“How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?
Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.
Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“You haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where gravity has failed twice in different directions.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“When you’re a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you’re left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you’re just the same as everybody else.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“You know when you've got nothing in particular to do, nothing to stay awake for? When your life is just routine and it doesn't feel like it belongs to you, how you feel tired and listless and everything seems like too much effort?
Well, it's like that, but it's much worse, because everything is much worse these days. Everything that's bad is worse, believe me. There are whole Neighborhoods out there where no one has anything to do all their lives. They're born, and from the moment they hit the table, there's nothing to do. They clamber to their feet occasionally, realize there's nothing to do and sit down again. They grow up, and there's nothing to do; they grow up, and there's still nothing. They spend their whole lives indoors, in armchairs, in bed, wondering who they are.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again,”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“All non-smokers seem to live in the belief that smokers have wandered naively through life, bereft of the knowledge that their habit is extremely bad for them.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“What they are is a small tablet about six inches square, which has a screen in it. As you walk it shows a scrolling digital map of the area you’re in, telling you what each store you pass sells, who lives in what block, the whole works, updated by small beacons on every street corner. If you tap in a destination the screen shows you a red line to follow, and the tablet whispers at you to tell you when to make a turn.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don’t bring the whole of yourself with you, you’ll never see the sun again.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“would be on top of me like a ton of heavy things.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“When you’re born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you’re lucky as you travel forward through time, you’ll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onwards, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it’s alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“Everyone’s alone in their world, because everybody’s life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“The mind is like a pool of water, and rain falls as you age. The water gets deeper, and looks so still: occasionally some stray thought or impulse betrays its depths, but seldom. But deep down underneath, right at the bottom, there may be something lying on the bottom. Something that died a long time ago, something rotted and foul that belies the pool’s still surface. Alkland had just seen a bubble rise from the bottom, had smelt the stench of decay: and when that happens, you don’t want other people to come too close, in case they smell it too.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
“People always find it so frustrating that there’s no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they’re afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it’s not the way things work. I never know what the hell’s going to happen next, but I can live with that.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
Michael Marshall Smith
Born place: in Knutsford, Cheshire, The United Kingdom
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“So tell me, Miss Fitt, do you know when your brother will return?"
"No." I wet my lips. "Do you know Elijah?"
He looked off to the right. "I know of your brother."
"Oh?"
"Of course." He folded his arms over his chest and returned his gaze to me. "Everyone knows of the Philadelphia Fitts.I even know of you."
"You mean Allison told you about me."
His lips twitched. "Certainly."
I stroked my amethysts and made my expression passive. I didn't care one whit about her gossip-though I did wish she wouldn't talk about me to Clarence. I'd prefer if eligible young men learned my faults after meeting me.
He flashed his eyebrows playfully, as if knowing where my thoughts had gone. "You needn't worry. She's said nothing unkind. She finds you amusing-she likes to talk, you know?"
"I hadn't noticed," I said flatly. Saying Allison loved to gossip was like saying birds enjoyed flying. It was not so much a hobby as part of her physiology.
Clarence's smile expanded, and his eyes crinkled. "Apparently there was an insult you gave her a few days ago, though...She had to ask me what it meant."
My face warmed, and I looked away. "I believe I might have called her a spoiled Portia with no concept of mercy."
He laughed and hit his knee. "That's right. Portia's speech on mercy in the final act of The Merchant of Venice. Allie had no idea what you meant."
"In my defense, she was taunting me-"
"With no mercy?"
"Something like that," I mumbled, embarrassed he'd heard abou tit.
"Oh,I have no doubt. One of Allie's charms is her childish teasing." He laughed again and shook his head. "Next time, though, I suggest you use less obscure insults. They might hit their mark better.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Something Strange and Deadly
“Just focus on how good life is right now.”
― Ali Harris, quote from The First Last Kiss
“It can be hard to say important things to the person in our life who matters the most.”
― Suzanne Woods Fisher, quote from A Lancaster County Christmas
“There is no way to satisfy the desires of all the people who clamor for their time, so leaders must subjugate their schedule to God's will and invest themselves in those activities and projects most critical. Unlike”
― Henry T. Blackaby, quote from Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God's Agenda
“Când Platon se îndoia dacă locul femeii se află printre vietuitoarele înzestrate cu judecată sau printre cele lipsite de minte, voia doar să arate prostia nemăsurată a sexului frumos. Femeia e tot femeie, orice ar face, adică tot proastă, oricât s-ar strădui să se prefacă. Încă nu-mi vine a crede să fie femeile aşa de proaste încât să le supere cele ce am spus aici. Sunt doar de acelaşi sex cu ele, sunt Prostia. Dovedindu-le proaste nu le fac oare supremul elogiu? Şi, la o dreaptă cumpănire, ar trebui să vadă că mie, Prostiei, îmi datorează ele fericirea lor cu mult mai mare decât a bărbatilor. Nu eu le-am dat farmecele şi aţâţările, pe care cu drept cuvânt le socotesc ele mai de preţ decât orice şi care le ajută să-i înlănţuiască până şi pe cei mai crunţi tirani? De unde vine oare sluţenia bărbaţilor, cu pielea lor plină de păr, cu barba aceea ca o pădure, de par bătrâni şi în floarea vârstei? De la cel mai mare dintre vicii, înţelepciunea. Dimpotrivă, femeile au obraji catifelati, vorbă cristalină, piele netedă, tot atâtea semne ale unei tinereţi veşnice. Au ele vreo altă dorinţă în viaţă decât să placă bărbaţilor? Gătelile, sulemenelile, băile, dichisirea părului, parfumurile, mirodeniile şi toate celelalte care slujesc la înfrumuseţarea chipului, ochilor ori ascund beteşugurile, nu sunt inchinate acestui scop? Şi nu prostia le ajută pe femei să şi-l atingă? Dacă bărbaţii îndură fără crâcnire toanele femeilor, o fac ei oare din alt motiv decât pentru că aşteaptă ca ele să-i răsplătească dăruindu-le plăcere? Iar plăcerea e totuna cu prostia. Cine ia aminte la toate neroziile pe care le spune şi la toate prostiile pe care le săvârşeşte bărbatul care vrea să intre pe sub pielea unei femei nici că are nevoie de mai bună dovadă.”
― Erasmus, quote from Praise of Folly
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