“The mighty sturgeon has his pool; The stork upon the dam makes his habitation. Fish in scaly armour, Birds in serried plumes, find protection. In my distress I question that inscrutable expanse: O bowels of earth! O boundless sky! Will ye not hearken to my cry? Above, the twinkling Milky Way; The air cold, Slanting moonlight, The water-clock sunk past midnight. My restless heart grieves still;”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
“No remedy but love Can make the lovesick well; Only the hand that tied the knot Can loose the tiger’s bell.”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
“There was a peal of laughter from the girls. Then, before anyone could say a word, the line was seen to move a fraction. A bite at last! The sage yanked in for all he was worth. The rod crashed into a protruding rock and broke clean in two.”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
“There was a peal of laughter from the girls. Then, before anyone could say a word, the line was seen to move a fraction. A bite at last! The sage yanked in for all he was worth. The rod crashed into a protruding rock and broke clean in two. The”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
“She walked indoors, and staring once more at her orchids, thought to herself: ‘Flowers have their spring-time, a time for fresh blossoms and young leaves. I am young, but frail as the willow that dreads the first breath of autumn… If all turns out for the best, I may grow stronger yet. But if not, my fate will be like that of the fallen petals at spring’s end, driven by the rain and tossed in the wind…”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
Cao Xueqin
Born place: Nanjing, China
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“All this happened, more or less.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death
“Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken
“I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“I’ve liked you since the morning you ran into me.”
I giggle and try to shove him away, but he uses the motion to pull us closer. “You have not,” I say.
“I have,” he whispers, and now his lips brush against my cheek. “I remember thinking, ‘Nice job, dickhead. Add another girl to the list of people who hate you.’”
“I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you.”
“Now, that’s reassuring,” he says, but I can hear the smile in his voice. He inhales along my cheekbone, and sparks flare through my abdomen. “You should write for Hallmark.”
“All my future love letters will start with ‘To whom it may concern.’”
“Are you going to send me future love letters?”
I flush, and I’m sure he can see it. Feel it.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Alkimist
“When the war (WWI) finally ended it was necessary for both sides to maintain, indeed even to inflate, the myth of sacrifice so that the whole affair would not be seen for what it was: a meaningless waste of millions of lives. Logically, if the flower of youth had been cut down in Flanders, the survivors were not the flower: the dead were superior to the traumatized living. In this way, the virtual destruction of a generation further increased the distance between the old and the young, between the official and the unofficial.”
― Robert Hughes, quote from The Shock of the New
Timbuktu
Magic to the Bone
Doing It
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