Anthony Powell · 715 pages
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“She glided away towards the lift, which seemed hardly needed, with its earthly and mechanical paraphernalia, to bear her up to the higher levels.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their potentiality for deeper suffering. Young men might superficially transcend their seniors in this respect, but they probably showed less endurance in sustaining that state, while, once pinioned, the middle-aged could be made to writhe almost indefinitely.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Jeavon's thick dark hair, with its ridges of corkscrew curls, had now turned quite white, the Charlie Chaplin moustache remaining black. This combination of tones for some reason gave him an oddly Italian appearance, enhanced by blue overalls, obscurely suggesting a railway porter at a station in Italy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Esteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will - implies a kind of innocence.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Bring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Entering the front door, you were at once assailed by a nightmare of cheerlessness and squalor, all the sordid melancholy, at its worst, of any nest of bedrooms where only men sleep;”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“His woolly grey hair, short thick body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant's tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
“Quería a Stefan. Y a Damon su orgullo jamás le permitiría pedirle a Elena lo que sólo él deseaba, e igualmente tampoco le permitiría tomarlo sin que ella consintiera... O eso esperaba.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from Shadow Souls
“ASAP. Whatever that means. It must mean, 'Act swiftly awesome pacyderm!”
― Dr. Seuss, quote from Horton Hears a Who!
“Are you free to be anything more than a friend to me? If," and she stressed the if heavily, "I ever decided to live in Avalon and wanted to be with you, would you be free enough to do that?"
He looked away, and Laurel could tell he'd been avoiding a conversation like this.
"Well?" she insisted.
"If you wanted it," he finally said.
"If I wanted it?"
He nodded. "I'm not allowed to ask. You would have to ask me."
Her breath caught in her chest, and Tamani looked at her.
"Why do you think David bothers me so much?"
Laurel looked down at her lap.
"I can't just storm in and proclaim my intentions. I can't 'steal' you away. I just have to wait and hope that, someday, you'll ask."
"And if I don't?" Laurel said, her voice barley above a whisper.
"Then I guess I'll wait forever.”
― Aprilynne Pike, quote from Spells
“I think I'm losing it—I don't know what's happening, what happened, but I look at you, I look at you, and I love you so much. Not because of anything you've said, or done, or anything at all. I look at you, and I just love you, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me what I would do for you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Never Fade
“Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
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