“An interesting thing happened today,” she said, giving me just enough time to get the word “hi” out of my mouth. “I opened the front door and there was a man on my doorstep. A big man. A very big, very black man.”
“Rachel —”
“You said it would be discreet. His T–shirt had the words ‘Klan Killer’ written on the front.”
“I —”
“And do you know what he said?”
I waited.
“He handed me a note from Louis and told me he was lactose intolerant. That was it. Note. Lactose intolerant. Nothing else. He’s coming to the reading with me. It was all I could do to get him to change his T–shirt. The new one reads ‘Black Death.’ I’m going to tell people it’s a rap band. Do you think it’s a rap band?”
I figured it was probably his occupation, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said the only thing I could think of to say.
“Maybe you’d better buy some soy milk.”
She hung up without saying good–bye.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“You still carrying an arsenal in the trunk of your car?”
“Why, you need something?”
“No, but if your car is hit by lightning I’ll know where my lawn went.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“So what you gonna do?”
“Push a stick into the beehive and rustle up some bees. The Larousses are hosting a party today. I think we should avail ourselves of their hospitality.”
“We got an invite?”
“Has not having one ever stopped us before?”
“No, but sometimes I just like to be invited to shit, you know what I’m sayin’, instead of havin’ to bust in, get threatened, irritate the nice white folks, put the fear of the black man on them.”
He paused, seemed to think for a while about what he had just said, then brightened.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Real good,” he agreed.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“I have found in the past that what passes for coincidence is usually life’s way of telling you that you’re not paying enough attention.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“THE AFRO-AMERICAN HAS BEEN HEIR TO THE MYTHS THAT IT IS BETTER TO BE POOR THAN RICH, LOWER-CLASS RATHER THAN MIDDLE OR UPPER, EASYGOING RATHER THAN INDUSTRIOUS, EXTRAVAGANT RATHER THAN THRIFTY AND ATHLETIC RATHER THAN ACADEMIC.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“So, how we doin'?"
"Same as usual: dead people, a mystery, more dead people."
"Who we lost?"
"The boy. His guardians. Maybe Elliot Norton."
"Shit, don't sound like we got anybody left. Anyone hires you better leave you your fee in their will.”
― John Connolly, quote from The White Road
“There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“If they veered left, it would feel to them as if they were sinking into the earth: the path would narrow as the ground around them rose up to their hips, then shoulders, then heads. The walls would turn from sod to stone, and it would seem as if they were walking inside a crag in a cliff. The sky would be reduced to a thin swath of blue, broken in parts by the branches of the trees that grew above them along the sides of this ancient channel.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“You're not a pawn, Sofia. You're the queen.”
― Bella Forrest, quote from A Shade of Blood
“Whatever it is you want, whatever it is you need, I suggest you go after it. Sitting back and pretending otherwise will get you nowhere in life, boy. And if you ever need to talk, about anything, you know your mother and I will always listen.”
― Nicole Edwards, quote from Travis
“Wow. Snubbed by a homeless guy. My night was getting better and better”
― Jenn Bennett, quote from The Anatomical Shape of a Heart
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