Hardness Quotes (page 114)
it is most certainly Christianity itself which is primarily responsible for the intellectual sloppiness of its critics. Apart from the single instance of Stalinism, it is hard to think of a historical movement that has more squalidly betrayed its own revolutionary origins...For the most part, it has become the creed of the suburban well-to-do, not the astonishing promise offered to the riffraff and undercover anti-colonial militants with whom Jesus himself hung out...This brand of piety is...
Terry Eagleton
My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.
David Sedaris
No one worth possessing. Can be quite possessed; Lay that on your heart, My young angry dear; This truth, this hard and precious stone, Lay it on your hot cheek, Let it hide your tear. Hold it like a crystal. When you are alone. And gaze in the depths of the icy stone. Long, look long and you will be blessed: No one worth possessing. Can be quite possessed.
Sara Teasdale
And then, before he told me, I knew what it was. The old ptitsa who hadall the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world in one of the cityhospitals. I'd cracked her a bit too hard, like. Well, well, that waseverything. I thought of all those kots and koshkas mewling for moloko andgetting none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress. That waseverything. I'd done the lot, now and me still only fifteen.
Anthony Burgess
Judging from the spiderwebs clinging to it, the emergency stairway was hardly ever used. To each web clung a small black spider, patiently waiting for its small prey to come along. Not that the spiders had any awareness of being "patient". A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically...
Haruki Murakami