Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[BenG]

To be on foot in the United States is only immoral, not illegal. Unless you’re a bum, of course. It’s just like in England, really: you can wander abroad and lodge in the open air so long as you've a home to go to; it’s only an offence if you haven’t one – on the same principle that ensures you cannot borrow money from a bank unless you don’t need any.

--Kyril Bonfiglioli, Don't Point That Thing At Me, the first in his Charlie Mortdecai series

[kennyc]

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
- Steve Jobs

[covingtoncat73]

“You’re a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust, riding a rock, hurtling though space. Fear nothing.” ~ Unknown source, tried to find who originated this but couldn't. I love it, though.

[Greg Anos]

"They don't have to like us, snake. They just have to make the payment schedule..."

David Drake, Rolling Hot

[AlexBell]

This quote comes from Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell, set in the early 1800s in which there were virtually no social supports. The male speaker, a widower with an adolescent daughter in need of a mother has just proposed marriage to Mrs Fitzpatrick, a widow also with an adolescent daughter who is struggling to survive by running a school.

There! he had done it - whether it was wise or foolish- he had done it! but he was aware that the question as to its wisdom came into his mind the instant that the words were said past recall.

She hid her face in her hands.

"Oh! Mr Gibson," she said; and then, a little to his surprise, and a great deal to her own, she burst into hysterical tears: it was such a wonderful relief to feel that she need not struggle any more for a livelihood.

[KenMagee]

Why is it when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side? Tyrion, Game of Thrones

[kennyc]

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.
....
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mending-wall

[covingtoncat73]

[covingtoncat73]

"The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is."

~Bob Dylan, Chronicles, vol. 1

[covingtoncat73]

"Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?"
— Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)

[covingtoncat73]

"Mr. Aldige drew his revolver and informed the men that he would call on the police to protect him and that he would make a corpse of the first man who laid hands on him."

~My great-great-great grandfather having a "lively time in Algiers" from the June 3, 1878 Times Picayune

[AlexBell]

This quote comes from Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell, set in 1830 when there were virtually no social supports. The male speaker, a widower with an adolescent daughter has just proposed marriage to Mrs Fitzpatrick, a widow (also with an adolescent daughter) who is struggling to survive by running a school.

'There! he had done it - whether it was wise or foolish - he had done it! but he was aware that the question as to its wisdom came into his mind the instant that the words were said past recall.

She hid her face in her hands.

"Oh! Mr Gibson," she said; and then, a little to his surprise, and a great deal to her own, she burst into hysterical tears: it was such a wonderful relief to feel that she need not struggle any more for a livelihood.'

[kennyc]

"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (from Paris Review interview 1981)

[AlexBell]

Being a woman, I was naturally interested in them, and could see some things more clearly than men could. I saw their real power, their real dignity, their real responsibility in the world...

Then I thought of all the other women, the real ones, the vast majority, patiently doing the work of servants without even a servant's pay - and neglecting the noblest duties of motherhood in favor of house service; the greatest power on earth, blind, chained, untaught, in a treadmill. I thought of what they might do, compared to what they did do, and my heart swelled with something that was far from anger.

From When I was a Witch, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1910

[covingtoncat73]

"The stories in newspapers hate the stories in newspapers, David's mother would say. Newspaper stories were like newly caught fish, worthy of attention only for as long as they remained fresh, which was not very long at all. They were like the street urchins hawking the evening editions, all shouty and insistent, while stories- real stories, proper made-up stories-were like stern but helpful librarians in a well-stocked library. Newspaper stories were as insubstantial as smoke, as long-lived as mayflies. They did not take root but were instead like weeds that crawled along the ground, stealing the sunlight from more deserving tales.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things