Dandi Daley Mackall · 265 pages
Rating: (477 votes)
“I was thinking about the cow thing. About how hanging on to an ex-boyfriend is like chewing your cud until somebody drops a fresh bale of hay in front of you. Or something like that.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“It's my personal onion theory. See, it's like we've all got layers on layers, going deep inside, to layer ten, that place where we're spiritual and private. But we don't show those deep layers.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“My mother says that falling in love and getting dumped is good for you because it prepares you for the real thing, like it gets you ready for true love and all, but I'm thinking it's more like climbing up he St. Louis Arch and falling off twice. Does he first fall really get you ready for the second?”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“Mom says good health is like buying an appliance at a garage sale. You do the best you can to make sure it's in good shape and then leave the rest to God.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“I'd still be a goofy frog because, guess what, I like being a frog.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“Mom said that going back to an ex-boyfriend was like buying your own garage sale junk after the sale's over. Somebody else may think your old stuff is gold, but you know better. It's not golden for you.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees...”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
“I always want to be somewhere else, in the place I have just fled from. In recent years this condition has, if anything, become worse: I go to and from Vienna at diminishing intervals, and from Nathal I will often go to some other big city, to Venice or Rome and back, or to Prague and back. The truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car , between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to. I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. Basically I am one of those people who cannot bear to be anywhere and are happy only between places.”
― Thomas Bernhard, quote from Wittgenstein's Nephew
“Been having a fight with your blankets, Septimus?" A familiar voice echoed down the chimney. "Looks like you lost," the voice continued with a chuckle. "Not wise to take on a pair of blankets, lad. One, maybe, but two blankets always gang up on you. Vicious things, blankets. ”
― Angie Sage, quote from Physik
“He was not afraid, in fact he was content to go: So much that had been pleasurable in his life was now beyond his capacity, and that he could not bear.”
― Alison Weir, quote from The Lady Elizabeth
“Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow.
“You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like children.”
Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters.
“It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds: their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because these truths are made, cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he will become Inrithi …
“Split him in two, and he would murder himself.”
Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not. Everything, Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain …
Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground.
“But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them. Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume nothing comes before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen.
So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow conditioning for absolute truth.”
He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it, two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into the impenetrable black.
“And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they not fear when they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some higher sign that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.”
He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with the coin of their devotion.”
― R. Scott Bakker, quote from The Thousandfold Thought
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