“This is what the Problem means,” he went on. “This is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and ivy. We lose them twice over, Lucy. Death’s not the worst of it. We turn our faces away.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“The skull’s…spirit? He…he looks different.”
The youth scowled. “Yeah? You look just the same. I was banking on frostbite taking a few of your fingers, or even your nose. Here’s hoping something else has dropped off that I don’t know about. If not, I’ll be sorely disappointed.”
Lockwood stared. “Does he always talk like this?”
“No. Usually he’s worse. See what I have to put up with?”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Looks?” the skull said. “Who cares about that? It’s superficial. Outward appearance doesn’t interest me at all. Why do you think I hang around with you?” It chuckled. “Insult aside, that’s just one way in which I’m superior to every one of you, except for Cubbins.”
I blinked. “What? Why? What’s George got to do with anything?”
“What a person looks like doesn’t bother him much, or hadn’t you noticed?”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Who says I’m dying? Did you see the amount of sheer effort it took me to escape the land of the dead? I’m not going back in now!”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Lockwood didn’t speak until everything was quiet again. “I know you’re worrying about me, Luce,” he said. “But you really mustn’t. These things happen when you’re an agent. You’ve been snared by ghosts in the past, haven’t you? There was the one that made the bloody footprints, and the thing in the tunnels below the Aickmere Brothers store. But it’s fine, because I helped you then, and you’ve helped me now. We’re there to help each other. If we do that, we’ll get through.” Which was a lovely thing to say, and it made me feel a little warmer. I just had to hope it was true.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Let's have the baddish one first,' George said. 'I prefer my misery to come at me in stages, so I can acclimatize on the way.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Here we go," the Skull sighed. "Cue crisis!”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Do you trust me?' the skull said.
...
'Yes,' I said. 'Sort of.'
'Then break the bloody glass.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“It was higher and shriller than Holly’s, so we knew that it was Kipps.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Mr Lockwood, you've impressed a lot of people over the years. Personally, I expected you to be ghost-touched long ago, but your agency has flourished. Impress me again now... Let them forget about you... Even now, it's probably not too late. - Inspector Barnes”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Ooh, I smell something burning... Wait, wait - it's your pants ! Your pants are on fire, you massive liar ! You so weren't on a case !”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Ghost Lore among the Tribes of New Guinea and West Sumatra,”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“The door closed; almost imperceptably, the lift began to rise.
'Going up,' the skull said. 'Next floor: cutlery, condiments and underpants.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Empty Grave
“Brave is being scared and doing what needs to be done anyway”
― R.C. Lewis, quote from Stitching Snow
“—Es una terrible incoherencia escuchar el sencillo mensaje del evangelio proclamado por labios altaneros. L”
― quote from Mondays with My Old Pastor: Sometimes All We Need Is a Reminder from Someone Who Has Walked Before Us
“The unfortunate animals raised for food are forced to eat large quantities of fish meal and rendered animal flesh and organs, which is totally unnatural for them, in order to fatten them quickly. Manure is also used to “enrich” their feed, and these additives concentrate toxins to an even higher extent than the plant foods the animals are fed. The toxins in the animal foods we eat include carcinogenic heavy metals, deadly PCBs, chemical residues, antibiotics, and the human-created nightmare we now call the prion. Prions are thought to cause mad cow disease and the other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that have raged through both human cannibal populations (such as the cannibalistic Fore people of Papua New Guinea where a type of human spongiform encephalopathy, called by them “kuru,” was first documented in the 1950s) and animal cannibal populations (such as the farmed sheep and mink populations that developed scrapie and transmissible mink encephalopathy after being fed rendered animal flesh). Similar diseases such as Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (the human equivalent of mad cow) and, according to some researchers, certain forms of Alzheimer’s disease, now threaten human omnivore populations as well because of perverse industry standards that have dictated feeding cows to other cows, and that still feed pigs to other pigs, chickens to other chickens, and pigs and chickens to cows.30”
― Will Tuttle, quote from The World Peace Diet
“It was trying to strive for perfection that destroyed my parents, Foster. I wouldn’t want perfect love. I want true love, the kind that doesn’t depend on pretending to be better than I am.”
― R.K. Ryals, quote from The Story of Awkward
“We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she’ll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They’ll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days.
But there’s no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love. Jung would say that this is because, even culturally, our anima is repressed, hated, derided. We hate our female selves. A boyish girl is perfectly acceptable. A girlish boy? Not so much. In certain places, you’d get your ass kicked, find yourself "gay-bashed." You might even get yourself killed. That's how much we hate our anima.”
― Lisa Unger, quote from In The Blood
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