“Chin up, don’t smile, don’t cry, don’t fall, walk.”
“We all make mistakes, some bigger than others, but none of us is perfect.”
“Love can change us beyond recognition, we become love-sick, soft-eyed jelly-bellied fools.”
“He was comparing you to the butterflies that you both adore and cherish, and he said you were special for the same reasons: you were rare, exotic and entirely you. He said you're beautiful exactly the way are now.”
“Some people say that you shouldn't operate from a place of fear but if there is no fear, how is there a challenge?”
“Nobody can pretend to know what people want to read or hear or see. People rarely know it themselves; they only know it after the fact.”
“Journalism classes teach us that one must extract oneself from the story in order to report without bias, but often we need to be in the story in order to understand, to connect, to help the audience identify or else it has no heart; it could be a robot telling the story, for all anyone cares.”
“Don't worry..we all have our blips. See, we all go through it, now it's your turn. It's only fair”
“You had heard of a caterpillar that couldn't turn into a butterfly. And you would like to examine how it would feel to be denied such a beautiful thing. You would like to know how it feels for the caterpillar to watch other caterpillars transform while all the time knowing he would never have that opportunity.”
“You were the only person who truly told me in that interview that you weren't afraid to fly, that in fact you were afraid that you wouldn't.”
“There are more people involved in telling a story than the writer.”
“Every single ordinary person has an extraordinary story.”
“People who believe that they are not interesting, usually are the most interesting of all.”
“I cannot get through this day. But I did. Somehow. And then that day was over and I was facing the night and I said to myself, I cannot face this night. But I did. Somehow”
“Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her.”
“So how long have you been together? Two months?'
'Five.'
'Five? Jesus, Steve, you might as well get married. I should buy a hat.'
'Don't. They give away your Spock ears.'
She laughed. 'This is the Romanian girl?'
'Croatian.'
'Right. She's a painter?'
'Photographer.'
'Right.' She studied him.
'What?' he laughed self-consciously as though he was a twelve-year-old boy who'd just been caught with his first girlfriend.
'Nothing.'
'Come on.'
'I don't know Steve,' she cut into her meat, 'you've changed. You no longer write about Victoria Beckham and you have a girlfriend. I think...'
'You think what?'
'I don't know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I think there's a possibility you might not be gay after all.'
A chip was hurled at her head.”
“Each second is rather torturous, as though it will never move on, and as though it will never get any easier, and yet when I look back on it, look where we are. Two weeks on. And I’m doing it. And I still believe I simply cannot.”
“You’re always sorry 'after' you do something. You never think about how they feel or how you’d feel 'before'.”
“And then one good thing happened that day, the first good thing, the only good thing, but sometimes you only ever need one good thing.”
“She felt disgusting and used and like she could never trust anyone ever again, and the last thing she wanted was food.”
“There was so much time wasted not spending it together.”
“I believed in God as much as I believed in germs. It was something adults just scared you about, just habit, something I had to do.”
“People didn't always listen to the narrative, they just looked at the pictures.”
“I'm sure it's like you writing a story. If you don't care, how can the reader?”
“Apart from them, Kitty had never been able to keep friends, not because she was disloyal in any way, she just felt that she hadn't connected with anyone deeply since her school friends and so it was easy to drift away as life moved on, as college finished and as she found new jobs and created new friendships that lasted as long as the jobs had.”
“I never believed in God. Not even at school when my priestly teacher drummed the fear and the guilt into us. I believed that he believed it, all right, but I thought he was mad. Delusional. I thought if somebody had to force you that much to believe in something then it wasn't worth believing, that it wasn't natural, you know?”
“Love can soften people, I believe that. But in me, now, love riles up an anger, a red-hot rage that crawls on my skin, seeps into my blood and brings out the worst in me. That's why everyone I love is better off loving me from afar.”
“It's not easy, I suppose, but it's not all bad... I usen't to believe in marriage. My mum and dad separated when I was young, it was nasty and so I didn't have a good example of marriage, but a lot of my friends are getting married now mostly I do their hair. All brides are nervous for different reasons, whether they're sick or not. You just have to judge if they want to chat or not. Some don't. The main difference is my friends are panicking about the "for ever" part. They have to stay together for ever whereas Diane's worried because she knows that it can't be. When I get married I want to be like Diane and hope beyond hope that it can be for ever.”
“And that’s what the problem was – Kitty had finally nailed it. In the six months of Etcetera stories that Kitty had pored over, she now realised she hadn’t written a single article that had been an idea of her own. Each story had been proposed by Pete or Cheryl or by somebody else who had enough on their own plate and was unable to write it. She hadn’t noticed it happening because she hadn’t minded.”
“Some people say that you shouldn’t operate from a place of fear,’ Constance went on, ‘but if there is no fear, how is there a challenge?”
“...where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”
“Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it’s then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty.”
“But as the years went on, I realised that what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human.”
“Они не знали, что будущее за них, что будущее без них невозможно. Они не знали, что в этом мире страшных призраков прошлого они являются единственной реальностью будущего, что они – фермент, витамин в организме общества. Уничтожьте этот витамин, и общество загниет, начнется социальная цинга, ослабеют мышцы, глаза потеряют зоркость, вывалятся зубы. Никакое государство не может развиваться без науки – его уничтожат соседи. Без искусств и общей культуры государство теряет способность к самокритике, принимается поощрять ошибочные тенденции, начинает ежесекундно порождать лицемеров и подонков, развивает в гражданах потребительство и самонадеянность и в конце концов опять-таки становится жертвой более благоразумных соседей. Можно сколько угодно преследовать книгочеев, запрещать науки, уничтожать искусства, но рано или поздно приходится спохватываться и со скрежетом зубовным, но открывать дорогу всему, что так ненавистно властолюбивым тупицам и невеждам. И как бы ни презирали знание эти серые люди, стоящие у власти, они ничего не могут сделать против исторической объективности, они могут только притормозить, но не остановить. Презирая и боясь знания, они все-таки неизбежно приходят к поощрению его для того, чтобы удержаться. Рано или поздно им приходится разрешать университеты, научные общества, создавать исследовательские центры, обсерватории, лаборатории, создавать кадры людей мысли и знания, людей, им уже неподконтрольных, людей с совершенно иной психологией, с совершенно иными потребностями, а эти люди не могут существовать и тем более функционировать в прежней атмосфере низкого корыстолюбия, кухонных интересов, тупого самодовольства и сугубо плотских потребностей. Им нужна новая атмосфера – атмосфера всеобщего и всеобъемлющего познания, пронизанная творческим напряжением, им нужны писатели, художники, композиторы, и серые люди, стоящие у власти, вынуждены идти и на эту уступку. Тот, кто упрямится, будет сметен более хитрыми соперниками в борьбе за власть, но тот, кто делает эту уступку, неизбежно и парадоксально, против своей воли роет тем самым себе могилу. Ибо смертелен для невежественных эгоистов и фанатиков рост культуры народа во всем диапазоне – от естественнонаучных исследований до способности восхищаться большой музыкой... А затем приходит эпоха гигантских социальных потрясений, сопровождающихся невиданным ранее развитием науки и связанным с этим широчайшим процессом интеллектуализации общества, эпоха, когда серость дает последние бои, по жестокости возвращающие человечество к средневековью, в этих боях терпит поражение и исчезает как реальная сила навсегда.”
“You know as well as I do that life has a way of clearing that path for you. And maybe the good Lord above has dropped two hundred pounds of gorgeous path-clearing answer out there at our dinner table for you.”
-Taryn about Mike”
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