Dave Matthes · 209 pages
Rating: (11 votes)
“...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.”
― Dave Matthes, quote from Bar Nights (The Mire Man Trilogy, #1)
“I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting point from which I have never stopped running.”
― Dave Matthes, quote from Bar Nights (The Mire Man Trilogy, #1)
“The piano sounds vibrating from the bar below made the floor a playground for my shoeless toes. Down my throat, I swallowed brown. And thus my heart was happy. And up through the floorboards, my feet soaked in the melodies.”
― Dave Matthes, quote from Bar Nights (The Mire Man Trilogy, #1)
“Brewster Place became especially fond of its colored daughters as they milled like determined spirits among its decay, trying to make it home. Nutmeg arms leaned over windowsills, gnarled ebony legs carried groceries up double flights of steps, and saffron hands strung out wet laundry on backyard lines. Their perspiration mingled with the steam from boiling pots of smoked pork greens, and it curled on the edges of the aroma of vinegar douches and Evening in Paris cologne that drifted through the street where they stood together - hands on hips, straight-backed, round-bellied, high-behinded women who threw their heads back when they laughed and exposed strong teeth and dark gums. They cursed, badgered, worshiped, and shared their men. Their love drove them to fling dishcloths in someone else's kitchen to help him make the rent, or to fling hot lye to help him forget that bitch behind the counter at the five-and-dime. They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond their years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story.”
― Gloria Naylor, quote from The Women of Brewster Place
“It’s a curse to have a mind if it is illegal to use it. It’s a curse to have intelligence if you are forced to cloak it in a lifetime of wilful stupidity.”
― Ben Elton, quote from Blind Faith
“Why has that man fallen in love with that woman? Because she’s pretty. Why does pretty matter? Because human beings are a mainly monogamous species and so males are choosy about their mates (as male chimpanzees are not); prettiness is an indication of youth and health, which are indications of fertility. Why does that man care about fertility in his mate? Because if he did not, his genes would be eclipsed by those of men who did. Why does he care about that? He does not, but his genes act as if they do. Those who choose infertile mates leave no descendants. Therefore, everybody is descended from men who preferred fertile women, and every person inherits from those ancestors the same preference. Why is that man a slave to his genes? He is not. He has free will. But you just said he’s in love because it is good for his genes. He’s free to ignore the dictates of his genes. Why do his genes want to get together with her genes anyway? Because that’s the only way they can get into the next generation; human beings have two sexes that must breed by mixing their genes. Why do human beings have two sexes? Because in mobile animals hermaphrodites are less good at doing two things at once than males and females are at each doing his or her own thing. Therefore, ancestral hermaphroditic animals were outcompeted by ancestral sexed animals.”
― Matt Ridley, quote from The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
“And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Alvin Journeyman
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