“He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book.
"What are you reading?" Reggie asked.
"On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot's 'little gray cells' will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian's.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“This surprised him, her turning down his invitation to dine with him, and his face showed it. "Katie."
She rose. Their gazes locked for an extended moment. "Good luck, Shaw."
She hesitated for another second, long enough for him to say something to keep her there. Yet he remained quiet.
She turned and left.
Shaw sat there for several beats, a massive struggle going on inside his mind. Finally, he threw some euros on the table, hustled from the restaurant, and looked up and down the crowded street.
But Katie was already gone.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“That's because superstition has it that the first person who gets up from a party of thirteen will die?"
"Precisely. I believe Agatha Christie even wrote a mystery about it.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“Katie James kept waking up. It was nothing unusual; it was just how she was. A noise here, an internal thought there, a nightmare that seemed so real she could touch it, kept hammering away. She finally rose, got some water and settled in an armchair, flicked on a reading light, and picked up the latest Lee Child thriller.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“Shaw didn't answer, He didn't know anything, not for sure. But what he did have was an instict that almost never led him down the wrong path. And every inner warning signal he had was blaring away.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“They rode in a cab to the rendezvous spot. It was a warehouse, which didn't surprise Shaw.
"It's usually a damn warehouse," he said to Reggie.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“And he has guns and dogs that would make the Hound of Baskervilles seem like a bleeding Pekinese.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Deliver Us from Evil
“It is a great deal to ask of a kitten, to defend a man against the armies of the dead.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Other Wind
“Hay naturalezas puramente contemplativas, impropias totalmente para la acción, que, sin embargo, merced a un impulso misterioso y desconocido, actúan en ocasiones con rapidez de que se hubieran creído incapaces.
El que, temeroso de que el portero le dé una noticia triste, se pasa una hora rondando su puerta sin atreverse a volver a casa; el que conserva quince días una carta sin abrirla o no se resigna hasta pasados seis meses a dar un paso necesario desde un año antes, llegan a sentirse alguna vez precipitados bruscamente a la acción por una fuerza irresistible, como la flecha de un arco. El moralista y el médico, que pretenden saberlo todo, no pueden explicarse de dónde les viene a las almas perezosas y voluptuosas tan súbita y loca energía, y cómo, incapaces de llevar a término lo más sencillo y necesario, hallan en determinado momento un valor de lujo para ejecutar los actos más absurdos y aun los más peligrosos.
Un amigo mío, el más inofensivo soñador que haya existido jamás, prendió una vez fuego a un bosque, para ver, según decía, si el fuego se propagaba con tanta facilidad como suele afirmarse. Diez veces seguidas fracasó el experimento; pero a la undécima hubo de salir demasiado bien.
Otro encenderá un cigarro junto a un barril de pólvora, para ver, para saber, para tentar al destino, para forzarse a una prueba de energía, para dárselas de jugador, para conocer los placeres de la ansiedad, por nada, por capricho, por falta de quehacer.
Es una especie de energía que mana del aburrimiento y de la divagación; y aquéllos en quien tan francamente se manifiesta suelen ser, como dije, las criaturas más indolentes, las más soñadoras.”
― Charles Baudelaire, quote from Paris Spleen
“Japan had held 132,134 western POWs and 35,756 of them died in detention, a death rate of 27 percent. In contrast, only 4 percent of the POWs held by the Germans and Italians died.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
“Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness.”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from The Museum of Innocence
“After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from The Secret Scripture
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