“I was sitting in the Temple of Karnak on the Nile, as the sun was going down, and I was all alone, and the great Hypostyle Hall was full of shadows and ghosts of the past, and suddenly I heard this little voice saying "my name is Taita, write my story"… and if you believe that you'll believe anything.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“Yet such is the perversity of human nature that I hungered for what I could never have and dreamed of the impossible.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“when it comes to fashion, even the most sensible woman is not to be trusted.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“Out of the chaos and darkness of Nun rose Ammon-Ra, He-Who-Creates-Himself. I watched Ammon-Ra stroke his generative member, masturbating and spurting out his seminal seed in mighty waves that left the silver smear that we know as the Milky Way across the dark void. From this seed were generated Geb and Nut, the earth and the heaven.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“As they slithered up the muddy bank, scores of tiny silver fish that had been feasting on the open wounds were slow to relinquish their hold and were drawn out with the carcasses. Stranded upon the mud-banks, they flopped and quivered like stars that had fallen to earth.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“Sometimes you are garrulous, Taita.’ Pharaoh was less than captivated by my lecture on the palace architecture. ‘Get on”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“Taita,’ she called to me, ‘sing with me!’ And when I obeyed she smiled with pleasure. My voice was one of the many reasons that, whenever she was able, she kept me near her; my tenor complemented her lovely soprano to perfection. We sang one of the old peasant love songs that I had taught her, and which was still one of her favourites: My heart flutters up like a wounded quail when I see my beloved’s face and my cheeks bloom like the dawn sky to the sunshine of his smile”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“chariots that I would design with”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“The fact that I had been on the point of making a similar heroic gesture was quite ignored, and this only increased my irritation.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“She is the epitome of injustice, is my mistress. I never sulk, I am no glutton, and at that time I was barely thirty years of age, although to a fourteen-year-old anyone above twenty is an ancient, and I admit that, when it comes to food, I do have the refined tastes of a connoisseur.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
“Nevertheless, I had recommended a diet of bull’s testicles fried in honey and counselled him to find the most beautiful virgin in Egypt and take her to his marriage-bed within a year of the first flowering of her woman’s moon.”
― Wilbur Smith, quote from River God
Wilbur Smith
Born place: in Kabwe, Zambia
Born date January 9, 1933
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“line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face.”
― John Boyne, quote from The Heart's Invisible Furies
“There were only more ravens. A whole unkindness of them. He smirked at the thought. Evie had once told him about the various names used to describe groupings of birds. It had taken her nearly an hour to recite them all.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The King's Traitor
“My heart is crushed within me. Here is the truth: You made me love you- your eyes and mouth and voice. You pulled me into your heart. You don't want me there and I don't want to be there, but it's where I will always live.”
― Ashley Herring Blake, quote from Suffer Love
“What the slave wants but can never have is not only freedom from the chains but also from their memory.”
― Ben H. Winters, quote from Underground Airlines
“A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from الحرب والسلم [War and Peace]
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Fences
Shadows in the Silen...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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