“It is possible the world is divided into three genders - there are men, there are women and then there are women who choose to have nothing to do with children. How about men without children, he answered quickly, aren't they also different from fathers? She shook her head firmly, daring him to contradict her: no, all men are the same.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Hugo pulled away from Rosie’s teat. ‘No one is allowed to touch my body without my permission.’ His voice was shrill and confident. Hector wondered where he learnt those words. From Rosie? At child care? Were they community announcements on the frigging television?”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Regrets, of course; only an imbecile did not have regrets. Regrets, some shame, a little guilt. But they had all done the best they could, they had raised their children well, educated them, housed them, made them safe and secure. They had all been good people. Death was never welcome but He always came. It was only to be truly lamented when He took the young, those neither prepared nor deserving of it. Then Death was cruel. Manolis watched the foam rise in the briki and he turned off the flame.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Queria passar mais uns minutos no mundo que não fosse dominado pela hierarquia e o snobismo e a vingança.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“E quem é que os americanos não destruíram? Olha o que eles estão a fazer no Médio Oriente. É a mesma coisa.
…Mas os Vietnamitas derrotaram-nos, porque eram um povo unido. Ao contrário dos idiotas dos Árabes… os Ingleses puseram-nos uns contra os outros há cem anos e eles são demasiado ignorantes para o perceberem. Se fossem unidos, podiam conquistar o mundo.
…A América não vai deixar ninguém conquistar o mundo, a não ser eles próprios. Rebentam com todos nós antes de deixarem seja quem for levar vantagem.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“As a young man he had not dared risk God’s wrath by questioning His purpose. Now he did not give a damn. Fuck it. There was no Paradise and there was no Hell and if there was a God, He was worse than inscrutable. What did exist was the cold, cruel truth of a young man, dead—from cancer or a car accident or suicide or God knows what—at the obscene age of thirty-two.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from The Slap
“Christ, she missed him outrageously. Disgusted with herself, she ducked her head under the spray and let it pound on her brain.
When hands slipped around her waist, then slid up to cup her breasts, she barely jolted. But her heart leaped. She knew his touch, the feel of those long, slim fingers, the texture of those wide palms. She tipped her head back, inviting a mouth to the curve of her shoulder.
"Mmm. Summerset. You wild man."
Teeth nipped into flesh and made her chuckle. Thumbs brushed over her soapy nipples and made her moan.
"I'm not going to fire him." Roarke trailed a hand down the center of her body.
"It was worth a shot. You're back..." His fingers dipped expertly inside her, slick and slippery, so that she arched, moaned, and came simultaneously. "Early," she finished on an explosive breath. "God."
"I'd say I was just on time.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Ceremony in Death
“There cannot be any hard and fast rules. But there can be suggestions and useful analogies. The most useful, to my mind, is that of the difference between the English and French judicial systems. In England (and America), the task of the court in criminal cases, which it devolves upon a jury, is to arrive at a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ on the evidence presented by prosecuting and defending counsel in turns. Trials are conflicts and verdicts are decisions; the two sides ‘win’ or ‘lose’. In France, and other countries which observe Roman Law, the task of the court in a criminal case is to arrive at the truth, as far as it can be perceived by human eyes, and the business of establishing the outlines of the truth falls not on a jury, which is strictly asked to enter a judgement, but upon a juge d’instruction. This officer of the court, unknown to English law, is accorded very wide powers of interrogation–of the suspect, his family, his associates–and of investigation–of the circumstances and scene of the crime–at which the suspect is often required to participate in a reconstruction. Only when the juge is satisfied that a crime has indeed occurred and that the suspect is responsible will he allow the case to go forward for prosecution. The character of these two different legal approaches is usually defined as ‘accusatorial’ (English) and ‘inquisitorial’ (French) respectively.”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
“That’s all it might take. It wasn’t death he feared—none of them feared that—but rather failure. But were not the Holy Warriors of Allah those who did the hardest things, and would not his blessings be in proportion to his merit? To be remembered. To be respected by his compatriots. To strike a blow for the cause—even if he managed to do that without recognition, he would go to Allah with peace in his heart.”
― Tom Clancy, quote from Dead or Alive
“Le scandale du monde, est ce qui fait l'offense;
Et ce n'est pas pécher, que pécher en silence.”
― Molière, quote from Tartuffe
“In Fleury’s day, however, the grass was cut and the graves well cared for. Besides, as you might expect, he was fond of graveyards; he enjoyed brooding in them and letting his heart respond to the abbreviated biographies he found engraved in their stones . . . so eloquent, so succinct! All the same, once he had spent an hour or two pondering by his mother’s grave he decided to call it a day because, after all, one does not want to overdo the lurking in graveyards. This decision was not a very sudden one. From the age of sixteen when he had first become interested in books, much to the distress of his father, he had paid little heed to physical and sporting matters. He had been of a melancholy and listless cast of mind, the victim of the beauty and sadness of the universe. In the course of the last two or three years, however, he had noticed that his sombre and tubercular manner was no longer having quite the effect it had once had, particularly on young ladies. They no longer found his pallor so interesting, they tended to become impatient with his melancholy. The effect, or lack of it, that you have on the opposite sex is important because it tells you whether or not you are in touch with the spirit of the times, of which the opposite sex is invariably the custodian. The truth was that the tide of sensitivity to beauty, of gentleness and melancholy, had gradually ebbed leaving Fleury floundering on a sandbank. Young ladies these days were more interested in the qualities of Tennyson’s “great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman” than they were in pallid poets, as Fleury was dimly beginning to perceive. Louise Dunstaple’s preference for romping with jolly officers which had dismayed him on the day of the picnic had by no means been the first rebuff of this kind. Even Miriam sometimes asked him aloud why he was looking “hangdog” when once she would have remained silent, thinking “soulful”. All”
― J.G. Farrell, quote from The Siege of Krishnapur
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