Likely Quotes (page 136)
With what characters she had filled this lost stage of emptiness! It was here that she would see the people of her imagination, the fierce figures of her making, as they strolled from corner to corner, brooded like monsters or flew through the air like seraphs with burning wings, or danced, or fought, or laughed, or cried. This was her attic of make-believe, where she would watch her mind's companions advancing or retreating across the dusty floor.
Mervyn Peake
Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.
And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight’s play of light, when your...
Yasunari Kawabata
He was in blue jeans and a work shirt, which is another weird quirk of Rich Old Men. Just one of the guys here. Blue jeans and a work shirt, salt of the earth, working man like yourself. Like they're somehow uncomfortable about being rich enough to sleep in a bed made of vaginas being pulled around the town at night by a fleet of gold-covered midgets.
Warren Ellis
all of the creatures were staring fixedly at Boots. She was standing on the back of her loyal cockroach friend, Temp, smack in the middle of the octagon, singing "The Itsy-Bisty Spider" at the top of her lungs. The green spider, to whom the song principially was directed, seemed to be cringing. Boots was somewhat off-key, but Gregor was pretty sure it was the loudness that was making the arachnid hunch down and contract. [...] "She has been going on like this for hours," whispered Nerissa....
Suzanne Collins
they hacked down trees widening rings around their central halls and blistered the land with peasant huts and pigeon fences till the forest looked like an old dog dying of mange. they thinned out the game, killed birds for sport, set accidental fire that would burn for days. their sheep killed hedges, snipped valleys bare, and their pigs nosed up the very roots of what might have grown. hrothgar's tribe made boats to drive farther north and west. there was nothing to stop the advance of...
John Gardner
People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.
Alice Duer Miller
One of the most widespread superstitions is that
every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a
man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc.
Men are not like that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is
the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow
here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now
clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with
men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every
human quality and sometimes one...
Leo Tolstoy
It's beautiful," said Mort softly. "What is it?"THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death."Is it like this every night?"EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT."Doesn't anyone know?"ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, ISN'T IT?"Gosh!"Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
Terry Prachett