Listener Quotes (page 36)
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Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all...
Toni Morrison
There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of...
J. R. R. Tolkien
He saw that the Prisoner had listened carefully all the time, looking gently in his face--But evidently he did not want to reply. The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on the forehead.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
...I know that in your heart you miss all those wonderful moments you spent with my father --watching him gnaw on the furniture, listening to his insane gibbering, and enjoying all those playful blows to the stomach and kicks to the head with which he demonstrated his affection for his wives.--King Urgit
David Eddings
The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you. You can’t say that my interests are special compared to yours any more than you can say that the particular spot that I am standing on is a unique part of the universe because I happen to be standing on it that very minute.
Steven Pinker
1. Total domination of the world by 1958.2. Domination of the astral spheres quite soon too.3. The finding of lovely ladies for Spotty Muldoon within the foreseeable future.4. GETTING A NUCLEAR ARM to deter with.5. The bodily removal from this planet of C. P. Snow and Alan Freeman and their replacement with fine TREES.6. Stopping the GOVERNMENT from crawling up our pipes and listening to all we say.7. Training BEES for uses against foreign powers, and so on.8. Elimination of spindly insects...
Peter Cook
Three weeks and I hadn't slept. Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body-experience. My doctor said, "Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what's actually wrong. Listen to your body."I just wanted to sleep. I wanted little blue Amytal Sodium capsules, 200-milligram-sized. I wanted red-and-blue Tuinal bullet capsules, lipstick-red Seconal.
Chuck Palahniuk
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair. Upon the straits--on the French coast the light. Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray. Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar. Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand . . .
Matthew Arnold
From a translation by Stephen Mitchell Chapter 14Look, and it can't be seen. Listen, and it can't be heard. Reach, and it can't be grasped. Above, it isn't bright. Below, it isn't dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from:...
Lao Tzu