Quotes from Books... 2006 And Before.
Submitted by Jentle on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 12:39
Tags:
Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
- ...Most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it's being shed by the deserving*), and then wondered where the stories went.
- *That is to say, those who deserve to shed blood. Or possibly not. You never quite know with some kids.
- p 1-2
- "Thusan?"
- She looked around. Her door had been pushed open and a small figure stood there, barefoot in a nightdress.
- She sighed. "Yes, Twyla?"
- "I'm afwaid of the monster in the cellar, Thusan. It's going to eat me up."
- Susan shut her book firmly and raised a warning finger.
- "What have I told you about trying to sound ingratiatingly cute, Twyla?" she said.
- The little girl said, "You said I mustn't. You said that exaggerated lisping is a hanging offense and I only do it to get attention."
- "Good. Do you know what monster it is this time?"
- p 4-5
- Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.
- p 23
- After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.
- p 23
- Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
- p 24
- This one was actually marked by Scott! In his otherwise PRISTINE book! Heh.
- There was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals.
- p 77
- TO THE HOGFATHER, ALL PORK PIES ARE AS ONE PORK PIE. EXCEPT THE ONE LIKE A TURNIP.
- p 82
- "Why have you stolen that piece of red paper from a little girl's present?" said Susan.
- "I've got plans," said the raven darkly.
- p 87
- "That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?"
- p 140
- IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather.
- "You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?"
- YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.
- p 142
- The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
- Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all first steps.
- p 160
- It's amazing how good governments are, given their track record in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters.
- One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it.
- It's not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of other aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops.
- The planet Earth is now banned to all alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one - who is big, hairy and has very large feet.
- The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- p 188 (old tag)
- It was amazing how many people spent their whole lives in places where they never intended to stay.
- p 199 (old tag)
- "Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get."
- p 207 (old tag)
- The Cheerful Fairy was quite short and plump in a tweed skirt and shoes so sensible they could do their own tax returns, and was pretty much like the first teacher you get at school, the one who has special training in dealing with nervous incontinence and little boys whose contribution to the wonderful world of sharing consists largely of hitting a small girl repeatedly over the head with a wooden horse. In fact, this picture was helped by the whistle on a string around her neck and a general impression that at any moment she would clap her hands.
- p 233 (old tag)
- "How do you spell 'electricity,' sir?"
- Ridcully thought for a while. "You know, I don't think I ever do."
- p 244 (old tag)
- It's amazing how people define roles for themselves and put handcuffs on their experience and are constantly surprised by the things a roulette universe spins at them. Here I am, they say, a mere wholesale fish monger, at the controls of a giant airliner because as it turns out all the crew had the Coronation Chicken.
- p 295 (old tag)
- Susan looked down at the new shape.
- "Nope," she said. "It's horrible, but it doesn't frighten me. No, nor does that." It changed again, and again. "No, nor does my father. Good grief, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you? I like spiders. Snakes don't worry me. Dogs? No. Rats are fine, I like rats. Sorry, is anyone frightened of that?"
- p 309 (old tag)
- When you were grown up you only feared, well, logical things. Poverty. Illness. Being found out. At least you weren't mad with terror because of something under the stairs. The world wasn't full of arbitrary light and shade. The wonderful world of childhood? Well, it wasn't a cut-down version of the adult one, that was certain. It was more like the adult one written in big heavy letters. Everything was... more. More everything.
- p 314 (old tag)
- "I really should talk to him, sir. He's had a near-death experience!"
- "We all have. It's called 'living.'"
- p 322
- Sobs welled up inside her. The tiny part of Susan that watched, the inner baby-sitter, said it was just exhaustion and excitement and the backwash of adrenaline.
- p 331
- HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
- p 336 (old tag)
Sick Puppy, Carl Hiaasen
- Twilly never knew which Lucy was coming through the front door until he leaned down to kiss her neck, which was the first thing he always did.
- p 135
- Vengeance, he believed, ought never to be ambiguous.
- p 164
- He could've robbed a church and still she wouldn't have wanted to go home. She understood him no better than she understood herself, but she felt unaccountably comfortable at his side. Sometimes she caught him glancing sideways at her - it was a look no other man had ever given her, a combination of naked desire, penetrating curiosity and also sadness.
- p 251
- The dog was having a grand time.
- That's the thing about being a Labrador retriever - you were born for fun. Seldom was your loopy, free-wheeling mind cluttered by contemplation, and never at all by somber worry; every day was a romp. What else could there possibly be to life? Eating was a thrill. Pissing was a treat. Shitting was a joy. And licking your own balls? Bliss. And everywhere you went were gullible humans who patted and hugged and fussed over you.
- ....
- Labradors operated by the philosophy that life was too brief for anything but fun and mischief and spontaneous carnality.
- - p 286
- "Don't give him any crazy new ideas."
- "There's no room in his head for more. Am I right, boy?"
- Twilly, deadpan: "I've turned over a new leaf."
- - p 454
- "Why are you stopping?"
- "Waste not, want not."
- "You love bacon that much, let me buy you a Denny's franchise," Twilly said. "But I'll be damned if you're stashing a four-hundred-pound pig corpse in my new station wagon. No offense, captain."
- - p 455
- "But I will tell you there's probably no peace for people like you and me in this world. Somebody's got to be angry or nothing gets fixed. That's what we were put here for, to stay pissed off."
- - p 457
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt
- Their relationship with their dead brother was of the most intimate sort, his strong, bright, immutable character shining changelessly against the vagueness and vacillation of their own characters, and the characters of people that they knew; and they grew up believing that this was due to some rare, angelic incandescence of nature on Robin's part, and not at all to the fact that he was dead.
- p 19
- She scarcely thought about the past at all, and in this she differed significantly from her family, who thought of little else.
- p 23
- Harriet, the baby, was neither pretty nor sweet. Harriet was smart.
- p 26
- From the time she was old enough to talk, Harriet had been a slightly distressing presence in the Cleve household. Fierce on the playground, rude to company, she argued with Edie and checked out library books about Genghis Khan and gave her mother headaches.
- p 26
- "I'd just as soon go to Hell," snapped Edie.... "as have to go around all the time letting everybody in town know exactly what I thought of them."
- p 29
- And this was a hallmark of Harriet's touch: she could scare the daylights out of you, and you weren't even sure why.
- p 74
- Harriet liked to set herself difficult physical tests (once, she'd tried to see how long she could subsist on eighteen peanuts a day, the Confederate ration at the end of the war), but mostly these involved suffering to no practical point. The only real goal she could think of - and it was a poor one - was to win first prize in the library's Summer Reading Contest.
- p 75
- She turned the page, to where her own notations, in pencil, began. These were mostly lists. Lists of books she'd read, and books she wanted to read, and of poems she knew by heart; lists of presents she'd got for birthday and Christmas, and who they were from; lists of places she'd visited (nowhere very exotic) and lists of places she wanted to go (Easter Island, Antarctica, Machu Picchu, Nepal). There were lists of people she admired: Napoleon and Nathan Bedford Forrest, Genghis Khan and Lawrence of Arabia, Alexander the Great and Harry Houdini and Joan of Arc. There was a whole page of complaints about sharing a room with Allison. There were lists of vocabulary words - Latin and English - and an inept Cyrillic alphabet which she'd done her laborious best to copy from the encyclopedia one afternoon when she had nothing else to do. There were also several letters Harriet had written, and never sent, to various people she did not like.
- p 76
- It tormented Harriet to see how lightly her mother treated Ida sometimes, as if Ida was only passing through their lives and not fundamentally connected with them.
- p 142
- She did not care for children's books in which the children grew up, as what "growing up" entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows.
- p 143
- "An archivist," she said, with a gasp, "is just a fancy word for pack rat."
- p 218
- Heeee.... I'm SUCH an archivist.
- Time was broken. Harriet's way of measuring it was gone.
- p 413
- ... she shut her eyes and hung her head, warmed and glowing all over, like a chimed bell.
- p 416
- ... she lavished a bewildering amount of care upon trivia.
- p 418
- Hely's feelings didn't run very deep; he lived in sunny shallows where it was always warm and bright.
- p 426
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Wendy Mogel, Ph.D.
- Our dining table with our children is an altar. It has the potential to be the holiest spot on earth. pg 35
- "It is not your responsibility to complete the work [of perfecting the world] but you are not free to desist from it either." - Rabbi Tarfon pg 37
- "Adults don't hold themselves to those standards. We don't interview the pediatrician about whether he can throw a basketball, or quiz our accountant on biology before we let her do our taxes." pg 43
- If you believe that fear is always a reliable indicator of danger, your child will believe this as well. pg 107
- Um... yeah... do I want to train my kid to ignore their instincts? Possible there's a sane medium point here?
- [We] might have better luck dealing with our children's materialistic cravings if we could say to ourselves, "Witness this spirited, impassioned, forceful young being. She is magnificent in the intensity of her desires and the brilliant locutions of her argument." pg 118
- Lets look at a short list of things that children are fully entitled to: respectful treatment, healthful food, shelter from the weather, practical and comfortable clothing, yearly checkups at the pediatrician and the dentist, and a good education. Everything else is a privilege. pg 122
- Paradoxically, effective parenting can cause parental separation anxiety. If we really expect and demand that children take responsibility, we may no longer need to nag them. pg 139
- "Humans are the only creatures that devote energy to making their offspring 'happy.' The rest of the animal kingdom is devoted to fostering competence to survive in the world." Children deserve more than our love and devotion. They deserve to be taught how to fend for themselves and eventually contribute to society. pg 141
- A two-year-old can wipe up the high-chair tray with a big industrial-sized sponge and can dust big sturdy objects like chairs with a feather duster. By three, children can begin to be given responsibility for dressing themselves. Older preschoolers can water plants, wipe the table, and help to sort the laundry by color. By four they can wash hands and brush teeth with some supervision.
- By four and five, children can learn how to care for their own belongings: putting their toys away, straightening their bed, putting their clothes in the hamper. The next stage is care for the family and the household. Here your child contributes to the smooth running of the ship by helping to set and clear the table, loading and unloading the dishwasher, bandaging a sister's skinned knee. Older children and teenagers graduate to cooking, ironing, washing the car, and earning their own spending money. p 143
- Seriously? Chores start at 2??
- What if she doesn't do it just exactly the way you think she should? What is gained and what is lost? When you wash her hair for her while feeling frustrated and resentful, she knows it. It isn't good for either of you. It's time to step back and give her a chance to learn by doing. pg 145
- When you give a child a job to do, let them, as much as is reasonable, decide how to get it done. p 146
- It's not the severity of a consequence that has an impact on children but the certainty. - Barbara Colorosa - p 155
- Despite all the frustrations and setbacks, chores give us a unique opportunity to teach our children family citizenship, self-reliance, responsibility, and a sense of the holy potential in every action. The sages teach us to turn some of our priorities upside down. The lessons we instill by insisting that our children do mundane tasks may very well be the ones that stay with them the longest, helping them to become self-reliant adults, responsible community members, and loving parents. p 157
- Worth thinking about...
- Eating disorders are in part spiritual disorders, because the sufferer is battling with the source of life. p 162
- Children often show their worst side to their mothers. p 189
- Your character traits will boomerang back at you when you become a parent, reflected in your child's behavior. p 191
- The most effective first step in improving your child's behavior might be to change your own. p 192
- To reduce the opportunities for your child to misbehave, ask yourself:
- *Does the trouble arise when my child is hungry? Tired? Over-stimulated? When I am?
- *Is his schoolwork too difficult? Too easy?
- *Does my child have enough stimulating things to do? A new study of sibling rivalry shows that its primary cause is not a desire to get parents' attention but boredom.
- *Is my child suffocating? If children can touch someone else in all four directions all day long they are too boxed in. All children need some time to themselves to unwind.
- *Does my child have a long enough recess break at school? Does he have some time between school, homework, and bedtime to play?
- *Is my child sleep-deprived?
- *Does my child have a headache from eyestrain?
- *Has my child been tested for hearing problems?
- p 195
- Think about using words in moderation. Don't try to provide instant solutions to your child's problems; instead, be quiet and just listen. p 200
- The trickiest part is delivering a rebuke that carries some sting without shaming the person being rebuked. Protecting others from shame is a central theme in Judaism. The rabbis taught that shame causes such great pain that it is akin to murder. If we cause someone to redden with embarrassment, it is as though we have drawn blood. p 201
- Don't up the ante on punishment. If you blurt out, "No TV for three days," and your daughter responds with a flippant, "Big deal," you are stooping to her level and abusing your power if you come back with, "OK, fine then! It will be no TV for a week!" You earn the privilege of leadership and respect by not taking advantage of your position.
- p 205
- We're not afraid of losing time but of having time to reflect. p 221
- Children need a chance to build up their boredom tolerance muscle. p 229
- If a seven-year-old has all the information, privileges, and responsibilities of a ten-year-old, seven will be lost to him. p 232
- Judaism does not ask its followers to take a leap of faith, it asks them to take a leap of action. p 240
- God is so different from science that we can't use the same parts of our mind to understand them.... God and science aren't in a competition. p 242
- In Judaism giving to the poor or needy or caring for the sick is not charity, it is justice. By helping others, you set the world straight when it has tipped against an individual or group. Cis's offer was different from one of friendship, courtesy, or social service. She was asking us to give her an opportunity to fulfill a holy obligation mandated by God. What right did we have to refuse? p 248
- Interesting perspective.
- "God didn't do that, bad people did. And God can't do everything. It's impossible. But he did one thing. He gave you and me the gift of life, and it's our job to use it and make the world better than we found it. The people who killed people didn't use their gift the right way." p 258
- .... Kids' impressions of God are sometimes awesome.
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett
- And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger. pg 27
The Sarantine Mosaic, Guy Gavriel Kay
- 'Pagan?'
- 'I honor the old gods, yes. And their philosophers. And believe with them that it is a mistake to attempt to circumscribe the infinite range of divinity into one - or even two or three - images, however potent they may be on a dome or a disk.' - Guy Gavriel Kay, The Sarantine Mosaic (p 72)
- 'The numinous... is not to be directly apprehended. Indeed, if the gods wish to destroy a man they need only show themselves to him.' (p 72)
The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett
- 'Yes, but I was just trying to keep her talking in case she turned violent,' said Maurice. 'She's gone in the head, if you ask me. she's one of those people like.... actors. You know. Acting all the time. Not living in the real world at all. Like it's all a big story. Dangerous Beans is a bit like that. Highly dangerous person, in my opinion!'
- 'He's a very kind and thoughtful rat!'
- 'Ah, *yes*, but the trouble is, see, that he thinks everyone else is like him. People like that are bad news, kid. And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
- 'Well, that's harmless, isn't it?' asked Keith.
- 'Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies.... it's just a word.'
Protecting The Gift, Gavin De Becker
- 'It is a world of so many possible risks that two miracles occur every day with most every child and most every parent: the kids survive, and the parents retain their sanity.'
- 'Throughout history, half of all children failed to reach adulthood. Half. The odds are far better for children in America today, but the truth remains that childhood is safe only when adults make it so.'
- 'After my daughter was born, the love I felt for her was so intense, so beyond anything I had ever imagined, that I knew I would not allow any harm to come to her. This made me feel, well, dangerous. If someone hurt her, or even tried to, I knew I would take justice into my own hands.'
- 'A good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, what am I choosing *not* to see right now?'
- 'Ask highly specific questions about a given dreaded outcome... ...Anytime we start to invent possibilities or find that the answer to most questions is "I don't know," we're not evaluating real or present risk.'
- '...The most common age at which sexual abuse begins is three...
- Nearly 100 percent of abuse is committed by heterosexual males...
- The US Department of Justice estimates that on average, there is one child molester *per square mile*...
- The average child molester victimizes between thirty and sixty children before he is ever arrested.'
- 'Deaths people describe as terrible have one thing in common: The deceased saw it coming. That forced acknowledgment of death, not the manner of death, is what we're really recoiling from. After all, being burned or crushed or trapped underwater is terrible even if the person survives. Such misfortune could be more accurately described as "a terrible way to live," because dying might be the easiest part of the experience.'
- 'Woman: You're right. I shouldn't be wary. I'm overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because we have to consider where we park, where we walk, and whom we talk to in the context of whether someone will kill us or rape us or merely scare us half to death; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that we're made to feel foolish for being cautious even though we live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards, and just because I'm with my daughter and have a duty and fervent desire to protect her as well as myself from harm DOESN'T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD NO.'
- 'People should learn to see and so avoid all danger. Just as a wise man keeps away from mad dogs, so one should not make friends with evil men.' - Buddha
- 'True openness is realizing that the guy across from me is not who I want him to be, but who he is.'
The Companions, Sheri S Tepper
- 'Judgments based upon untruths are not worthy of us.'
- 'I loved them because they weren't like people. They were different. We need things to be different. If everyone is alike, it narrows our world down, it makes us narrow, too. It makes us think human things are the only things, human ideas the only ideas...'
- 'I addressed her as Sannasee, which means honored female.'
- 'Killing females and young ones upsets the softskins greatly, but they forget as quickly. Kill their important men, they remember it forever, so we don't want to do that.'
- 'Many of us are having such imprintings. It is being necessary for many creatures. One is finding one's way in the pack or herd by knowing where one is ranking, who to be groveling to and who to be dominating. One is learning very young the smell or sound of the higher-up, the lower down. It is continuing for most or all of a life. Also, when we are mating, we are being imprinted, each by the other. No matter how unsuitable or disagreeable the mate is being, some people are staying imprinted all their lives.'
- 'In his heart, mankind has never been able to evolve past the tribal stage.....'.....
- 'Perhaps it's why we get on with dogs so well. We and they have the same societies.'
- 'Oh, she was... A marvel. A wonder. A dear, dear otherness. An answer to the question of whether humans are any more important than any other creature.'
The Bone People, Keri Hulme
- "It was a book she had designed to cater for all the drifts and vagaries of her mind. To provide her with information, rough maps and sketches of a way to God."
- "But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk..."
- "It was the hermitage, her glimmering retreat. No people invited, for what could they know of the secrets that crept and chilled and chuckled in the marrow of her bones?"
- He ruffles Simon's hair, smoothes it again. "Tama, you've never told Kerewin, have you?" in the same quiet-as-breathing voice.
- His son shakes his head.
- "Why?"
- There's a long silence.
- Because she'll know I'm bad, the boy mouths, and starts crying. Because she'll know I'm bad, he says it again and again, gulping miserably through the silent words, she'll know I'm bad.
- "O Christ," says Joe, and cries with him.
- "Life gets better the older you grow, until you grow too old of course."
- She's standing on the orangegold shingle, arms akimbo, drinking the beach in, absorbing sea and spindrift, breathing it into her dusty memory. It's all here, alive and salt and roaring and real. The vast cold ocean and the surf breaking five yards away and the warm knowledge of home just up the shore.
- "Ahhh," she sings wordlessly, hugging herself, oblivious of the two behind her. She stamps her feet in the shingle, bends down and throws off her boots, and stamps again, bare feet tensing against the damp cold stones.
- "I am back!" she calls in a high wild voice, "I am here!"
- The wind blows more strongly in seems, and a larger breaker than the ones before comes crashing down in front of the woman and sends long white fingers speeding towards her. The foam curls round her ankles and Kerewin cries aloud with joy.
- "O Thou art beyond all good but truly this land and sea is your dwelling place..."
- She spins round, dancing herself round, spreading her arms wide in a welcome, her eyes alight.
- "Okay, here goes... Aiki is not a technique to fight with... It is the way to reconcile the world, and make human beings one family. Winning means winning over the mind of discord in yourself. It is to accomplish your bestowed mission. Holmes addendum: and to discover your bestowed mission. Love is the guardian deity of everything. Nothing can exist without it. Aikido is the realisation of love. The way," stopping reading, and explaining, "Do is Japanese for a way. Ai means love, harmony, and ki is the vital spirit. Aikido can mean, the way of martial spiritual harmony, okay?"
- "Okay." says Joe.
- "... The way means to be one with the will of deity, and practise it. How can you straighten your warped mind, purify your heart, and be at harmony with the activities of all things in the universe? You should first make God's heart yours. There in no discord in love. There is no enemy in love.
- ...
- "Even standing with my back to the opponent is enough. When he attacks, hitting, he will injure himself with his own intention to hit. I am one with the love of the universe, and I am nothing else. There is no time or space before Uyeshiba of Aikido - only the universe as it is."
- I'm the odd one out, the peculiarity in my family, because they're all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can remember, I've disliked close contact... charged contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels like the other person is draining something out of me.
- Spirals make more sense than crosses, joys more than sorrows...
- Each ring feeds my fingers with its particular virtue. A garnet gives courage, a turquoise soothes. Greenstone enobles. Opal enlivens. Coral is shy, but full of ancient memory. And aquamarine quickens thought, lively as a dolphin in the open sea.
- And some stones I avoid like the plague... diamonds are obnoxious and leave, somehow, a sick taste in the mouth. Emeralds are cold as death, idol eyes, and rubies are too luxuriantly, unctuously velvet...
- I am a waste, a wilderness of alien gorse and stone that scores all who enter. O, Kerewin can stalk through in her grim and withering way, because she is self-contained, wrapped in iron, and I cannot reach her except on the terms she admits. Very few, very hard...
- And Haimona... Ah Dear God, my Haimona... Haimona storms through any wilderness though it tears him bloody. I am afraid of his ardour. I am afraid of him. So they track my waste, and the waste yields nothing blessed yet. And no-one else attempts this desert...
- ...
- I cannot warm or heal the woman. I cannot warm or heal the child...
- Kerewin said at Moerangi, "Suffering is undignified." Suffering ennobles, I said, but I smiled to show her that I thought that was really bullshit. What was noble about enduring a hook in your thumb? And she said, "Sometimes, the dross is burnt off your character," and moodily she added, "But the scars that result from burning can be a worse exchange."
- But I've done as much as I can with the past.
- Primarily, that I forgo control over myself and my destiny. Secondly, medicine is in a queer state of ignorance. It knows a lot, enough to be aware that it is ignorant, but practitioners are loath to admit that ignorance to patients. And there is no holistic treatment. Doctor does not confer with religious who does not confer with dietician who does not confer with psychologist. And from what I can learn about cancer treatment, the attempted cure is often worse than the disease...
- "What do I love?" musing on it.
- "Very little. The earth. The stars. The sea. Cool classical guitar. Throbbing flamenco. Any colour under the sun or hidden deep in the breast of my mother Earth. Ah Papa my love, what joys do you yet conceal? And storms... and the thunderous breaking surf. And the farout silent waves... and o, dolphins and whales! The singing people, my sisters in the sea... And anything that displays gentle courage, steadfast love. The still brilliance of garnet, all wine, water of life and bread of heaven and grave shimmering moon...."
Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Toni Weschler
- "We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them." - Dora Russell
- "Abraham Kaplan's theory, The Law of The Instrument: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."
Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
- It's beautiful Geryon, she said hanging up the telephone.
- It's a beautiful sculpture.
- She put her hand on top of his small luminous skull as she studied the tomato.
- And bending she kissed him once on each eye
- Then picked up her bowl of peaches from the tray and handed Geryon his.
- Maybe next time you could
- use a one-dollar bill instead of a ten for the hair, she said
- As they began to eat. [sic]
- It was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness. The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.
- Maybe I'll just keep talking and if I say anything intelligent you can take a picture of it.
- Meanwhile music pounded across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being a self in a song.
After Long Silence, Sheri S Tepper
- "So you did something wrong. God forbid you should ever do anything wrong. Everyone else, but not you. You're so much above mistakes. So damn good."
- I've always been your good boy, Mother. Yours and Dad's. I never asked questions. I always did what I was told. If I broke any rules, they were always little rules, for what I thought were good reasons. I loved someone, even though I knew she loved me in a different way. I wanted a child, and she wanted to be my child. Still, I really loved her, and sometimes - oh sometimes all that love came back to me a hundredfold. And I thought if I went on being good, life would be like that always. Something bright and singing, something terrible and wonderful would come to me.
- I've always thought paradise must be very perilous. Anything beautiful, anything that takes hold of your heart and shakes it - that's perilous.
- "Like? She was... she was a lot like Wendra Gentrack. Edible. And sweet. Like some baby animal, soft and giggly. Kind of fearful. Not interested in much. A good cook. Beautiful looking. She only had one way to act toward men, flirtatious. She didn't mean anything by it. She fluffed up even for me, and I'm nobody."
- "Bondri Gesel, this Loudsinger is defective. He has no pain feelings at all. Perhaps that is why he acts as he does."
- Bondri regarded the Loudsinger [human] with disfavor. The Prime Song urged good returned for good, and when possible, good returned as an example for others, even when bad had been intended. However, the song also directed that those who kill without good reason must be disposed of in order that others may live in tranquility. Then there was the question of the taboo. There was no good reason to break the taboo for this man. Now he looked down into Spider Geroan's expressionless eyes and attempted to apply the Song.
- "Can you fix him?" he sang. "Can you fix him so he can feel?"
- "Simple," caroled the giligee.
- "Well, then, fix him," he said, with a sense of satisfaction that he did not even attempt to understand. "And when you have finished, tell the troupe they can eat him."
- "I'm saying that when any of us get into relationships where one person totally depends on another, we kill something.
- Ourselves, perhaps. Or them."
Montessory in the Classroom, Paula Polk Lillard
- She really has an almost mystical belief in the energy that is released by working and playing hard - "The revitalizing fuel that makes development possible." And she sees it as her job to spark that fuel.
- The curriculum for the environment consists of three types of materials: materials through which the children can develop their skills for independence and academic knowledge, art materials (including writing tools) for their expression of self, and materials for the maintenance of the room so that they can develop pride in and responsibility for their own environment. Each of these materials is organized down to the smallest detail so that children can use them independently.
The Safe-Keeper's Secret, Sharon Shinn
- She wept even harder. "You should not have to take care of me, too! I at least should not be a burden."
- He kissed her on the top of her head. "No burden," he murmured. "Love never is."
A Fine & Private Place, Peter S. Beagle
- He was not without philosophy, this shopkeeper, and he knew that if a raven comes into your delicatessen and steals a whole baloney it is either an act of God or it isn't, and in either case there isn't very much you can do about it.
- I told people I was thirty-three because it saved questions about why I liked books.
- We both had delusions of kindness.
Author Comments:
Many repeated from my Quotes Written In My Journals series... though less so, as it goes on...
How do you wanna work this? If I have quotes from the same books do you want them here in the discussions? Or do you want a matching list per book, or a Mirror Quotes list, or what? Let's talk taxonomy, meshuggah.
Hm... good question. Lemme think about it...
.... Currently I'm leaning a bit toward a Mirror Quotes list... Do you have a preference? Any pro-con ideas?
glingleglingleglingle
Should we try reading another book together? Another Discworld?
Thud?
Read it, and know where I put the quotes. But I'd read it again.
Something else maybe?
Wee Free Men?
As long as that's the one that comes first in their story-arc, I'm in. Lemme find a copy.
Indeed.
1. Wee Free Men
2. Hat Full of Sky
3. Wintersmith
Yup, Wintersmith. We got some catching up to do.