“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.
Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd be good news?”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“Beautiful," Grillo said.
"Would Swift approve?"
"Fuck Swift."
"Somebody should have.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“Never a truer word said or thought. Anything was possible.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“Before she could look to find a wound he had control of the vision once again, but like a juggler attempting to hold too many balls in the air catching one meant loosing another.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“Stories had a way of doing that, in Grillo’s experience. It was his belief that nothing, but nothing, could stay secret, however powerful the forces with interests vested in silence. Conspirators might conspire and thugs attempt to gag but the truth, or an approximation of same, would show itself sooner or later, very often in the unlikeliest form. It was seldom hard facts that revealed the life behind the life. It was rumour, graffiti, strip cartoons and love songs.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“Nothing, I had come to believe by the end, was more illusory than the idea of ending.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Great and Secret Show
“thought you had liberal views on what women should be allowed to do. It’s not as if I were suggesting joining one of your hideous hunts. I imagine that there aren’t wild animals behind every rock in Turkey waiting to charge at helpless humans.” “I wouldn’t object in principle to your going to Troy, but I will admit that I don’t view you as an adventurous type.” His eyes searched my own. “Beast! You don’t know me at all.” “Would you have the wardrobe?” He was laughing, and I realized he was teasing me. “Isn’t Ephesus in Turkey? Perhaps I could visit there on the same trip. I’ll send you a note from the Temple of Artemis, where I assure you I will not appear in evening clothes.” “I didn’t realize you had an interest in antiquity.” “Philip inspired me.” We had reached the rue de Rivoli and were nearly at the Meurice. “Let’s keep walking; I would like to see the river at night.” We turned away from the hotel and walked until we reached the Pont-Neuf. The air had grown chilly, and I had not worn even a light wrap; Colin stood near me to shield me from the wind blowing over the bridge. “Can you imagine how many people have crossed this bridge?” I asked. “It must be three hundred years old. Do you think that Marie Antoinette ever stood here and looked across the Seine at the city?” “Hardly. I think she would have had a greater appreciation for the views at Versailles.” “We consider this bridge old, but if it were in Athens, would anyone even comment on it? I shouldn’t be impressed with anything less than two thousand years old if I were in Greece.” “Then you would miss some particularly fine Roman ruins, my dear. Why don’t you plan a nice, civilized trip to Athens on your way to Santorini when you go?” “I shall have to see how it fits with my plan to visit Troy.” Colin shook his head and took my arm. I let him guide me back to the hotel, but not before contemplating at some length the pleasure I derived from his standing so close to me. COLIN CALLED ON ME the next afternoon, and I confess I was delighted to see him. I planned to dine in my rooms that evening and invited him to join me. He readily accepted. “What time shall I return?” he asked. “I’ll only need to dress.” “Don’t be silly,” I replied. “We shan’t dress. I ordered a light supper and asked to have it early. It’s only the two of us, and”
― Tasha Alexander, quote from And Only to Deceive
“Some men are born lucky. Others are born Marcus Didius Falco.”
― Lindsey Davis, quote from The Silver Pigs
“Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy - very unhappy - it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.
To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children that they are naughty - much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. You carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. This is called moral influence, and it will enable you to bounce them as much as you please. They think you know and they will not have yet caught you lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run away if they fight you with persistency and judgment. You keep the dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them. Tell them how singularly indulgent you are; insist on the incalculable benefit you conferred upon them, firstly in bringing them into the world at all, but more particularly in bringing them into it as your own children rather than anyone else's... You hold all the trump cards, or if you do not you can filch them; if you play them with anything like judgment you will find yourselves heads of happy, united, God-fearing families... True, your children will probably find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience to yourself.”
― Samuel Butler, quote from The Way of All Flesh
“Conny and I stood in line, along with other people, outside Checkpoint Charlie, the gate for foreigners into East Berlin. Many of those in line were Dutch, and I saw they were being passed without difficulty. Everything seemed routine: Hand your passport to a guard, walk down the line, and receive your passport back with a stamp that allowed you to spend the one day in East Berlin. I hoped it would be as easy for us when it was our turn to be checked. Finally we were in front of the window. The guard looked at our passports, looked in a book and then turned and said something to another man behind him. “Is there a problem?” I asked the man. He turned and gave me a stern look. “Come with”
― Corrie ten Boom, quote from Tramp for the Lord
“A man is held to be criminal,sometimes, by the great ones of the earth,not because he has committed a crime himself but because he knows of one which has been committed.”
― Alexandre Dumas, quote from The Man in the Iron Mask
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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