“People who think God is on their side are capable of the most inhumane acts. (Petrov)”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake --- one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both. (Harry Smith)”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake --- one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both. (Mitch Rapp)”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“I don't need men like Ross on my side. I just need them to get out of my way. (Mitch Rapp)”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“Abel came to the sad conclusion that he was watching a once-great civilization slide toward the abyss. The masses wanted the state to provide for them in every way, and the politicians who promised the most largesse were the ones who were elected. They in turn gave the people what they wanted, which then placed an ever-increasing burden on the most productive members of society.”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“divided Europe. Abel looked back on it all and wondered where he had made his mistake. Was it when he agreed to take the job from Saeed? Was it when he pushed the assassins and threatened to hunt them down? At the time, it seemed like his only option, but looking back on it now, it had been a foolish and emotionally inspired move. He had no idea who they were, and they knew far too much about him. It was clear now what they had decided. He had threatened”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“The hugely uneven distribution of wealth itself was forcing the country toward a boiling point. Add”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“The Saudis think that God is on their side, and people who think God is on their side are capable of the most inhumane acts.”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“wife’s death. “I know what you are thinking, my prince, but I do not see how Rapp could have left America and put this together so quickly. Who would he find to be a suicide bomber?” “Maybe he blew himself up?” Rashid asked in a hopeful tone. Tayyib thought about that for a moment and then announced, “I have studied Rapp. The man would never commit suicide unless he had to. He would have simply shot Saeed.” “Then tell me why a fellow Muslim would want to kill Saeed?” “Maybe it wasn’t a Muslim.” Rashid frowned. “There is no such thing as a non-Muslim suicide bomber. Do you see any Jewish suicide bombers? Even the Irish during their war with the British never resorted to suicide bombings. The Japanese are the only other culture to employ the tactic in modern history, and I doubt the Japanese killed Saeed.” “I’ll grant that the timing looks bad, but I”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Consent to Kill
“Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.”
― Billy Collins, quote from Picnic, Lightning
“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.”
― Erica Jong, quote from Fear of Flying
“Toni, I barely know you, but I canna see anything remotely unworthy about you. any man would be blessed and honored to receive yer love." (Ian MacPhie)”
― Kerrelyn Sparks, quote from All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire
“And that night he couldn't sleep, but lay looking out at the light June night which was full of lonely whisperings and rustlings and the pattering of feet. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Finn Family Moomintroll
“Work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes undying part of a totality. That totality is human life. Past and present and to come forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens and thousands of years. And has been growing more elaborate, and on the whole more beautiful.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Robots and Empire
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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