“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“Daylight was coming outside, but it was not only that: courage cast its own light.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'
'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'
Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days...why aren't you fat?'
'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“But courage was not lacking in her heart, though it might be foolhardy and unwise.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“Alluding and attacking, summoning a courage, embodying a gallantry of defiance that hurt to see, it was so noble and so doomed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree
“to test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved “slowly and insecurely” and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an “ovoid cupola.” Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading “Experiments with Human Subjects”—a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased—von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X’s inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
“I found myself within a forest dark,”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from La Divina Comedia
“A very wise person once told me, “When it comes to overcoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says, I can overcome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to overcome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.”
― W. Timothy Gallwey, quote from The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
“Deliberate practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement. Once an overall goal has been set, a teacher or coach will develop a plan for making a series of small changes that will add up to the desired larger change. Improving some aspect of the target performance allows a performer to see that his or her performances have been improved by the training. Deliberate practice is deliberate, that is, it requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions. It isn’t enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s directions. The student must concentrate on the specific goal for his or her practice activity so that adjustments can be made to control practice.”
― K. Anders Ericsson, quote from Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
“This love you gave me… taught me, gifted me with… required me to.” “I”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Seven Sons of Zion
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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