Those Quotes (page 162)
The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Alas. What have we done to our good, bawdy, Anglo-Saxon four-letter words? ...We have blunted them so with overuse that they no longer have any real meaning for us. ...When will we be able to redeem our shock words? They have been turned to marshmallows. ...We no longer have anything to cry in time of crisis. 'Help!' we bleat. And no one hears us. 'Help' is another of those four-letter words that don't mean anything any more.
Madeleine L'Engle
... Living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world. What I find appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals.
David Sedaris
Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhD’s, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
Bell Hooks
He had one of those typical piece of shit days. The grind always. At least this time he had the guys to stay away from the bar and not drive home to the wife and kid drunk. He got home and immediately everything pissed him off. Sometimes the way his wife looked at him made him want to kill himself. The way she all of a sudden appeared like a total stranger. The vacancy in her eyes, it was bad. He took his son's favourite plastic mug, the one with the picture of Magic Johnson, and threw it...
Henry Rollins
I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another's child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque part oû nous ne serons jamais sè parè s; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young...
Vladimir Nabokov
a process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was being treated as one of those useless great-grandfathers who wander about the bedroom like shades, dragging their feet, remembering better times aloud, and whom no one bother about or remembers really until the morning they find them dead in their bed.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Look, we're trying to explore other options to your retirement," the whitecoat said. "You might be useful to us in other ways."Because we're not that useful dead,"Nudge said thoughtfully. No," I agreed. "Well, maybe as doorstops."The whitecat made an "eew" expression. Or those things in a parking lot that show where the cars should stop," suggested Iggy. He closed his eyes and went stiff, to demonstrate what it would look like. Also an option.
James Patterson
We ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Thornton Wilder