Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

"I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul"

~Radiohead, Creep

[kennyc]

Great song, great poetry!

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Great song, great poetry!

Thanks, Kenny. Indeed. My brother went to their show Monday night in New Orleans. I was jealous but my health is such I just can't go out to a night-time concert, then function at work the next day.

Here are a couple of quotes from my current read:

“Life isn’t made of choices,” said Holland. “It’s made of trades. Some are good, some are bad, but they all have a cost.”

― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“Two cheers to the wind…” “And three to the women…” “And four to the splendid sea.” The last word trailed off, dissolving into the coarser sounds of glasses knocking against tables, ale splashing onto floor. “Is that really how it goes?” asked Vasry, tipping his head back against the booth. “I thought it was wine, not wind.” “Wouldn’t be a sea shanty without the wind,” said Tav. “Wouldn’t be a shanty without the wine,” countered Vasry, slurring his words.”

― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

[covingtoncat73]

From "American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel" by Neil Gaiman -

"'Hey,' said Shadow. 'Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.'

The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.

'Say ‘Nevermore,’' said Shadow.

'F**k you,' said the raven."

[AlexBell]

... and many things which would have made me wince in old days move me to tenderness and even rapture. The explanation of this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha, but what is the explanation of the love itself, I really don't know.

Anton Chekhov in 'Love', from Love and Other Stories

[astrangerhere]

I asked him if the song brought back memories of Yuko. “It does not bring back memories,” he said. “Because it is not something that I forget.”

We often think of searching as a kind of movement, a forward motion through time, but maybe it can also be the opposite, a suspension of time and memory.

...

The search for love, the search — his, hers, everyone’s — is not for a needle in a haystack, nor a fish in the sea. It’s for a specific person on earth. The world never looks as big as when someone is lost.

- Jennifer Percy | I Have No Choice but to Keep Looking from The New York Times Magazine

[bfisher]

"I love roads:
The goddesses that dwell
Far along invisible
Are my favourite gods.

Roads go on
While we forget, and are
Forgotten like a star
That shoots and is gone.
...
Helen of the roads,
The mountain ways of Wales
And the Mabinogion tales,
Is one of the true gods,
...
Calls back to their own night
Troops that make loneliness
With their light footsteps’ press,
As Helen’s own are light.

Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance:"

from Roads by Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras on April 9, 1917. After a long career as a literary hack, and partly inspired by his new friend Robert Frost, he abandoned prose for poetry at the beginning of World War I. It has been speculated that an advance copy of The Road Not Taken that Frost sent to Thomas may have been the last straw that impelled Thomas to enlist in July, 1915.

[AlexBell]

I maintain that to be engaged is very dreary, far more so than to be a husband or nothing at all. An engaged man is neither one thing nor the other, he has left one side of the river and not reached the other, he is not married and yet he can't be said to be a bachelor...

Anton Chekhov in 'Love', from Love and Other Stories

[kennyc]

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
- Anne Lamott - Happy Birthday today 4/10

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

[BenG]

"Murderers?" She was indignant. "That wasn't murder. He just killed a politician. All the court could do was determine whether or not the politician needed it...."
― H. Beam Piper, A Planet for Texans aka Lone Star Planet

[covingtoncat73]

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

~John Rogers
In an "Ephemera" blog post
This also appears in Ch. 10 of The Value of Nothing (2010) by Raj Patel, who later acknowledged it was a borrowed joke in "Citation Alert!" (21 January 2010) at rajpatel.org. From Wikiquote: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Rogers

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

~John Rogers
In an "Ephemera" blog post
This also appears in Ch. 10 of The Value of Nothing (2010) by Raj Patel, who later acknowledged it was a borrowed joke in "Citation Alert!" (21 January 2010) at rajpatel.org. From Wikiquote: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Rogers

[covingtoncat73]

From "The Infidel Stain (A Blake and Avery Novel)" by M.J. Carter -

"“Explain it to me. I ask you honestly. I wish to know.”

“Parliament functions to allow the privileged to maintain their privileges,” he said. “It has consistently fought Lord Allington’s attempts to shorten working hours for the laboring class. It forestalls his attempts to regulate children’s work in mines and factories and votes down his plans to introduce universal education for children. It fights tooth and nail to maintain the Corn Laws which keep bread prices high, so landowners like your father are secure in their wealth. Meanwhile the harvests fail and the poor go hungry. In whose interests are these things done?”

“But the children of the poor need to work to help feed their families. Everyone knows that.”

Blake gave me his look. I looked away. We lifted our cups and sipped our coffee."

[kennyc]

"Hemingway didn't say that"
- Garson O'Toole

Some of you may find this book interesting - How one man corrected hundreds of modern misquotations infecting the Internet, our books, and our minds.

[astrangerhere]

“It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.”

Mary Beard | SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome