“It's a long way back to Eden, Sweetheart, so don't sweat the small stuff.”
“It was life, often unsatisfying, frequently cruel, usually boring, sometimes beautiful, once in a while exhilarating.”
“Sooner or later everything you thought you'd left behind comes around again. For good or ill, it comes around again.”
“Him's name is Roland, Mama. I dream about him, sometimes. Him's a King, too.”
“I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small town obscurity because that's the way they like it.”
“They lived in fearful perplexity and passed it off as imagination”
“Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.’ ”
“Worlds which had trembled for a moment in their orbits now steadied, and in one of those worlds, in a desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts, a man named Roland turned over in his bedroll and slept easily once again beneath the alien constellations.”
“Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye”
“How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing?' he asked himself. 'How much courage to go on and do that after you’ve spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, ‘I have to quit these peas, peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans.’'
‘A lot,’ he said, wiping at the corners of his eyes again. ‘A damn lot, that’s what I think.”
“Don't sweat the small stuff, it's a long walk back to EDEN. Carolyn Roberts”
“Hey hey Susan Day have you killed any kids today?”
“It’s time to quit fucking around, don’t you know that? When you start to see colored footprints on the sidewalk, it’s time to quit fucking around and go to the doctor.”
“There’s really no just about it, is there?”
“perhaps real beauty was something unrecognized by the conscious self, a work that was always in progress, a thing of being rather than seeing.”
“What an amazing day this has been, he thought. What a perfectly amazing day . . . and it’s not even one in the afternoon yet.”
“Envelhecer não é para fracos, pois não?”
“(...) as afirmações dos cínicos parecem sempre mais plausíveis do que as dos optimistas incorrigíveis.”
“As pessoas estão constantemente a morrer por falta de sono — dizia Wyzer — apesar de o médico legista acabar por escrever 'suicídio', em vez de 'insónia', na linha correspondente à causa da morte.”
“Of all the things which make up our Short-Time lives, sleep is surely the best.”
“Because ka was like a fish, ka was like a sand dune, ka was like a wheel that didn’t want to stop but only to roll on and on, crushing whatever might happen to be in its path. A wheel of many spokes.”
“O sono é o herói esquecido e o curandeiro dos pobres. Shakespeare disse que se trata do fio que remenda os rasgões das preocupações (...).”
“The hardest for man is lie to himself between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning.”
“She felt a calmness in him now, a centered lack of fear, that touched her heart with love, and with some queer darkness, as well. He was so different, her son, so special . . . but the world did not love people like that. The world tried to root them out, like tares from a garden.”
“Surprised, Ralph looked down at the card again. There was a second number there, marked J.W. “Day or night,” Wyzer said. “Really. You won’t disturb my wife; we’ve been divorced since 1983.”
“Beings too hideous to comprehend, according to Mr. C., and Mr. C. was a gentleman who dealt death for a living.”
“It’s a long walk back to Eden, sweetheart, so don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“¿Sabes qué, Tortuguita? -le dijo antes de salir de casa hacia el colegio-. De vez en cuando hay que sacar la cabeza de la concha... Habla, sé valiente.”
“It's a long hard road ahead for you, little warrior. Enjoy a happy day while you can.
—Boldred”
“We both gaze down at my swollen tummy for a while. I still can't quite get my head round the fact that there's a baby inside my body. Which has got to come out... somehow.
OK, let's not go there. There's still time for them to invent something.”
“The future was going to happen, even if he wasn’t ready for it. Even if he was never ready for it. At least he could make sure he was with the right person. Wasn’t that the point of life? To find someone to share it with? And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn’t everything else just scenery?”
“I crossed my arms over my chest. Jeez, it was cold in here all of a sudden. And had he always smelled this good? Was it a cologne? Eau de Christmas Pie?”
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