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Quotes by Novelist
"But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture."
45
"If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?"
45
"He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to."
45
"Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?"
45
"Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends."
45
"In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today."
45
"You took Theo's title and his home," West continued in appalled disbelief, "and now you want his wife.""His widow," Devon muttered."Have you seduced her?""Not yet."West clapped his hand to his forehead. "Christ. Don't you think she's suffered enough?"
45
"Cat doesn't have to work. She's a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she'd accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience."Of course not, Leo said acidly. "My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I'm sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was."
45
"Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold?The tree says to the leaf:"That's the cycle of life. You may think you're going to die, but you live on in me. It's thanks to you that I'm alive, because I can breathe. It's also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing."
45
"I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others-the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."
45
"My tiny scary friend is coming."
45
"Fortunate are those who take the first step. Someday people will realize that men and women are capable of speaking the language of the angels - that all of us are possessed of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that we can perform miracles, cure, prophesy, and understand."
45
"A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining. I like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances."
45
"Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real."
45
"Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them."
45
"Pretty great view. You think they'd do something about the sharks."
45
"The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility."
45
"There are two schools of thought about the resilience of time. The first is that time is highly volatile, with every small event altering the possible outcome of the earth's future. The other view is that time is rigid, and no matter how hard you try, it will always spring back toward a determined present. Myself, I do not worry about such trivialities. I simply sell ties to anyone who wants to buy one..."
45
"Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again."
45
"We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else."
45
"He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?"
45
"How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?"
45
"I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them."
45
"All the fires of hell could burn for a thousand years and it wouldn't equal what I feel for you in one minute of the day. I love you so much there is no pleasure in it. Nothing but torment. Because if I could dilute what I feel for you to the millionth part, it would still be enough to kill you. And even if it drives me mad, I would rather see you live in the arms of that cold, soulless bastard than die in mine," Merripen said to Win."
45
"Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"
45
"It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open."
45
"Percy: Dad-Poseidon: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.Percy: I'm praying, I'm talking to you, right?Poseidon: Oh...yes. Good point."
45
"Do you find this...distracting?"
44
"It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil."
44
"Justice is such a fine thing that we cannot pay too dearly for it."
44
"I tried to imagine how things could get much worse. The gods were in the Midwest fighting a huge monster that had almost defeated them once before. Poseidon was under siege and losing a war against the sea Titan Oceanus.Kronos was still out there somewhere. Olympus was virtually undefended. The demigods of Camp Half-Blood were on our own with a spy in our midst.Oh, and according to the ancient prophecy, I was going to die when I turned sixteen-which happened to be in five days, the exact same time Typhon was supposed to hit New York. Almost forgot that."
44
"Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar."
44
"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
44
"Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family."
44
"I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody."
44
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