“Lemties neįmanoma įžvelgti, nebent jei sapnuoji ar esi apsvaigęs iš meilės.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Aren’t eccentricities fairly common among overachievers.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“As for Dr. Zajac’s modest contribution to the ongoing pollution of the Charles River… well, let’s be fair… In his hopelessly old-fashioned opinion, a lot worse than dogshit was dumped into the Charles on daily basis.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“And feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary…”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Americans are suckers for an English accent.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“When they weren’t praying, they did what schoolgirls everywhere do. They laughed, they shrieked, they burst into hysterical sobs – all for no apparent reason…
The schoolgirls also played the worst Western music imaginable, and they took a surfeit of baths – so many baths that the traditional inn where Wallingford and Evelyn Arbuthnot stayed was repeatedly running out of hot water.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“There is often a defining experience that marks any significant change in the course of a person’s life.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Was he nice? He didn’t know. He hoped he was, but how many of us truly know?”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Maybe drinking five or six ales before getting into a massive brawl hadn't been the wisest choice.”
― Megan Derr, quote from Tournament of Losers
“Punching - 2 shillings
Both eyes blacked - 4 shillings
Nose and jaw broke - 10 shillings
Jacked out (knocked out with a blackjack) - 15 shillings
Ear chewed off - same as previous
Leg or arm broke - 19 shillings
Shot in leg - 25 shillings
Stab - same as previous
Doing the Big Job - 3 pounds and up”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Reluctant Assassin
“What's that?" he asked.
"A balance sheet," I said. "To keep track of your payments."
He asked whether Pop had written it or me. When I answered truthfully, he handed the paper back like the useless thing it was. "Thank you," he said. "I won't be needing this."
Which took me by surprise and set me stammering how it was proof he was making his payments, and how he should take it because it was the right and proper way to do business.
"The rules aren't the same for me as they are for you," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Don't you know that, Will?" Which put my nose out of joint so bad that I told him he was being rude, and that I was only trying to do him a favor at no small risk to myself.
Joseph's face went blank as the cloudless sky overhead. He eyed the receipt. Said, "Thank you, Mr. William. But I can't accept." And got back on his bicycle.
"That all you got to say?" I near shouted, frustrated at how easily he'd turned my good intentions into a fool's errand. And the quickest flash of hate you ever did see danced across the dark of his eyes.
I stood there, feeling awkward and a fool. Joseph put one foot on a pedal and said, real quiet, "If you'll excuse me, I've a funeral to attend."
Only then did I notice the band of mourning black around his upper arm.
"Who died?" I asked stupidly.
Joseph's eyes were flat. "Nobody important, Mr. William. Only a Negro boy like me.”
― Jennifer Latham, quote from Dreamland Burning
“That so many of them were African American, many of them my grandmother’s age, struck me as simply a part of the natural order of things: growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine. My”
― quote from Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
“Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion, that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by war—teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.” In”
― Shelby Foote, quote from The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
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