“My dad hates umbrellas, said Deeba, swinging her own. When it rains he always says the same thing. 'I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society's usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“...where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“I'm Margarita Staples." She bowed in her harness. "Extreme librarian. Bookaneer.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“So...I'm the funny one? I'm the funny sidekick?
.
.
.
That's no way to talk about anyone! To say they're just hangers-on to someone more important.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Were you terrified, Murgatroyd?" Murgatroyd nodded eagerly. "There you go, girl: You're a terrorist. You make me twitchy, and under Article Forty-One of the 2000 Terrorism Bill, that's all I need. Time for some reasonable force, I think.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Yeah, but where’s the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Is it dangerous? Hmm. Well, define 'dangerous.' Is a knife 'dangerous'? Is Russian roulette 'dangerous'? Is arsenic 'dangerous'? ...It really depends on your perspective.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“My job is never boring," Staples said. "There's nuts-and-bolts stuff like getting the tarpaulin over the shaft when it rains, and so in. Cataloging and reshelving. The shelves are in a shocking state. And when you've got everything ever written or lost to keep track of, it's quite a job. And there's fetching books.
"I used to really look forward to requests for books way down in the abyss. We'd all rope up, follow our lines down for miles. The order falls apart a way down but you learn to sniff out class-marks. Sometimes we'd be gone for weeks, fetching volumes.' She spoke with a faraway voice.
"There are risks. Hunters, animals, and accidents. Ropes that snap. Sometimes someone gets separated. Twenty years ago, I was in a group looking for a book someone had requested. I remember, it was called 'Oh, All Right Then': Bartleby Returns. We were led by Ptolemy Yes. He was the man taught me. Best librarian there's ever been, some say.
"Anyway, after weeks of searching, we ran out of food and had to turn back. No one likes it when we fail, so none of us were feeling great.
"We felt that much worse when we realized that we'd lost Ptolemy.
"Some people say he went off deliberately. That he couldn't bear not to find the book. That he's out there still in the Wordhoard Abyss, living off shelf-monkeys, looking. And that he'll be back one day, book in his hand.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Come on then," Deeba said. "We haven't got time to waste. You're not the ones who are going to get forgot in a few days' time if you don't phone home.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“You've met our guards." He gestured at the silent cylindrical guide. "The secret warriors: the binja.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Strictly speaking, she thought, this place was a cross between a forest and a jungle. “This is a jorest,” she said to Hemi. “Yeah,” he said. “No, it’s a fungle.” They grinned.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“A dark-windowed diesel train burst out of the building, close enough to make the bus shake. It helter-skeltered downward into the earth. “Where’s it going?” Zanna said. “Crossing the Odd, to some of the other abcities,” Jones said. “If you’re brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn’t, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless…It’s a terminus.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t take him for part-ghost—but you’d know he wanted to be somewhere else.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“UnLondon would have to look after itself. She wasn’t the Shwazzy. She was just someone. How could just someone be any help, whatever was going on?”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Easiest way is to bend over and say ‘car.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“Pokud člověka mátlo pobývat v Přízrakově, kde ho obklopovali duchové předchozích forem, ocitnout se uvnitř této budovy mu vyrazilo dech.
Zdálo se, jako by se chodba stahovala a zužovala podle kolotání jejích duchů. Stěny byly ověšené osvědčeními a obrazy, které obklopovaly další v přízračné podobě. Kolem světel visely přízraky holých žárovek a složitých lustrů.
"Myslím, že hodím šavli," řekla Deeba.
"To je ti jenom duchno," poznamenal Hemi. "To se spraví.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
China Miéville
Born place: in Norwich, England, The United Kingdom
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“It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna
“It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down,” he told his daughter, Marilynn. “What matters is how many times you get up.”
― Daniel James Brown, quote from The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
“She took a puff, put the cigarette in the ashtray and stared at it. Without looking up, she said, But do you believe in love, Mr Evans? She rolled the cigarette end around in the ash tray. Do you? Outside, he thought, beyond this mountain and its snow, there was a world of countless millions of people. He could see them in their cities, in the heat and the light. And he could see this house, so remote and isolated, so far away, and he had a feeling that it once must have seemed to her and Jack, if only for a short time, like the universe with the two of them at its centre. And for a moment he was at the King of Cornwall with Amy in the room they thought of as theirs—with the sea and the sun and the shadows, with the white paint flaking off the French doors and with their rusty lock, with the breezes late of an afternoon and of a night the sound of the waves breaking—and he remembered how that too had once seemed the centre of the universe. I don’t, she said. No, I don’t. It’s too small a word, don’t you think, Mr Evans? I have a friend in Fern Tree who teaches piano. Very musical, she is. I’m tone-deaf myself. But one day she was telling me how every room has a note. You just have to find it. She started warbling away, up and down. And suddenly one note came back to us, just bounced back off the walls and rose from the floor and filled the place with this perfect hum. This beautiful sound. Like you’ve thrown a plum and an orchard comes back at you. You wouldn’t believe it, Mr Evans. These two completely different things, a note and a room, finding each other. It sounded … right. Am I being ridiculous? Do you think that’s what we mean by love, Mr Evans? The note that comes back to you? That finds you even when you don’t want to be found? That one day you find someone, and everything they are comes back to you in a strange way that hums? That fits. That’s beautiful. I’m not explaining myself at all well, am I? she said. I’m not very good with words. But that’s what we were. Jack and me. We didn’t really know each other. I’m not sure if I liked everything about him. I suppose some things about me annoyed him. But I was that room and he was that note and now he’s gone. And everything is silent.”
― Richard Flanagan, quote from The Narrow Road to the Deep North
“She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.”
― David Sedaris, quote from When You Are Engulfed in Flames
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