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Quotes by Novelist
"You don't get ulcers from what you eat. You get them from what's eating you."
5
"Fire's the sun, unwindin' itself out o' the wood."
5
"I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from."
5
"If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation."
5
"In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction."
5
"She also liked to remember that there could be no such thing as an intentional imperfection. People are always mistaking something that looks good for something that feels good."
5
"Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet."
5
"A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness."
5
"A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return."
5
"People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly."
5
"We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history."
5
"It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can."
5
"This change did not bring me into the community of the others, did not make me closer to anyone, but actually made me even lonelier. My reformation seemed to point in the direction ofDemian, but even this was a distant fate. I did not know myself, for I was too deeply involved. It had begunwith Beatrice, but for some time I had been living in such an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughtsof Demian that I'd forgotten all about her, too. I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams andexpectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to?"
5
"Let me give you a bit of advice.' the girl said bitterly, 'from one working girl to another; life isn't easy, no matter where you are. You'll make choices you think are right and then suffer for them.' Those remarkable eyes flickered. 'So if you're going to be miserable, you might as well go to Antica and be miserable in the shadow of the Torre Cesme."
5
"I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern."
5
"I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth."
5
"A woman is always a mystery: one must not be fooled by her face and her hearts inspiration."
5
"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."
5
"The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one."
5
"In March of 1915, all three of Lord and Lady Chetwynd-Pitt's sons'd been gassed, blown up or machine-gunned in the very same week at the battle of Neuve-Chapelle. All three. Imagine that: On Monday, you've got three sons, by Friday you've got none. Lady Albertina had just, y'know, caved in. Physically, mentally, spiritually, brutally."
5
"But I went to high school in a Portland suburb and went to college here."
5
"The second is the structure and source of cults. They have always haunted me, and I wanted to explore the fundamental notion of giving up responsibility to an outside power."
5
"You groan and shake your head, Sixsmith, I know, but you smile too, which is why I love you."
5
"The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome."
5
"Peeta actually is charming and then utterly winning as the boy in love. And there I am, blushing and confused, made beautiful by Cinna's hands, desirable by Peeta's confession, tragic by circumstance, and by all accounts, unforgettable."
5
"A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die."
5
"Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life."
5
"To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with."
5
"She would fill the world with it, with her light-her gift. She would light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss. It would not take a monster to destroy a monster-but light, light to drive out the darkness.She was not afraid."
5
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