Parting Quotes (page 132)
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What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing exept his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he...
Mark Haddon
The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear
the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked
for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
Herman Melville
Because I liked you better. Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised. I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us. We parted stiff and dry:'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.''Fare well, I will,' said I. If e'er, where clover whitens. The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you. Starts in the trefoiled grass, Halt by the headstone shading. The heart you have not stirred, And say the lad that loved you. Was one that kept his word.
A. E. Housman
Despite Marijana's bracing presence, he seems to be on the brink of one of his bad spells again, one of the fits of lugubrious self-pity that turn into black gloom. He likes to think they come from elsewhere, episodes of bad weather that cross the sky and pass on. He prefers not to think they come from inside him and are his, part of him
J. M. Coetzee
The most dangerous part of lending books lies in the returning. At such times, friendships hang by a thread. I look for agony, ecstasy, for tears, transfiguration, trembling hands, a broken voice - but what the borrower usually says is, "I enjoyed it." I enjoyed it - as if that were what books were for.
Anatole Broyard
Think of it. Fifteen whole years-no small part of a mans life.-taken from us-all the most energetic have fallen to the cruelty of the emperor. And the few that survive are no longer what we once were. Yet I find some small satisfaction in acknowledging the bondage we once suffered. Tacitus, The Agricola
Tacitus
...in their millenial and long-lived patience they knew quite well how, in a hundred years, or a thousand years' time, or else, perhaps, tomorrow, in an hour's time, for it was all a gamble, a million to one chance, but all the same there was a chance that if they kept on shaking their chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles would part.
Angela Carter
He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn't that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn't take money, masses of money, it took a certain security.
Patricia Highsmith