Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

"No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't."

Stephen King, The Stand

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by orlok

Are we allowed poems?

Why shouldn't we? Great idea! Let's have poems.

Here's Eva Gore-Booth's take (published in 1918) on the Irish Easter Rising. As a pacifist, she didn't believe in the violent means, but very much in the goal of the Rising. Moreover, her sister Constance had been one of the leaders of the rebellion and was now in prison. So here we have six brilliant lines of ambivalence:



EASTER WEEK

Grief for the noble dead
Of one who did not share their strife,
And mourned that any blood was shed,
Yet felt the broken glory of their state,
Their strange heroic questioning of Fate
Ribbon with gold the rags of this our life.

[elk886]

"She says no one would be mean to me if I didn’t do something first, but people can turn mean if something bad happened to them just before you walked into the room."

-Joan Alden, When I First Knew

[covingtoncat73]

"Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds."
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes)"
Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), Metamorphoses, book XV, line 165

[pdurrant]

"I never could get the hang of Thursdays"

— The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams,

[rkomar]

"What is least fascinating in [religious] sanctuaries are the images and objects. They bear too much of a resemblance to the rest of reality. They try to tear themselves away from it and end up sinking back into it instead, testifying to the futility of all such efforts. Air, however, closed within a solid form, and space, shaped by vaulting, walls and architectural detail, becomes the most perfect representation of nostalgia. You can walk into it, feel its touch on your skin, but it all flows between your fingers, you can hold it in your lungs, but just for a moment."

Andrzej Stasiuk, "Tales of Galicia"
(translated by Margarita Nafpaktitis)

[AlexBell]

"I besought him, if he knew what really ailed her, that he would tell me. At last he said, 'Does she not know herself that the malady is a mental one -- that it is, in one word, love? Do you not see how her swelled eyes, her unsettled look, her pale countenance, betray the wounded heart? Her thoughts wander, her discourse is unconnected, she gets no sleep, and visibly falls away; some relief must be sought for, but he alone for whom she pines can, I think, afford it."

From The Aethiopica by Heliodorus, 3rd century AD

[covingtoncat73]

“Doesn’t private vice make a man unworthy of public office?” And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment. “Well,” she laughed, “if it did, there’d be no one to govern the land.”


― Edward Rutherfurd, New York

[covingtoncat73]

“They say that people should be free to do as they like. That’s what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.”


― Edward Rutherfurd, New York

[covingtoncat73]

"You can make money in a small way without politics. But to make the big money, you need to buy the legislature. Can’t be done otherwise.”"
― from "New York: The Novel" by Edward Rutherfurd

[astrangerhere]

"What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk. We need to find out what fiction is, what it means, to us, an experience that is going to be unlike anyone else's experience of the story."

"There. Consider yourself warned. There are so many little triggers out there, being squeezed in the darkness even as I write this. This book is correctly labeled. Now all we have to worry about is all the other books, and, of course, life, which is huge and complicated and will not warn you before it hurt’s you. Thank you for coming. Enjoy the things that never happened. Secure your own mask again after you read these stories, but do not forget to help others.”

Neil Gaiman's introduction to Trigger Warning

[covingtoncat73]

"Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." ~Prince, R.I.P.

[doubleshuffle]

R.I.P. Cosmic Lunchbox Ambassador!

Cynthia had a happy face,
just like the one she'd draw
on every wall in every school,
but it's all right, it's for a worthy cause:

Starfish and coffee,
maple syrup and jam,
butterscotch clouds, a tangerine
and a side order of ham.

If you set your mind free baby,
maybe you'd understand:
Starfish and coffee,
maple syrup and jam.

[KenMagee]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

"I never could get the hang of Thursdays"

— The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams,

I'm not so good with Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays either.

Great quote from a fantastic book.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

"What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk. We need to find out what fiction is, what it means, to us, an experience that is going to be unlike anyone else's experience of the story."

"There. Consider yourself warned. There are so many little triggers out there, being squeezed in the darkness even as I write this. This book is correctly labeled. Now all we have to worry about is all the other books, and, of course, life, which is huge and complicated and will not warn you before it hurt’s you. Thank you for coming. Enjoy the things that never happened. Secure your own mask again after you read these stories, but do not forget to help others.”

Neil Gaiman's introduction to Trigger Warning