Once Quotes (page 127)
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Reading Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge's brilliant and depressing book, "The Thirties", I thought of a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. Hr paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam tricked out of his oesophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man. The thing that has been cut away is his soul, and there was a period -...
George Orwell
Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cookies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when...
Raymond Chandler
I still don't know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason. But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well. Hwai dungsyi, was this kind of thinking wrong? If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?...Then you...
Amy Tan
But what about the creatures whose flesh he's carrying there? A few days ago they were alive. They too have souls. They too are God’s children. They were quite possibly made of better material than human beings. Since they were sinless, they were certainly more innocent. But day after day they are ritually sacrificed-angels in the shape of oxen, calves, sheep. I once wanted to become a vegetarian. I wanted everything-and I never got further than wanting.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Voldemort,” said Riddle softly, “is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter. . . .”
He pulled Harry’s wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
J. K. Rowling
Every line from you exhilarates my spirits and gives me a glow of pleasure, but your kind congratulations are solid comfort to my heart. The little strength of mind and the considerable strenght of body that I once possessed appear to be all gone, but while I breathe I shall be your friend.
David McCullough
By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age with a changing world. But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science fiction are willing to wait to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a...
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Maybe people with weird haircuts are like structures that become interesting only after being wrecked - Florida ranch houses half-fallen into sinkholes; bankrupt malls; civilizations after a nuclear war. I feel a warm tragic glow knowing I may be of interest to the world only once I have been destroyed.
Doug Coupland
His embarassment would have pleased me, but once he recovered, there would be that awkward period that sometimes culminates in a handshake. I didn't want to touch these people's hands or see things from their point of view, I just wanted to continue hating them. So I kept my mouth shut and stared off into space.
David Sedaris
When I turned thirty, I briefly flirted with the notion of undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. Once again, I was ready for a big change in my life. Plus, I was having a really difficult time meeting gay guys who didn’t seem gay yet were still caustic. So I figured, as a woman I would have a whole new pool of men from which to fish.
I decided that I would probably opt for the self-lubricating vagioplasty option. …the plus side of this vagina was that it was, like the name implies,...
Augusten Burroughs
Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.
Yukio Mishima
