“If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“He could have had “dull” tattooed across his forehead, but that would have made him too exciting.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“There is a class of tourists who never seem to see the things they're visiting, I thought. They prefer to look at directions to the next place they're not going to look at.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“Only the French, I thought, could attain orgasm by listening to themselves. It was self-inflicted oral sex. A DIY blowjob.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“Words, it seems, are like felt pens. If you don't use them for a while they dry up.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
Stephen Clarke
Born place: in St. Albans, The United Kingdom
Born date October 15, 1958
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“In 1939, Simon & Schuster published ADDRESS UNKNOWN as a book and sold fifty thousand copies, a huge number in those years. Hamish Hamilton followed suit in England with a British edition, and foreign translations were begun. But 1939 was also the year of Blitzkrieg; within months most of Europe was under the domination of Adolph Hitler, the Dutch translation disappeared, and the only other European appearance of ADDRESS UNKNOWN was on the Reichskommisars list of banned books. So the story remained unknown on the continent for the next sixty years, despite its great impact and success in the U.S. and England. Author”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, quote from Address Unknown
“Но все же во мне живет безумная надежда. Снисходительно посмеиваюсь сама над собой. Ребенком я так же упрямо надеялась, что никогда не умру. Надежда представляется мне слепым кротом, он живет во мне и лелеет безумные планы. Не в силах прогнать его, я вынуждена с ним примириться.”
― Marlen Haushofer, quote from The Wall
“Anger is simply momentary madness, and sometimes there is strength in silence. After all, he is only throwing words, not stones.”
― Jeff Shaara, quote from Rise to Rebellion
“He touches my body but he tears at my soul, ripping pieces out of me that are now his and his alone.”
― J.M. Darhower, quote from Monster in His Eyes
“I knew, for instance, that rooms where people slept exuded peculiarly human smells just as the goat pen smelt goaty and the cattle kraal bovine. It was common knowledge among the younger girls at school that the older girls menstruated into sundry old rags which they washed and reused and washed again. I knew, too, that the fact of menstruation was a shamefully unclean secret that should not be allowed to contaminate immaculate male ears by indiscreet reference to this type of first in their presence.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
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Islands in the NetBookQuoters 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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