“I never knew whether I was drawn to eccentric people or if they were drawn to me.”
“Sometimes, when I'm feeling sorry for myself, it seems that I'm made to carry an impossibly heavy weight, the crushing weight of losing her. I have moments of bitterness and doubt. You know? But the weight is a blessing, really, and I shouldn't be bitter about it. The weight is on my heart because I knew her and loved her. The weight is the accumulation of all we had together, all the hopes and worries, all the laughs, the picnics at St. Bart's bell tower, the adventures we shared because of my gift... If they had taken her away on their yacht, if I had never met her, there would be no weight to carry—and no memories to sustain me.”
“When I was no longer of the world, I would miss its extravagant beauty. I would miss the complex and charming layers of subterfuge by which the truth of the world’s mysteries were withheld from us even as we were tantalized and enchanted by them. I would miss the kindness of good people who were compassionate when so many were pitiless, who made their way through so much corruption without being corrupted themselves, who eschewed envy in a world of envy, who eschewed greed in a world of greed, who valued truth and could not be drowned in a sea of lies, for they shone and, by the light they cast, they had warmed me all my life.”
“...and where the Ferris wheel carried its passengers high and brought them low and raised them high and brought them low again, as if it were not merely a carnival ride but also a metaphor for the basic pattern of human experience.”
“Being known by everyone is not the same as being loved.”
“After a silence, because he knew me well, he said, "Not all wounds are the bleeding kind.”
“They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but it is also the grandmother of desperation.”
“Free will," she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.”
“Truly tough guys never say they’re tough.”
“I disliked guns, but I learned to use them. I had come to understand guns, that they were tools and that they were no more evil, in their essence, than pliers and wrenches. At times, they were a necessity. In a world of evil, they were often also a blessing. Now and then, as I’ve said, I was able to”
“...Here lie your hopes and dreams, shattered and swept aside...”
“I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.”
“...on a subconscious level we're aware that time isn't enduring, that it is not a required condition of our existence, that there comes a point when we will have no need of it.”
“Some dreams matter. Most don't. Often it can be hard to know which might be which.”
“In this world, Evil works through countless surrogates. Its name is Legion. But Good works through surrogates, as well, and they are legion, too.”
“The problem with omens is that they never come with an illustrated pamphlet explaining what they mean.”
“Our world was a battleground on which good and evil clashed, and many of the combatants on the dark side were known to everyone. Terrorists, dictators, politicians who were merchants of lies and hate, crooked businessmen in league with them, power-mad bureaucrats, corrupted policemen, embezzlers, street thugs, rapists, and their ilk waged part of the war, and their actions were what made the evening news so colorful and depressing. But those fighting in that dark army had their secret schemes, too, intentions and desires and goals that would make their public villainy seem almost innocent by comparison. They were assisted by other politicians who concealed their hatred and envy, by judges who secretly had no respect for the law, by clergymen who in private worshipped nothing but money or the tender bodies of children, by celebrities who trumpeted their concern for the common man while in their off-screen lives assiduously hobnobbing with and advancing the interests of the elite of elites.… The war unseen by most people was one of clandestine militias, unincorporated businesses, unchartered organizations, philosophical movements that could not survive fresh air and sunlight, secretive coalitions of lunatics who didn’t recognize their own lunacy, nature cults and science cults and religious cults.”
“Free will,” she agreed, “our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.”
“Sympathy is a nobler feeling than pity. But if sympathy is the principal reason that one person is drawn to another, there will always be an unbridgeable chasm between friendship and genuine love.”
“Too many years of watching old Warner Bros. cartoons by Chuck Jones can instill in you a silliness gene by proxy.”
“I needed more time to think. And a better brain with which to do the thinking.”
“Everything barbarians do is nothing, no matter how loudly they insist it’s something.”
“No offense intended to the satanists who might be reading this, but I have found that those who worship the devil tend to be sneaky, more deceitful by far than your average Methodist—and proud of it.”
“Proceeding with caution and proceeding slowly are sometimes two different things. In certain circumstances, momentum could be more important than caution,
though it was never wise to dispense with wariness.”
“I suspected eccentricity was often if not always a response to pain, a defense mechanism against anguish and torment and sorrow.”
“The source of magic in this world is more mysterious than all the explanations that sorcerers and wizards have given for it, and it is more prevalent than can be understood by those who live according to the constricted form of reason so prevalent in our time.”
“we are born into time only to be born out of it, after living through the cycles of the seasons, under stars that turn because the world turns, born into ignorance and acquiring knowledge that ultimately reveals to us our enduring ignorance: The circle is the essential pattern of our existence.”
“As I turned to leave the tent, she said, "Don't worry. Your own mother wouldn't know you."
I said, "She never has.”
“There is much to be known," said Adaon, "and above all much to be loved, be it the turn of the seasons or the shape of a river pebble. Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.”
“It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis.”
“Everything had been beaten down and baked by the sun”
“Permission to buy apricots and oranges from my own trees, the ones my great grandfather planted and i kept alive in drought and war”
“Pity isn't the only thing I don't do. Princesses are high on my lists too.”
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