“She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren't the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“It didn’t make any more sense to me then than it does now, how life can pile troubles up on a man what don’t deserve them, while letting some of the biggest jackasses and scoundrels alive waltz their way through long, untroubled existences.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“There's plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can't bear the listening.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“Still, it's an interesting technique--leaving one person behind in order to find her or him somewhere else. And *in* someone else.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“No, since we began this case, another possibility has presented itself to me--the thought that, although my mother cared for her children, their welfare was simply not her first priority. And the real question is not why that should have been so, but why it should have been such a difficult theory to either formulate or accept--why, indeed, it should have taken a murder case to make me think of it. After all, a man who makes his children of secondary or even minor importance, though he may be criticized by some, is hardly held to be unusual. Why should we believe any differently of a woman?”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“there’s plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can’t bear the listening. My”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“Whatever poor team of maidservants had to stuff her into the kind of tight-waisted gown she was wearing that evening earned their pay as sure as any coal miner, that much was certain. The”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“It isn’t really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn’t want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society—more important, even, than honest or decent—is identifiable. Even when Libby’s evil—perhaps most of all when she’s evil—she’s easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified lets them know who she is—it keeps them safe. Imagine how much harder it would be to say, yes, she’s a woman capable of terrible anger and violence, but she’s also someone who’s tried desperately to be a nurturer, to be a good and constructive human being. If you accept all that, if you allow that inside she’s not just one or the other, but both, what does that say about all the other women in town? How will you ever be able to tell what’s actually going on in their hearts—and heads? Life in the simple village would suddenly become immensely complicated. And so, to keep that from happening, they separate things. The normal, ordinary woman is defined as nurturing and loving, docile and compliant. Any female who defies that categorization must be so completely evil that she’s got to be feared, feared even more than the average criminal—she’s got to be invested with the powers of the Devil himself. A witch, they probably would have called her in the old days. Because she’s not just breaking the law, she’s defying the order of things.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness
“Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the human brain still stranger shallows;”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
“The people of jewel," said Olga Ciavolga,"treat their children like delicate flowers. They think they will not survive without constant protection. But there are parts of the world where young boys and girls spend weeks at a time with no company except a herd of goats. They chase away wolves. They take care of themselves, and they take care of the herd. And so, when hard times come - as they always do in the end - those children are resourceful and brave. If they have to walk from one end of the county to the other, carrying their baby brother and sisters, they will do it. If they have to hide during the day and travel at night to avoid soldiers, they will do it. They do not give up easily."
The tunnel took a sharp right-hand turn and, for a moment, the old woman s voice was lost. Something dropped onto Goldie's arm, and she opened her mouth to yelp - and thought of those children carrying their baby brothers and sisters through the night - and closed her mouth and kept going.
She rounded the corner in time to hear Olga Ciavolga murmur,"Of course, I am not saying that it is a good thing to give children such heavy responsibility's. They must be allowed to have a childhood. But they must also be allowed to find their courage and their wisdom, and learn when to stand and when to run away. After all, if they are not permitted to climb the trees, how will they ever see the great and wonderful world that lies before them?”
― Lian Tanner, quote from Museum of Thieves
“We often confuse what we wish for with what is.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from MirrorMask
“I'll see you soon," he whispered, the lump in his throat rising again to jar the release of his sigh. He swallowed once more and said, "But it won't be soon enough.”
― Laury Falter, quote from Reckoning
“There are three requisites for growth without bound, and only three: the will to remake oneself, the genius to survive, and the strength to suffer.”
― David Zindell, quote from The Broken God
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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