Some Quotes (page 345)
For in the latter days of that passionate life that lay now so far behind him, the conception of a free and equal manhood had become a very real thing to him. He had hoped, as indeed his age had hoped, rashly taking it for granted, that the sacrifice of the many to the few would some day cease, that a day was near when every child born of woman should have a fair and assured chance of happiness. And here, after two hundred years, the same hope, still unfulfilled, cried passionately through...
H. G. Wells
There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.
Tove Jansson
A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself," Entreri explained curtly, "if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world and one embraced by kings and lords, while the minor lying thieves on the streets or Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others.
R. A. Salvatore
Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions. Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat. On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence,...
Walter Kaufmann
I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.
Margaret Atwood
We live in time-it holds us and moulds us-but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I am not referring to the theories of how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow...
Julian Barnes
I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy., and to teach the offender his place.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Echo Lawrence(Party Crasher): If you were going to carve a quote on his grave, his favourite saying was 'The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.' Shot Dunyun(Party Crasher): That's bullshit. Rant's favourite saying was 'Some people are just born human. The rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.
Chuck Palahniuk
Then he asked me to tell him some stories about India, about America, about Italy, about my family. That's when I realized that I am not Ketut Liyer's English teacher, nor am I exactly his theological student, but I am the merest and simplest of pleasures for this old medicine man- I am his company. I'm somebody he can talk to because he enjoys hearing about the world and he hasn't had much of a chance to see it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Of course, a good meal might have helped; but I had already abolished my hunger by eating chocolate cake with fungus icing. Or I could have gone to a movie and smoked some grass. But when you're in that kind of sweat, the only lasting remedy is to ride with it: accept the anxiety, be depressed, relax, and let the current carry you where it will.
Truman Capote
If there's another writer, like Ross McDonald or Raymond Chandler, and all they're writing are mysteries, they won't be accepted," he said. "And that's problematic. A lot of so-called literary novels are just not very good. They're not well-written, they're not well-thought-out. They have pyrotechnics of intelligence."On the other hand, some of the best writers and speculative ideas are in science-fiction. The science-fiction genre is completely, completely segregated. And these people are...
Walter Mosley