Little Quotes (page 89)
One had to be so careful...about remembering things. Thinking and remembering were something like walking along well-known paths and passageways that always used to lead to something lovely...but now, the same paths and passageways might end in something dead or frightening. Yes, one had to walk on tiptoe, remembering to look carefully ahead and turn quickly away before one was faced with something ruined or dead. The thing to do was to make little tunnels or thoughtways, from now to...
Kate Seredy
... crystal spheres imprisoning green lizards, salamanders, millefiori bouquets dragonflies, a basket of pears, butterflies alighted on a frond of fern, swirls of pink and white and blue and white, shimmering like fireworks, cobras ready to strike, pretty little arrangements of pansies, magnificent poinsettias ...
Truman Capote
There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another. Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum-total of nothingness!
David Herbert Lawrence
I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink. I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken--a step. On a journey. To a place. A...
Cory Doctorow
In association with the ordinary run of men I have had but little to win or to lose ... My companions have with few exceptions exerted no marked influence on me ... So I am standing once more at the point where I must begin in another way. I shall now try to look calmly at myself and begin to act inwardly; for only in this way will I be able ... to call myself 'I' in a profounder sense ... So let the die be cast - I am crossing the Rubicon. This road no doubt leads me into battle, but I will...
Soren Kierkegaard
Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education--noisy-throated frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until, forgetting their embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little downy chickens and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow-violets and budding fruit trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long...
Helen Keller
But I was right and the real world seemed increasingly nonsensical. Why train for years to do a job you bitched about all day? Didn't it make more sense to follow your dreams and maybe do a little good at the same time? I didn't want to be a lawyer or a bank manager or a goddamn burger flipper. We only get one life and I wanted mine to be exciting...
Mark Millar