“Confidence is inspiring. Yet so often misplaced. (Robert Thornhill)”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“with the way the world is now, we all have to think about things beyond our lifetime. Beyond our children’s lifetime, in fact. It’s our right. It’s our duty, my good friend told me.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“were rabid, foaming bats blindly cleaving the air around his head. And it seemed that every few steps he would run straight into a twister of mosquitoes. Though he had been paid a large amount of cash up front, he was seriously considering increasing his daily fee on this one.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“knew. And his ex had seemed so kind on those first few dates, so infatuated with his Navy uniform, so enthusiastic in tearing up his bed. His ex-wife, a former stripper named Trish Bardoe, had married on the rebound a fellow by the name of Eddie Stipowicz, an unemployed engineer with a drinking problem. Lee thought she was heading for disaster and had tried to get custody of Renee on the grounds that her mom and stepfather could not provide for her. Well, about that time, Eddie, a sneaky runt Lee despised, invented, mostly by accident, some microchip piece of crap that had made him a gazillionaire. Lee’s custody battle had lost its juice after that. To add insult to injury, there had been stories on Eddie in the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and a number of other publications. He was famous. Their house had even been featured in Architectural Digest. Lee had gotten that issue of the Digest. Trish’s new home was grossly huge, mostly crimson red or eggplant so dark it made Lee think of the inside of a coffin. The windows were cathedral-size, the furniture large enough to become lost in and there were enough wood moldings, paneling and staircases to heat a typical midwestern town for an entire year. There were also stone fountains sculpted”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“more. Lee had done this so many times that he could have closed his eyes and his fingers would carry on, manipulating his tools of felony with enviable precision. Lee had already”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“A number of the wrought-iron fences that encircled the courtyards and gardens of the homes were painted the color of gold on their European-inspired spikes and finials.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“sound immediately stopped. As Lee closed the door”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“And when they were elected, they arrived in Washington with absolutely no idea what to do. Their only goal had already been achieved: They had won their campaign. However,”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“People who believe themselves to be True patriots tend to be zealots. Zealots, in my opinion are one short step from being lunatics.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“goes to the cottage. They may place her in Witness Protection without warning,”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“have under his thumb powerful congressmen, senators, even the vice president himself,”
― David Baldacci, quote from Saving Faith
“within yourself, you became a grave for her as you were a grave for Chet, and you carried your dead unquietly within you. —”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
“I first saw Lucas at the end of July last summer. Of course, I didn't know who he was then... in fact, come to think of it, I didn't even know what he was.
All I could see from the backseat of the car was a green-clad creature padding along the Stand in a shimmering haze of heat; a slight and ragged figure with a mop of straw-blond hair and a way of walking - I smile when I think of it - a way of walking that whispered secrets to the air.”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Lucas
“Still, that would not solve the problem; Percy would merely languish in prison until such time as Grey was recovered enough to testify. No, he decided, Hal’s response would more likely be to knock Grey over the head, bundle him into a sack, and have him smuggled aboard a merchantman bound for China, after which he would declare Grey lost at sea, and…
He discovered that he was laughing helplessly at the thought, tears coming to his eyes.
“Christ, Hal, I wish you would,” he said aloud, and quite suddenly thought of Aberdeen, realizing for the first time just how desperately his brother loved him.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
“El destino del hombre es equivocarse, afanarse inútilmente y sufrir, pero lo que no puede es quedar estancado; sacrifica su vida en aras de lo que considera su deber.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, quote from Gora
“In the afterglow of the Big Bang, humans spread in waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through replication and confluence across billions upon billions of years.
Everywhere they found life.
Nowhere did they find mind—save what they brought with them or created—no other against which human advancement could be tested.
With time, the stars died like candles. But humans fed on bloated gravitational fat, and achieved a power undreamed of in earlier ages.
They learned of other universes from which theirs had evolved. Those earlier, simpler realities too were empty of mind, a branching tree of emptiness reaching deep into the hyperpast.
It is impossible to understand what minds of that age—the peak of humankind, a species hundreds of billions of times older than humankind—were like. They did not seek to acquire, not to breed, not even to learn. They had nothing in common with us, their ancestors of the afterglow.
Nothing but the will to survive. And even that was to be denied them by time.
The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile, and ultimately lethal.
There was despair and loneliness.
There was an age of war, an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bonfire of identity. There was an age of suicide, as the finest of humanity chose self-destruction against further purposeless time and struggle.
The great rivers of mind guttered and dried.
But some persisted: just a tributary, the stubborn, still unwilling to yield to the darkness, to accept the increasing confines of a universe growing inexorably old.
And, at last, they realized that this was wrong. It wasn't supposed to have been like this.
Burning the last of the universe's resources, the final down-streamers—dogged, all but insane—reached to the deepest past. And—oh.
Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon. It's starting—”
― Stephen Baxter, quote from Manifold: Time
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