“It was funny, though, the things you didn't learn about people until after they died.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“But adulthood," continued the barely twentysomething, "doesn't give you power over what matters most. It doesn't protect you from pain, loss, fate. That's part of being human.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“Men suck.
- Not all men. Just the really good ones.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided. ”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“In the end, I'd loved him enough to let go. From afar, I would love him forever.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“Turned out there was some big, bad Wolf in my good boy after all.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“She seems to think being cryptic is some kind of substitute for having a decent personality.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“There’s always music,” he replied, “if you listen carefully enough.”
― Cynthia Leitich Smith, quote from Tantalize
“As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes
“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human
“Grief heals ... unshed tears fester like a canker in the soul.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Chosen
“The famous field altar came from the Jewish firm of Moritz Mahler in Vienna, which manufactured all kinds of accessories for mass as well as religious objects like rosaries and images of saints.
The altar was made up of three parts, lberally provided with sham gilt like the whole glory of the Holy Church.
It was not possible without considerable ingenuity to detect what the pictures painted on these three parts actually represented. What was certain was that it was an altar which could have been used equally well by heathens in Zambesi or by the Shamans of the Buriats and Mongols.
Painted in screaming colors it appeared from a distance like a coloured chart intended for colour-blind railway workers. One figure stood out prominently - a naked man with a halo and a body which was turning green, like the parson's nose of a goose which has begun to rot and is already stinking. No one was doing anything to this saint. On the contrary, he had on both sides of him two winged creatures which were supposed to represent angels. But anyone looking at them had the impression that this holy naked man was shrieking with horror at the company around him, for the angels looked like fairy-tale monsters and were a cross between a winged wild cat and the beast of the apocalypse.
Opposite this was a picture which was meant to represent the Holy Trinity. By and large the painter had been unable to ruin the dove. He had painted a kind of bird which could equally well have been a pigeon or a White Wyandotte. God the Father looked like a bandit from the Wild West served up to the public in an American film thriller.
The Son of God on the other hand was a gay young man with a handsome stomach draped in something like bathing drawers. Altogether he looked a sporting type. The cross which he had in his hand he held as elegantly as if it had been a tennis racquet.
Seen from afar however all these details ran into each other and gave the impression of a train going into a station.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, quote from The Good Soldier Švejk
“I never said it would be easy. Giving up is easy.”
― Maria V. Snyder, quote from Inside Out
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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