“Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image”
“There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.”
“There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushly carpeted funeral parlor which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower's lonely bedroom.”
“A swelled head is just a result of nature's frenzied efforts to fill a vacuum.”
“But all organic matter must have cell structure,” Sara said. “Cell structure is virtually a definition of organic matter, a requisite of all living tissue, plant or animal.”
“He saw that, without exception, human beings were driven by self-interest.”
“mankind was, in reality, the most ruthless, dangerous, unforgiving species on earth.”
“The mild wind made the trees sway gently, in a lullaby rhythm, and the resultant susurration was like the soft sighs and dreamy murmurs of a thousand peacefully slumbering children.”
“She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows.”
“That was when you discovered she’d recently begun using PCP—what’s sometimes called ‘angel dust’ on the street.”
“Even though she knew it wasn't biologically possible for her heart to rise into her throat, she swallowed it anyway.”
“Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.”
“Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on Earth has it worse than an Emperor penguin.”
“Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but it is not in itself efficacious. Teaching is like a mirror. It can show you if your face is dirty, but it the mirror will not wash your face.”
“It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.”
“One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
- That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever,
You and I on the old bridge one night.”
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