teh way and the headlights of the cars on the road. the moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. if i could cry, it might make things easier. but what would i cry over? i was too self centered to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.
Haruki Murakami
Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. ...
William Golding
What were you asleep? Helen would say as I opened the door. "I've been up since five." In her hand would be aluminum tray covered with foil, either that or a saucepan with a lid on it."Well," I'd tell her, "I didn't go to bed until three."I didn't go to bed until three thirty."This was how it was with her: If you got fifteen minutes of sleep, she got only ten. If you had a cold, she had the flu. If you'd dodged a bullet, she'd dodged five. Blindfolded. After my mother's funeral, I...
David Sedaris
Sam [Raimi] wanted the climactic sword fight to play out as elegantly as a Fred Astaire movie and he wanted it all in one crane shot. I must have rehearsed the routine for three weeks, but when it came time to shoot, the rigors of running up and down steps, fighting with both hands, and flipping skeletons over my head was too much to pull off without cuts. After ten takes, I knew Sam was pissed off, because he yanked the bullhorn from John Cameron.
Bruce Campbell
Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again.
David Sedaris
When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I lay there steeping myself into silence when, out of nowhere, I thought of the time Kizuki and I took a motorcycle trip. That had been autumn too, I realized. Autumn how many years ago? Yes, four years ago. I recalled the small of Kizuki's leather jacket and the racket made by that red Yamaha 125cc bike. We went to a spot far down the coast, and came back the same evening, exhausted. Nothing special happened on that trip, but I...
Haruki Murakami
Children...wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride,; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just...
Annie Dillard