“And all those boys of Europe born in those times, and thereabouts those times, Russian, French, Belgian, Serbian, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Prussian, German, Austrian, Turkish – and Canadian, Australian, American, Zulu, Gurkha, Cossack, and all the rest – their fate was written in a ferocious chapter in the book of life, certainly. Those millions of mothers and their million gallons of mother’s milk, millions of instances of small talk and baby talk, beatings and kisses, ganseys and shoes, piled up in history in great ruined heaps, with a loud and broken music, human stories told for nothing, for ashes, for death’s amusement, flung on the mighty scrapheap of souls, all those million boys in all their humours to be milled by the millstones of a coming war.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
“I thought it would be a good thing to follow John Redmond’s words. I thought for my mother’s sake, her gentle soul, for the sake of my own children, I might go out and fight for to save Europe so that we might have the Home Rule in Ireland in the upshot. I came out to fight for a country that doesn’t exist, and now, Willie, mark my words, it never will.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
“I am cold, even though the heat of early summer is adequate. I am cold because I cannot find my heart.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
“He was shivering like a Wicklow sheepdog in a snowy yard, though the weather was officially 'clement'.
The first layer of clothing was his jacket, the second his shirt, the third his long-johns, the fourth his share of lice, the fifth his share of fear.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date July 5, 1955
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“The summer of 1950 was the hottest in living memory, with high humidity and temperatures above 100 F. My mother had been washing every day, and she was attacked for this, too. Peasants, especially in the North where Mrs. Mi came from, washed very rarely, because of the shortage of water. In the guerrillas, men and women used to compete to see who had the most 'revolutionary insects' (lice).
Cleanliness was regarded as un proletarian When the steamy summer turned into cool autumn my father's bodyguard weighed in with a new accusation: my mother was 'behaving like a Kuomintang official's grand lady' because she had used my father's leftover hot water. At the time, in order to save fuel, there was a rule that only officials above a certain rank were entitled to wash with hot water.
My father fell into this group, but my mother did not. She had been strongly advised by the women in my father's family not to touch cold water when she came near to delivery time. After the bodyguard's criticism, my father would not let my mother use his water. My mother felt like screaming at him for not taking her side against the endless intrusions into the most irrelevant recesses of her life.”
― Jung Chang, quote from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
“I love you." she whispered into the rough wool of his sweater.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Awakening / The Struggle
“He relaxed and looked at my lips and then my eyes and then back to my lips. “How do we do that? This is what we do…back and forth, back and forth. You want me, you want him. You love me, you love him. You like me, you hate me, you want me, you don’t want me, you love me…you leave me. There’s so much that went wrong before…”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Thoughtless
“Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words I AM ALSO AN ALIEN. She had on a black skirt that was frayed at the hem, a worn-out black, mid-length leather jacket, rivet belt, heavy Doc Marten boots, and horizontally striped, green-and-red knee socks. She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind. In other words, she was exceptionally decked out.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Millennium Trilogy
“I can smell you, Ms. Lane," he said, even more softly. "The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb."
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Ok, that was one of the more disturbing things he'd ever said to me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Faefever
Life After Life
The Faceless Ones
Men at Arms
Genghis: Birth of an...
Waterfall
EdenbrookeBookQuoters 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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