“...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
“Golden hands. It is said that all Poles have them, and that this is how you know your place in life, by the ease of your hands, that whether you are born to make cakes or butcher animals, cuddle children or paint pictures, drive nails or play jazz, your hands know it before you do. Long before birth, the movements are choreographed into the tendons as they're formed.”
― Brigid Pasulka, quote from A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
“His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.1 Emerson”
― quote from Discover the Power Within You
“The more independent the subsystems are, the more you make it safe to focus on one bit of complexity at a time. Carefully defined objects separate concerns so that you can focus on one thing at a time. Packages provide the same benefit at a higher level of aggregation.”
― quote from Code Complete
“You think I’m broken, don’t you? You think I should be fixed. You want me to be normal. I’ll never be your version of normal, Lis. I’ll never be like you – like them.”
“I’m not trying to fix you, Daniel. I just want you to be happy. I love you just the way you are.”
― Jane Harvey-Berrick, quote from Dangerous to Know & Love
“Wherever I turn, I am accosted with enticing advertisements. Highly paid and highly sophisticated ad agencies employ all their creative talents to influence my buying habits. I am exhorted to buy things I may not want and probably don’t need with the promise that I will be sexier or healthier or have more fun. There is no campaign with comparable volume that influences me to be kind and compassionate and loving, or to act in moderation, or to give generously to those in need. The loudest, most visible message I get every day from the society I live in is that I need to acquire to be happy. If I want to live my life according to a different, more spiritually based message, I have to seek that message out; it is almost imperceptible. So”
― quote from Thank You for Being Such a Pain: Spiritual Guidance for Dealing with Difficult People
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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