Neither Quotes (page 18)
My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.
Samuel Beckett
The theory arrived neither full-blown, like an orphan on the doorstep, nor sharply defined, like a spike through a shoe; nor did it develop as would a photographic print, crisp images gradually emerging from a shadowy soup. Rather, it unwound like a turban, like a mummy bandage; started with the sudden loosening of a clasp, a scarab fastener, and then unraveled in awkward spirals from end to frazzled end.
Tom Robbins
Ugly, degrading, rather terrible half-truths... It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence... Their hearts ached while their lips formed recriminations. Their hearts burst into tears while their eyes remained dry and accusing, staring in hostility and anger... They could not forgive and they could not sleep, for neither could sleep without the other's forgiveness, and the hatred that leapt out at moments between them would be drowned in the...
Radclyffe Hall
Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield.
Edith Wharton
I just can't help thinking what a real shake up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems..." And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?" I demanded. They'd die more like mad dogs, I think--snarling & snapping at each other & biting their own tails." I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolation of literature?" In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the...
Kurt Vonnegut
Lee put his arm around the broad shoulders to comfort him. "You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. "Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror. But that's not the worst. We think everybody is seeing into us. The dirt is very dirty and purity is shining white. Aron, it will be over. That's not much relief to you because you don't believe it, but it's the best I can do for you. Try to believe that things are neither...
John Steinbeck