Sue Townsend · 272 pages
Rating: (34.9K votes)
“There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Adrian Mole's diary
Easter
Poor Jesus, it must have been dead awful for him. I wouldn't have the guts to do it myself.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I'm the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of being in love and Lucozade.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Had a note from Mr Cherry asking me when I can resume my paper round. I sent a note back to say that due to my mother's desertion I am still in a mental state. This is true. I wore odd socks yesterday without knowing it. One was red and one was green. I must pull myself together. I could end up in a lunatic asylum.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Mrs O'Leary said, 'Tis the child I feel sorry for', and all the people looked up and saw me, so I looked especially sad, I expect the experience will give me a trauma at some stage in the future. I'm all right at the moment, but you never know.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I asked her about my Family Allowance today, she laughed and said she used it for buying gin and cigarettes.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“said he ‘would rather go without’.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Measured my ‘thing’. It was eleven centimetres.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“My grandma let the dog out of the coal shed. She said my mother was cruel to lock it up. The dog was sick on the kitchen floor. My grandma locked it up again.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Just measured my thing. It has grown one centimetre. I might be needing it soon.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“She is just straight all the way up and down, including her nose and mouth and hair.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“He was standing very still with his arms folded, staring with poached egg eyes.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I had my first wet dream!”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“If knew you were going to drug me, kidnap me, and take me back to the dark ages with out my pants, I never would have slept with you.”
― John Scalzi, quote from Redshirts
“The implants just give you a new set of reproductive-free imperatives, that's all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to the trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from River of Gods
“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love’s favourite perversion? … I loved Ellen, and i wanted to know the worst. I never provoked her; I was cautious and defensive, as is my habit; I didn’t even ask questions; but I wanted to know the worst. Ellen never returned this caress. She was fond of me - she would automatically agree, as if the matter weren’t worth of discussing, that she loved me - but she unquestioningly believed the best about me. That’s the difference. She didn’t ever search for that sliding panel which opens the secret chamber of the heart, the chamber where the memory and corpses are kept. Sometimes you find the panel but it doesn’t open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you’ve looked. That’s the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don’t, but between those who want to know everything and those who don’t. This search is a sign of love, I maintain.”
― Julian Barnes, quote from Flaubert's Parrot
“Look, every government has a need to frighten its population, and one way of doing that is to shroud its working in mystery. The idea that a government has to be shrouded in mystery is something that goes back to Herodotus [ancient Greek historian]. You read Herodotus, and he describes how the Medes and others won their freedom by struggle, and then they lost their freedom when the institution of royalty was invented to create a cloak of mystery around power. See, the idea behind royalty was that there’s this other species of individuals who are beyond the norm and who the people are not supposed to understand. That’s the standard way you cloak and protect power: you make it look mysterious and secret, above the ordinary person―otherwise why should anybody accept it? Well, they’re willing to accept it out of fear that some great enemies are about to destroy them, and because of that they’ll cede their authority to the Lord, or the King, or the President or something, just to protect themselves. That’s the way governments work―that’s the way any system of power works―and the secrecy of the system is part of it.”
― Noam Chomsky, quote from Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
“He was hard lines, chiseled flesh, bronzed skin. I was a marshmallow melting in a cup of cocoa.”
― T.J. Klune, quote from Tell Me It's Real
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