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Quotes by Novelist
"Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels."
41
"What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely-mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid."
41
"People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have."
41
"Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire."
41
"In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75."
41
"We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack."
41
"The conscience of the dying belies their life."
41
"The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author."
41
"Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible."
41
"The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle."
41
"The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition."
41
"By the Valg, three were made,Of the gate-Stone of the Wyrd:Obsidian the gods forbadeAnd stone they greatly feared.In grief, he hid one in the crownOf her he loved so well,To keep with her where she lay downInside the starry cell.The second one was hiddenIn a mountain made of fire,Where all men are forbiddenDespite their great desires.Where the third liesWill never be toldBy voice or tongueOr sum of gold."
41
"Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life."
41
"A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly."
41
"Secrets affect you more than you'd think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone'll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn't it the secret who's actually using you?"
41
"It's not as if we're running a hospital for sick children down here, let's put it that way. Where's the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I've seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only-if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things-beautiful things-that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?"
41
"It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests."
41
"Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people."
41
"For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation."
41
"Billing and cooing to me is worse to witness an execution."
41
"There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started."
41
"I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course."
41
"Not only the style, but the way in which you don't exactly know what on earth has happened or is happening till about page two hundred - then it all becomes apparent in a blinding flash."
41
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
41
"A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind. Another question: why do some people remain open and elastic into extreme old age, whereas others become rigid and unproductive before they're fifty?"
41
"Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tyson pounding the Earthborn into the ground like a game of whack-a-mole. Ella was fluttering above him, dodging missiles and calling out advice: "The groin. The Earthborn's groin is sensitive."SMASH!"Good. Yes. Tyson found its groin."
41
"January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead."
Evil,
41
"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
41
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