Something People Quotes (page 50)
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How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane?
Walker Percy
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
Robert Fulghum
It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.
Iain Banks
I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out. Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn't sleep and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did...
Sylvia Plath
I find many mass cards from the funerals of people whose faces I no longer remember. In theory these mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.
Joan Didion
At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.
Robert A. Heinlein
You know what your trouble is? You're the kind whoalways reads the handbook. Anything people build, any kind of technology, it's going to have some specificpurpose. It's for doing something that somebody alreadyunderstands. But if it's new technology, it'll openareas nobody's ever thought of before. You read the manual, man, and you won't play around with it, not the same way. And you get all funny when somebody else uses it to dosomething you never thought of.
William Gibson
But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going...
Philip Pullman
When will the Home Office realize that when judges retire, not only are they sent home for the rest of their lives, but the only people they have left to judge are their innocent wives.'
'So what are you recommending?'asked Alex as they walked into the drawing room.
'That judges should be shot on their seventieth birthday, and their wives granted a royal pardon and given their pensions by a grateful nation.'
'I may have come up with a more acceptable solution,' suggested Alex.
'Like what?...
Jeffrey Archer