“Brisbane is so sleepy, so slatternly, so sprawlingly unlovely… It is simply the most ordinary place in the world…It was so shabby and makeshift … a place where poetry could never occur.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno
“Still the fact remains, he had me hooked. As he had, of course, from the beginning. I had been writing my book about Johnno from the moment we met.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno
“I might grow old in Brisbane, but I would never grow up.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno
“The hundred possibilities a situation contains may be more significant than the occurrence of any of them, and metaphor truer in the long run than fact.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno
“Now as I began to sort through his “effects” it occurred to me how little I had really known him … I had forced upon my father the character that fitted most easily with my image of myself; to have had to admit to any complexity in him would have compromised my own.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno
David Malouf
Born place: in Brisbane, Australia
Born date March 20, 1934
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“She blushed softly as she viewed herself in the mirror, suddenly aware that he was once more behind her eyes, seeing her just as she did.
“You could at least warn me,” she said aloud, cocking a scolding brow at her reflection.
And deprive myself of this side of you? I would not dream of it.
Legna smiled, moving closer to her looking glass.
She gasped when she got a closer look at herself, her hand coming up to her cheek in shock as she looked into her eyes.
“My eyes!” she exclaimed.
My eyes, he said.
He couldn’t have spoken a clearer truth. It was his mercury-colored irises that had become part of her reflection, the multicolored gray and green gone from their familiar place. She sighed with resignation, supposing to herself that since it wasn’t likely she could do anything about it, she would have to get used to it.
“I do not suppose you will show up here suddenly sprouting coffee-colored hair?” she asked hopefully.
No, sweet, that is not likely.
“Well, this is a highly unfair situation!” she cried with exaggerated petulance. “An exchange historically indicates one thing being swapped for another. So far I only see you in me, but none of me in you. It feels terribly high-handed. How typical of you.”
He did not respond, only a soft impression of laughter flitting through her mind. Odd, but she realized then that she had hardly ever heard him laugh before. She was surprised by how comfortable it sounded on him. He had always been so serious, so . . .
Self-possessed.
“If you do not mind, do refrain from editing my personal thoughts,” she scolded, her arching tone taunting and haughty.”
― Jacquelyn Frank, quote from Gideon
“Adamant was clearly not long on tact. Periapt had tried to be diplomatic and Adam had blundered right into what could have been an uncomfortable moment.
But the girl in question just laughed and the awkwardness passed.
For a moment Andie sobered. Because the way that Adam had so bluntly blurted "Like eat her," reminded her that these were 'dragons' after all, and there were as many "bad" dragons as "good" dragons. And, yes, if the compulsion had been strong enough, they would have eaten the maidens. They would have felt dreadful afterward, but-
But they 'were' dragons. This was what dragons sometimes did.
She had to chuckle a second time, because after so short a time with them, the two were now "Peri" and "Adam" in her mind, and they already showed distinct personalities.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from One Good Knight
“If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Algebraist
“its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members “could be dealt with only in bodies and droves.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Master of the Senate
“The method he adopted in building the bridge was as follows. He took a pair of piles a foot and a half thick, slightly pointed at the lower ends and of a length adapted to the varying depth of the river, and fastened them together two feet apart. These he lowered into the river with appropriate tackle, placed them in position at right angles to the bank, and drove them home with pile-drivers, not vertically, as piles are generally fixed, but obliquely, inclined in the direction of the current. Opposite these, forty feet lower down the river, another pair of piles was planted, similarly fixed together, and inclined in the opposite direction to the current. The two pairs were then joined by a beam two feet wide, whose ends fitted exactly into the spaces between the two piles forming each pair. The upper pair was kept at the right distance from the lower pair by means of iron braces, one of which was used to fasten each pile to the end of the beam. The pairs of piles being thus held apart, and each pair individually strengthened by a diagonal tie between the two piles, the whole structure was so rigid, that, in accordance with the laws of physics, the greater the force of the current, the more tightly were the piles held in position. A series of these piles and transverse beams was carried right across the stream and connected by lengths of timber running in the direction of the bridge; on these were laid poles and bundles of sticks. In spite of the strength of the structure, additional piles were fixed obliquely to each pair of the original piles along the whole length of the downstream side of the bridge, holding them up like a buttress and opposing the force of the current. Others were fixed also a little above the bridge, so that if the natives tried to demolish it by floating down tree-trunks or beams, these buffers would break the force of the impact and preserve the bridge from injury.”
― Gaius Julius Caesar, quote from The Conquest of Gaul
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