“You know what I'm thinking?' Maggie said.
I had no idea.
'Nope,' David replied. Apparently David didn't know either.
Maggie turned to me with pleading eyes.'Our babysitter has the flu.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' I replied.
Dead silence.
I honestly had no idea what Maggie was getting at, so I misread the silence.
'It's not serious, I hope,' I said sympathetically.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
“I don't have any kids, so I'm not as worried about my heirs as the rest of you, but still: I think the youth of tomorrow might be better off if they knew the physical sensation of cracking a spine and turning the page.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
“David's brow unfurled and he crouched down on the floor with his daughter. 'Did you have a fun time with your aunt Izzy?' he asked in a high squeaky voice.
Sydney stared at him blankly.
'Say good morning to Aunt Izzy.'
Sydney stared at me blankly.
'Remember me from last night?' I asked.
'Did you have fun?' Maggie asked.
'I wouldn't go that far,' I replied.
'I was actually talking to Sydney, Maggie said.
'Oh well, she'd probably agree. We had an okay time, didn't we, Sydney?'
'Why can't you talk to her like a normal person?' asked David.
'I'm the only one talking to her like a normal person. You sound like a eunuch.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
“But Vivien wasn't being given the chance to sow her wild oats. Speaking from a point of authority, it's best to get that shit out of the way when you are young.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
“A salad of honesty and deception is the only way I can get away with an untruth.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
“I really think you should go out, Walter.” “No, thank you. I don’t like it there.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from Trail of the Spellmans
Lisa Lutz
Born place: in The United States
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“I
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“and nominally a cigar manufacturer. He never came to the club except on nights like this, when Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann would entertain a few of their—her—friends at a smaller table. Mildred, towering above Losch, the club steward, and pointing, daintily for her, with one finger as she held a small stack of place-cards in her left hand, apparently was one woman who had not heard about the business of the night before. It was axiomatic in Gibbsville that you could tell Mill Ammermann anything and be sure it wouldn’t be repeated; because Mill probably was thinking of the mashie-niblick approach over the trees to the second green. Julian derived some courage from her smile. He always had liked Mill anyway. He was fragmentarily glad over again that Mill did not live in New York, for in New York she would have been marked Lesbian on sight.”
― John O'Hara, quote from Appointment in Samarra
“Explosion without an objective,” declared Miles Blundell, “is politics in its purest form.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from Against the Day
“When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
Ghost Story
From Bad to Cursed
Bloodline
Misbehaving
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Totem and TabooBookQuoters 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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