Tell Quotes (page 108)
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Dreamed of maman again. She was telling me—O cruelty!—that I didn’t really love her. But I took it calmly, because I was so sure it wasn’t true.
The idea that death would be a kind of sleep. But it would be horrible if we had to dream eternally.
(And this morning, her birthday. I always gave her a rose. Bought two at the little market of Mers Sultan and put them on my desk)
Roland Barthes
I forced words out: There are some things about myself I can't explain to anyone. There are some things I don't understand at all. I can't tell what I think about things or what I'm supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail, the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared , I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I'm not such a wonderful human being.
Haruki Murakami
Midway along the journey of our life. I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn(the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it. I must talk about things other than the good.
Dante Alighieri
Without his even being aware that it was happening, Paul's face rearranged itself into the expression of sincere concentration he always wore while listening to editors. He thought of this as his Can I Help You, Lady? expression. That was because most editors were like women who drive into service stations and tell the mechanic to fix whatever it is that's making that knocking sound under the hood or going wonk-wonk inside the dashboard, and please have it done an hour ago. A look of sincere...
Stephen King
You know what I am?" he says."What?"I'm an ordinary person."Come on."I know. Who isn't an ordinary person? How horribly presumptuous to want to be anything else. But I have to tell you. I've been treated as something special for so long and I've tried my hardest to be something special but I'm not, I'm not exceptional, I'm smart enough, but I'm not brilliant and I'm not spiritual or even all that focused. I think I can stand that, but I'm not sure if the people around me can.
Michael Cunningham
Do you know what he told me after lying under a cliff for thirty six hours with two inches of his femur sticking out? He said: 'Queenie, I think I'm going to pass out and before I do, I'm going to give you a piece of advice' - God, I thought he was going to die and knew and was telling me what to do with his book - and he said quite solemnly: 'Queenie, always stick to Bach and the early Italians' - and passed out cold as a mackerel. And by God, it's not bad advice.
Walker Percy
Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. . . . I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same...
Erich Maria Remarque
Not even to herself dare she blame Helen. She could not assess her trespass by any moral code; it was everything or nothing. Morality can tell us that murder is worse than stealing, and group most sins in an order all must approve, but it cannot group Helen. The surer its pronouncements on this point, the surer may we be that morality is not speaking. Christ was evasive when they questioned Him. It is those that cannot connect who hasten to cast the first stone.
E. M. Forster
The same source that tipped us off about her and Wu at Kvarnen says that she used to hang out with a bunch of girls there a while back. Some kind of girl band called Evil Fingers."Evil fingers?" Bublanski repeated."Seems to be something occult."Don't tell me Salander is some damned Satanist too," Bublanski said. "The media are going to go nuts."Lesbian Satanists," Faste said helpfully."Hans, you've got a view of women from the Middle Ages," Modig said. "Even I've heard of Evil Fingers."You...
Steig Larsson