Surely Quotes (page 113)
-
-
-
As you are surely aware, our planet is turning on its axis around and around in space. It turns slowly, however, making one complete rotation only every twenty-four hours; and that's a good thing -- isn't it? -- because if our world turned as fast as Gracie's room appeared to be turning, the sun would be either rising or setting every fifteen minutes, astronomers would be as woozy as rodeo clowns, and it'd be nearly impossible to keep our meatballs from rolling out of our spaghetti.
Tom Robbins
C.S. Lewis admitted, when he was asked to set forth his beliefs, that he never felt less sure of them than when he tried to speak of them. Photographers know this frailty. To them words are a pallid, diffuse way of describing and celebrating what matters. Their gift is to see what will be affecting as a print. Mute.
Robert Adams
Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms because our voices weren't enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt happy. If you mix your voice with others' voices, you feel as though you're caught on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann)
Franz Kafka
Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar. [...] I knew one 4th division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him, that could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope. "They sure give you the range," he said.
Michael Herr
They refused seconds and I insisted. And the division of thirds was put on the basis that there wasn't enough to save. And with the few divided drops of that third there came into Rocinante a triumphant human magic that can bless a house, or a truck for that matter-- nine people gathered in complete silence and the nine parts making a whole as surely as my arms and legs are a part of me, separate and inseparable.
John Steinbeck
...but after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter 'I.' One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter 'I.
Virginia Woolf
If our research leads us to a result that reduces religion to the status of a neurosis of mankind and explains it's grandiose powers in the same way as we sould neurotic obsession in our individual patients, then we may be sure we shall incur in this country the greatest resentment of the powers that be.
Sigmund Freud
When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never...
John Steinbeck
Hagrid, look what I’ve got for relatives!” Harry said furiously. “Look at the Dursleys!”
“An excellent point,” said Professor Dumbledore. “My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I’m not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery. . . .
J. K. Rowling