“There is a passion in you that scares me.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“The preface? Why would he waste time with the preface? Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing!”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“It was as though, in one moment, he had become a stranger. And I a stranger to myself.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“You see, when medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. - Polidori”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“No, indeed, 'pig' is very expressive. And an excellent description of a fellow who flirts with his brother's beloved.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“If she can bite a vulture, she can jump a crack.
~Victor Frankenstein”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“Beyond the lake, over the mountains, the clouds were illuminated from within by a brilliant stutter of lightning, and in that split second Elizabeth and I were etched against the sky.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“Konrad had gone to the New World without me, and no matter how fast I ran westward, how close I kept to the sunsets, I would never catch up with him now.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“We all knew no respectable physician would remove my fingers just for the asking, and we had no time anyway.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“What do you make of him?" I asked Elizabeth.
"Apart from the fact he's clearly insane?"
"What can he learn from Konrad's blood?" I said. "Except that he needs it in his body to live!"
"There is something ghoulish about it."
"He's like a vampyre,”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“Behind us I saw the water, still welling up from the tunnel, curving round in a frothing serpentine torrent to plunge down the other descending passage. For a moment we all sat there and watched, numb and exhausted.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
“Do you worry it is sinful?" I asked.
She took a breath. "No," she said firmly. "God is the creator, and anything on this earth is here by His permission. I cannot think He minds if we use His creations - only how. For good or ill. What we seek is for good, so I will not worry about it.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor
Kenneth Oppel
Born place: Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada
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“Alas that he did not ask the question then! I still sorrow for him on that account. For when the sword was put into his hand, it was a sign to him that he should ask. And I pity too his sweet host whom God's displeasure does not spare and who could have been freed from it by a question.”
― Wolfram von Eschenbach, quote from Parcival: Ridder van de Graal
“In my art history degree course, we did a module on palimpsests—medieval sheets of parchment so costly that, once the text was no longer needed, the sheets were simply scraped clean and reused, leaving the old writing faintly visible through the new. Later, Renaissance artists used the word pentimenti, repentances, to describe mistakes or alterations that were covered with new paint, only to be revealed years or even centuries later as the paint thinned with time, leaving both the original and the revision on view.
Sometimes I have a sense that this house—our relationship in it, with it, with each other—is like a palimpsest or pentimento, that however much we try to overpaint Emma Matthews, she keeps tiptoeing back: a faint image, an enigmatic smile, stealing its way into the corner of the frame.”
― quote from The Girl Before
“You love her that much,' she stated, not asking.
'That much,' he admitted in a whisper after a long moment of silence.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Blood of Elves
“Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“Yes,” her boss responded, “one for us and one for the customer.” “I’m sorry, so you are saying that the client is asking for a copy and we need a copy for internal use?” “Actually, I’ll check with the client—they haven’t asked for anything. But I definitely want a copy. That’s just how I do business.” “Absolutely,” she responded. “Thanks for checking with the customer. Where would you like to store the in-house copy? There’s no more space in the file room here.” “It’s fine. You can store it anywhere,” he said, slightly perturbed now. “Anywhere?” she mirrored again, with calm concern. When another person’s tone of voice or body language is inconsistent with his words, a good mirror can be particularly useful. In this case, it caused her boss to take a nice, long pause—something he did not often do. My student sat silent. “As a matter of fact, you can put them in my office,” he said, with more composure than he’d had the whole conversation. “I’ll get the new assistant to print it for me after the project is done. For now, just create two digital backups.” A day later her boss emailed and wrote simply, “The two digital backups will be fine.” Not long after, I received an ecstatic email from this student: “I was shocked! I love mirrors! A week of work avoided!” Mirroring will make you feel awkward as heck when you first try it. That’s the only hard part about it; the technique takes a little practice. Once you get the hang of it, though, it’ll become a conversational Swiss Army knife valuable in just about every professional and social setting.”
― Chris Voss, quote from Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
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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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