“That was the only decision there was once upon a time: what to do with the night.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring--to strike--when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“He knew and accepted for the first time that things would not be different tomorrow. Or ever. Things got different for some people. But for some they did not. There were a lot of things you could do though. One of them was to go nuts trying to pretend things would someday be different.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“It was not any one thing that scared him. It was everything. It was his life. His life terrified him. He didn't see how he was going to get through the rest of it.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“Joe Lon and Willard slipped out of their shirts. Willard flipped over and walked around in the dirt on his hands. Joe Lon took the bottle of whiskey out of his back pocket, set it carefully on the step of the Winnebago, checking out Susan Gender's red pants again as he did. Then he went into a steady handstand and did six dips, his nose just short of the dirt each time he went down. They both came off their hands and looked at Duffy.
"I'm impressed," said Duffy, shortly. "What the hell are you, gymnasts?"
"Drunks," said Joe Lon picking up the bottle.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, flamed it, made it grow like cancer. And it had ruined his life. Not now, not in this moment. Long before. The world had seemed a good and liveable place. Brutal, yes. but there was a certain joy in that. The brutality on the football fields, in the tonks, was celebration. Men were maimed without malice, sometimes--often even--in friendship. Lonely, yes. Running was lonely. Sweat was lonely. The pain of preparation was lonely. There's no way to share a pulled hamstring with somebody else. There's no way to farm out part of a twisted knee. But who in god's name ever assumed otherwise? Once you know that it was all bearable”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes
“- It's a bit late to say something now... I'll just live with it!
- If all you do is «live with it»... then that's not much of a life." (p.50)”
― quote from Orange: The Complete Collection, Volume 1
“(My youngest sister, Antimony, is still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. For the moment, it mostly seems to be roller derby, the occasional monster hunting job, and getting pissed at our parents.)”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Pocket Apocalypse
“Harlan gazed at Noÿs and his thoughts wound tightly about her. What would she”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Fim da Eternidade
“You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. At least, that’s the way I remember it. That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Don't put off what you can do today because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Sáu Người Đi Khắp Thế Gian (Quyển 1)
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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