Walter Van Tilburg Clark · 712 pages
Rating: (56 votes)
“Places, like people, have their beginnings and have also their endings.”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, quote from The City Of Trembling Leaves
“Nothing imaginative ever happens to five people at once, because each is up to only one-fifth of his personal intelligence and perception. A crowd is never equal to the intelligence of any one of its members.”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, quote from The City Of Trembling Leaves
“Just being is the main thing. Anything else is extra.”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, quote from The City Of Trembling Leaves
“It is possible to insult Americans?”
“They are automatically insulted and enraged,” said the young composer. “They form splenetic organizations by the hundreds, and write letters to periodicals and congressmen. They gather in mobs and pay no attention. They hang people without trial and shoot citizens down with machine guns out of passing cars. They will despise you because you do not eat the same things they eat for breakfast. They even apply indifference.”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, quote from The City Of Trembling Leaves
“If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything.”
― Liu Cixin, quote from Death's End
“You know better than anyone that nothing lasts. Nothing good. Nothing bad. Everything lives. Everything dies. Sometimes cities just fall into the sea. It's not a tragedy, that's just the way it is. People look around them and see the world and say this is how the world is supposed to be. Then they fight to keep it that way. They believe that this is what was intended - whether by design or cosmic accident - and that everything exists in a tenuous balance that must be preserved. But the balance is bullshit. The only thing constant in this world is the speed at which things change. Rain falls, waters rise, shorelines erode. What is one day magnificent seaside property in ancient Greece is the next resting thirty feet below the surface. Islands rise from the sea and continents crack and part ways forever. What was once a verdant forest teeming with life is now resting one thousand feet beneath a sheet of ice in Antarctica; what was once a glorious church now rests at the bottom of a dammed-up lake in Kansas. The job of nature is to march on and keep things going; ours is to look around, appreciate it, and wonder what's next?”
― C. Robert Cargill, quote from Dreams and Shadows
“No one knows how to be normal, Jim. We’re all just trying our best. Sometimes we don’t have to think about it and other times it’s like running after a bus that’s already halfway down the street.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Dad rattles the leash he brought in with him, and the noise causes an explosion of doggy joy beside me.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, quote from Violent Ends
“Oneness is always growing in the world, boy. Two but not two. It's always there, connecting its roots, humming. I can't be part of it--that's the price I pay for taking myself away. But you can be. You can vibrate with its heartbeat. You may be on your own. But you won't be alone.”
― Sara Pennypacker, quote from Pax
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