“...because once you've got one scar on your face or your heart, its only a matter of time before someone gives you another - and another - until a day doesn't go by when you aren't being bashed senseless, nor a town that you haven't been run out of, and you get to be such a goddamn mess that finally it doesn't feel right unless you're getting the Christ beaten out of you - amd within a year of that first damming fall, those first down borne fists, your first run out, you wind up with flies buzzing around your eyes, back at the same place, the same town, deader than when you left, bobbiong around in the swill - a dirty deadbeat whore in a roadside ditch. But a little part of you deosn't die. A little part of you lives on. And you make an orphan of that corrupt and contemtible part, dumping it right smack in the laps of the ones who first robbed you of your sweetness, for it is the wicked fruit of their crimes, it is their blood, their sin, it belongs there, this child of blood, this spawn of sin...”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“And Satan sighed and shook his head, played harp amongst the flames. ‘It’s Hell up there in Heaven too, for all that that is worth. Heaven is just a lie of mine to make it Hell on Earth.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“Listen, ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a dirty maggot for a brain.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“And I know why our friendship must be kept a secret. Or they will kill You like they killed You in the Bible. And then we could not be together. If not for them we would live in this valley together. As best friends. But we must be careful, Jesus. I think I would die if anything happened to You...' - she cried ah think, for ah could hear her little sobs as she spoke - '...just close my eyes and die.' And she let fall a heavy tear, and it passed through the slats and exploded upon mah face, just below the right cheek. And as the droplet began to roll, ah caught it with mah tongue. And ah was shocked momentarily by that tear's sweetness, having known them only as bitter things - only bitter things - always bitter things.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“Mummy was a swine: a scum-cunted, likkered-up, brain-sick swine. She was lazy and slothful and dirty and belligerent and altogether evil. Ma was a soak - a drunk - a piss-eyed hell-bag with a taste for the homebrew.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“Found in a small stone cave bitten from the roadside, stitchless save for his great outsized boots and a plague of flies, fat on the human scrappage of dinners long past, Toad squatted in the slitted stomach of a warm child, eating loudly the face of her hapless, headless father, who sat a good foot off the ground impaled up the ass on a pointed post.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“Humming softly with the child asleep in his arms, Sardus Swift looked to the winking stars and saw the moon - a smirk on the face of heaven - as he made his way home.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“Comatose, Pa's wife, the slobstress, buried an armchair beneath her bulk.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Macbeth
“Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ”
― Jane Austen, quote from Emma
“What Rangers do, or more correctly, what Rangers’ apprentices do, is the housework.”
Will had a sinking feeling as the suspicion struck him that he’d made a tactical error. “The…housework?” he repeated. Halt nodded, looking distinctly pleased with himself.
“That’s right. Take a look around.” He paused, gesturing around the interior of the cabin for Will to do as he suggested, then continued, “See ay servants?”
“No, sir,” Will said slowly.
“No sir indeed!” Halt said. “Because this isn’t a mighty castle with a staff of servants. This is a lowly cabin. And it has water to be fetched and firewood to be chopped and floors to be swept and rugs to be beaten. And who do you suppose might do all those things, boy?”
Will tried to think of some answer other than the one which now seemed inevitable. Nothing came to mind, so he finally said, in a defeated tone, “Would that be me, sir?”
“I believe it would be,” the Ranger told him, then rattled off a list of instructions crisply. “Bucket there. Barrel outside the door. Water in the river. Ax in the lean-to, firewood behind the cabin. Broom by the door and I believe you can probably see where the floor might be?”
“Yes, sir,” said Will, beginning to roll up his sleeves.”
― John Flanagan, quote from The Ruins of Gorlan
“I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.”
― Pierce Brown, quote from Red Rising
“She gives him what he can only call a sweet smile. 'So you are determined to go on being bad. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I promise, no one will ask you to change.”
― J.M. Coetzee, quote from Disgrace
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