Judith Merkle Riley · 609 pages
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“I could feel something cold stalking my heart. It was fear. They all begin this way, I thought, with pledges of love.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“After all, he meant well. Foreigners never seem to understand how little attraction an island of damp fogs, cut off from civilization, and a provincial little court has for us Parisians, who inhabit the most cultivated, powerful monarchy in the world.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“Daughter, your presence is a stay and consolation to me. Begin again in the Tenth Book; tell me, how does Aristotle define true happiness?” “Father, he tells us that true happiness is found in contemplation, whereas the common idea of happiness as pleasant amusements is fostered by the courts of tyrants.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“Why the Romans, Father?” I asked him one afternoon. “Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead,” he answered.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“Are you aware of the penalties reserved for freethinkers? I could send you to the block. Good.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“I mistrust mountebanks—especially of the female variety.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from La Jeune Fille aux Oracles
“Knuckleballers don't keep secrets. It's as if we have a greater mission beyond our own fortunes. And that mission is to pass it on, to keep the pitch alive. Maybe that's because we are so different, and the pitch is do different, but I think it has more to do with the fact that this is a pitch that almost all of us turn to in desperation. It is what enables us to keep pitching stay in the big leagues, when everything else has failed. So we feel gratitude toward the pitch. It becomes way more than just a means to get and out.
It becomes a way of life.”
― quote from Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
“If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.”
― John Burnside, quote from The Dumb House
“She wanted to take his hand. Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with her longing to be touched - hugged, stroked by anyone, any human being - a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God's encircling arms would bring comfort. They did not”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth
“imagine Winter singing! I wonder if he can scowl and sing and look darkly handsome and mortally offended all at the same time. Probably.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from Moon Rising
“I just want to break that song into pieces and love them all to death.”
― Rainbow Rowell, quote from Eleanor and Park
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