Ariana Franklin · 384 pages
Rating: (30.2K votes)
“Love- however doomed, had the capacity to attach bouys to the soul.”
“She had a quality he had never known- she WAS quality.”
“Welcome to the gates of heaven Adelia, and what did you do with your life? My Lord, I was a bishop's whore.”
“She thought, watching him, 'I am in a bath, naked in a bath with no bubbles, and a man is washing me; my reputation is doomed and to hell with it. I've been to hell and all I wanted in it was to be alive for this man. Who carried me out of it.”
“... Turn over that stone" - she pointed to a flint nearby - "and you will find a charlatan who will dazzle you with the favorable conjunction of Mercury and Venus, flatter your future, and sell you colored water for a gold piece. I can't be bothered with it. From me you get the actuality.”
“Sister Walburga ate some of the sausage she was taking upriver for the anchorites, but you'd think from her distress that she was a Horseman of the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon rolled into one.”
“Adelia, you must not quail. You are confounding inhumanity.”
“Man hovers between Paradise and the Pit,” Gordinus told her cheerfully. “Sometimes rising to one, sometimes swooping to the other. To ignore his capacity for evil is as obtuse as blinding oneself to the heights to which he can soar.”
“This infatuation must be dispelled; it is necessary for me not to admire you. I do not wish to fall in love.”
“You are a drab, she told herself, seduced into infatuation by a soldier’s tale. Outremer, bravery, crusade, it is illusory romance. Pull yourself together, woman.”
“Mir je novac, Aarone, a novac je mir.”
“Иногда лучше все оставить как есть. Время – не прялка. Время – пряжа.”
“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.”
“There are a million reasons why I love you. A million reasons that all begin with the amazing woman you are and end with the type of man you make me want to be.”
“The Queue consists entirely of fragments of ochered’ dialogue, a linguistic vernacular anchored by the long-suffering word stoyat’ (to stand). You stood? Yes, stood. Three hours. Got damaged ones. Wrong size. Here’s what the line wasn’t: a gray inert nowhere. Imagine instead an all-Soviet public square, a hurly-burly where comrades traded gossip and insults, caught up with news left out of the newspapers, got into fistfights, or enacted comradely feats. In the thirties the NKVD had informers in queues to assess public moods, hurrying the intelligence straight to Stalin’s brooding desk. Lines shaped opinions and bred ad hoc communities: citizens from all walks of life standing, united by probably the only truly collective authentic Soviet emotions: yearning and discontent (not to forget the unifying hostility toward war veterans and pregnant women, honored comrades allowed to get goods without a wait).”
“ما هكذا فعل قائدنا أبو ركوة (الوليد بن هشام بن المغيرة) قبل ألف عام. فلما رأى الناس يؤمنون بأن الحاكم بأمر الله يحكم بأمر الله، لم يسقط في يده، ولم ينتظر أن يصبح الشعب مؤهلاً، بل أقنعهم بأنه ثائر عليه هو أيضاً، بأمر الله. فتلقب بالثائر بأمر الله على الحاكم بأمر الله. فحيد العزة بالعزة. والحاكم أظلم. فتبعه خلق كثير.”
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