“Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Everyone has a dark side! But it’s their choice whether or not they cultivate it.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“But she still had time. Surely she still had time. Stories like this one weren’t meant to end badly.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I don’t know how many women can claim to have walked a man’s heart, but I’ve walked yours,”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Perhaps the man wasn’t so mad after all. Or maybe it’s a madness that I can learn to appreciate.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Perhaps in a heart, knowledge was more stable than memory or thought.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I think life would be much . . . simpler . . . if a man could believe in one solid thing,” he answered, still not looking at her. “Bits and pieces here and there do no good for a man’s soul. Thinking all of it is right or all of it is wrong does no good, either. Just as a magician cannot work all materials. He must choose one. But how does he know? How do these people believe in this faith, but not the others? Yet they are happy.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“The ghostly images lasted only a moment longer before fading away, as all unread stories were wont to do.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Never dismiss the value of entertainment, Ceony. Good-quality entertainment is never free, and it’s something everyone wants.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Curse Emery Thane for being such a difficult man to rescue!”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Or maybe it’s a madness that I can learn to appreciate.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I don’t know how many women can claim to have walked a man’s heart, but I’ve walked yours, Emery Thane. And I like the dog.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“What about my mistakes? I think about them, too, but where would I be if I thought of nothing else? What sort of person would I be if I drowned in them?”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“ma always said the word damn came from beavers who gave up on their houses one stick short.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“A heart that’s known love is stronger than one that hasn’t, did you know that?”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Mg. Thane held his fork loosely in his hand. “I’ll not starve you, if that’s your worry.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Her head full of clouds, but not in the dreamy sense. Just the empty one.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I feel capable of achieving anything, for nothing worldly can possibly hold me back from my ambitions now.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“For if rice and tuna was his for-guests meal, Ceony couldn’t imagine what the man ate when he dined alone. Perhaps Mg. Aviosky had assigned her here merely to ensure England’s oddest paper magician got some decent nutrition and didn’t wither away, leaving the country with only eleven paper magicians instead of twelve.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“The heart had the dark to balance out the light, the uncertainty to balance dreams.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Do you believe in one thing, Ceony?” Her heart sped as he said her name. She considered the question. “I’ve never given it a great deal of thought. I suppose I don’t. I think I understand what you mean, about there being good in all faiths. In all gods, in all beliefs. When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“She thought her ears would light with fire, her cheeks burn to ash, but the moment passed, as even the worst moments do.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“whose dark eyes narrowed to lightless almonds,”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Six days. The man had been gone six days, and that was all he had to say about it?”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“she exclaimed with all the anxiety of a worried mother, the sternness of an academy principal, and the relief of a farmer feeling spring’s first rain on his skin. Her”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“Anger. Infidelity. Death. Dark times—that’s what these memories were. Ceony had passed through Emery’s goodness and his hopes; it made sense to see his darkness, too. To see his hurts and his vices. To see the shadows cast behind those bright eyes.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“she turned the page and scanned them again, committing them to memory.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“He examined the paper, his eyes bobbing as he counted the pieces, and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I’m going to teach you something I really shouldn’t be teaching you.”
“But given the circumstances,” she urged.
He nodded. His lip quirked. “Given the circumstances. Just pretend to forget it once this is over . . . if either of us makes it past this.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“parasites make up the majority of species on Earth. According to one estimate, parasites may outnumber free-living species four to one. In other words, the study of life is, for the most part, parasitology. The book in your”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“I have heard people suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devasted phyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe
“From the vantage point of the brain, doing well in school and at work involves one and the same state, the brain’s sweet spot for performance. The biology of anxiety casts us out of that zone for excellence. “Banish fear” was a slogan of the late quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming. He saw that fear froze a workplace: workers were reluctant to speak up, to share new ideas, or to coordinate well, let alone to improve the quality of their output. The same slogan applies to the classroom—fear frazzles the mind, disrupting learning.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
“Pour alcohol on a bundle of nerves and it generally turns into a can of worms.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill
“My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
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