Knowing Quotes (page 823)
Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.
Jeanette Winterson
Then you compared a woman's love to Hell, To barren land where water will not dwell, And you compared it to a quenchless fire, The more it burns the more is its desire To burn up everything that burnt can be. You say that just as worms destroy a tree A wife destroys her husband and contrives, As husbands know, the ruin of their lives.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.
Ernest Hemingway
![Dorothy L. Sayers quote: "Do you know how to pick a lock?"Not in the least, I'm..."](/pic/247383/600x316/quotation-dorothy-l-sayers-do-you-know-how-to-pick-a-locknot-in-the.jpg)
I think we can do it."But you don't know for sure," he said."No."Geez, Anita."Don't get rattled on me. We can do this."But you aren't sure."I'm not sure we'll survive the plane ride home, but I'm still getting on the plane."Was that supposed to be comforting?" he asked."Yeah."It wasn't," he said."Sorry, but this is as good as it gets. You want certainty, be an accountant."I'm not good at math."Me either.
Laurell K. Hamilton
I didn't want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever he might be! On the contrary, if I was a damned thing, then let the son of a bitch come for me! Let him tell me why I was mean to suffer. I would truly like to know. As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
Anne Rice
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while...
Gilbert K. Chesterton