“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”
“Do you ever feel that way?"
"Lonely?"
I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."
He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have.
"Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last.
"What?"
"Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.”
“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”
“It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.”
“There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.”
“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”
“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”
“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
“We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.”
“You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.”
“I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.”
“I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.”
“The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon.”
“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”
“But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”
“Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.”
“Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.”
“There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.”
“But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.”
“War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so.”
“Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore... and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more...”
“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”
“I'm sorry,' he says simply. 'People make mistakes, Gemma. We take the wrong action for the right reasons, and the right action for the wrong reasons.”
“The night's chilly breath tickles up my neck and finds my ear, whispering secrets only the wind knows.”
“Because it is morning, it is morning, and there is so much to see.”
“A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer--Gem-ma, Gem-ma--and then the leaves bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.”
“When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.”
“If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I've no use for God. ”
“Svět zažil nacismus, atomovou bombu i moderní hudbu, a všechno to dokázal jakž takž přežít.”
“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.
Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.
They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.
It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time.
Here's to them.”
“When the right moment appears, the key is to not let it pass.”
“doesn’t make any sense,” he said. It was all he could do, however, to keep from throwing the dreadful sheet into”
“Come, Philander, let us be a marching, Every one his true love a searching,"
Would be the most appropriate motto for this chapter, because, intimidated by the threats, denunciations, and complaints showered upon me in consequence of taking the liberty to end a certain story as I liked, I now yield to the amiable desire of giving satisfaction, and, at the risk of outraging all the unities, intend to pair off everybody I can lay my hands on.”
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