Candy Bilski > Candy's Quotes

“You lost sight of what was important... and sometimes, to gain something you have to let something go.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“These days, there are so few pure country people left on the concession roads that we may be in need of a new category of membership, much as sons and daughters of veterans are now allowed to join the Legion. A few simple questions could be asked, a small fee paid and (assuming that the answers are correct) you could be granted the status of an "almost local." Here are some of the questions you might be asked: Do you have just one suit for weddings and funerals? Do you save plastic buckets? Do you leave your car doors unlocked at all times? Do you have an inside dog and an outside dog? Has your outside dog never been to town? When you pass a neighbour in the car, do you wave from the elbow or do you merely raise one finger from the steering wheel? Do you have trouble keeping the car or truck going in a straight line because you are looking at crops or livestock? Do you sometimes find yourself sitting in the car in the middle of a dirt road chatting with a neighbour out the window while other cars take the ditch to get around you? Can you tell whose tractor is going by without looking out the window? Can people recognize you from three hundred yards away by the way you walk or the tilt of your hat? If somebody honks their horn at you, do you automatically smile and wave? Do most of your conversations open with some observation about the weather? Is your most important news source the store in the village? Have you had surgery in the local hospital? If you hear about a death or a fire in the community, does the woman in your house immediately start making sandwiches or a cake? Do you sometimes find yourself referring to a farm in the neighbourhood by the name of someone who owned it more than twenty-five years ago? If you answered yes to all of the above questions, consider it official: you are a local.”
― Dan Needles, True Confessions from the Ninth Concession

“love was an unstable reaction with a half-life of about eight months. Bullshit, I said, and accused him of wearing cultural blinders; thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“Sir, winning is usually a matter of making one less mistake than the enemy or just getting up one more time than you get knocked down.”
― Jack Campbell, Valiant

“You are what you do when it counts”
― John Steakley, Armor

“The water was calm and blue today, and as they walked along the dunes they could see the hump of Poplar Island off the Eastern Shore.”
― Ken Grimwood, Replay

“Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower. That's the kind of love my parents had. Not so consuming and more everlasting. And you see that tree over there? Now it's only showing green leaves, but during the spring it's covered in flowers. Because as reliable as trees are, they can also speak of beauty and passion.”
― Mya Robarts, The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“… the primitive comprehension that the state property represents a social one, their identification, and their equalization  could not resist the criticism of the time. The state property is not socialism. The state-monopoly property, as it was on the both sides of the Berlin Wall and which continues to be such one even after it dropped down, is not social property. There was never and nowhere any socialism! In the twentieth century, we passed through a system of utopian socialism as proof that this was not socialism that was not possible, but the utopia of the writers before Marx and after Marx. We were visited by a utopian socialism, which at the contemporary stage is simply capitalism—state, monopolistic.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“For your information, Dolores, Rudi gave me full leave to do what I think is best for our children.”
― Dorlies von Kaphengst Meissner Rasmussen, Escaping the Russian Onslaught: A Family’s Story of Fleeing the Russian Army after Hitler’s Nazi Regime

“Later, back in the Den of Thieves, Rafe explained it all to Raimund. The boy was partially mollified. Rafe did not know about Raimund’s dreams, and Raimund did not enlighten him, so Raimund puzzled by himself. What did it mean? How had Aleana come to be in the prison cell under the protection of the young man from his dreams – in the arms of the young man who was now the occupant of his family’s old cottage? How had the man ended up in prison, and what was his crime? Most importantly, what would happen to Aleana?”
― Robert Reid, The Thief

“On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“A girl. Arranged, not dropped.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: Killer

“Murder calls were never welcome, but this one had a small silver lining.it was going to get Merlin out of a sticky predicament.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“Jimmy’s dog tag clinked as he almost slid right into her. Teenagers wore dog tags in case New York was bombed and they needed to be identified if killed or injured. Mrs. McCorkle, the O’Shaughnessy’s immediate next door neighbor, had insisted on a dog tag for Jimmy.”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“I mean, it’s not that we lack the technology or the resources to solve every one of the world’s problems, but we lack the political and moral will to prioritize people over profit, or people over power. We lack a worldwide spiritual wellness or a mutual love for others beyond our own tribe or religion, a humanity without racism or bigotry. Our prosperity has morphed into a ravenous, greedy cancer that transforms even basic life needs into cradle-tograve profit centers and corporate dynasties. Even worse, the average person has little control or real voice. Governments, technologies, and innovations systemically move wealth upward but do little or nothing to eliminate poverty or ignorance overall. At what point in time does humanity get honest with ourselves and have an intervention?”
― Guy Morris, Swarm

“Words are not enough. Not mine, cut off at the throat before they breathe. Never forming, broken and swallowed, tossed into the void before they are heard. It would be easy to follow, fall to my knees, prostrate before the deli counter. Sweep the shelves clear, scatter the tins, pound the cakes to powder. Supermarket isles stretching out in macabre displays. Christmas madness, sad songs and mistletoe, packed car parks, rotten leaves banked up in corners. Forgotten reminders of summer before the storm. Never trust a promise, they take prisoners and wishes never come true. Fairy stories can have grim endings and I don’t know how I will face the world without you.”
― Peter B. Forster, More Than Love, A Husband's Tale

“These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here”
― Émile Zola, Work

“I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.”
― Bill Watterson, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

“Open your eyes...and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“
How many times had she heard her father tread on the old baseball analogy, if you don't swing at the third strike, there's no chance of hitting the ball.”
― Ashby Jones, The Little Bird

“Buying loyalty can be as effective as fear when one’s rival is poorer than oneself.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized carrier bags and infants behind them as they went. Scott felt alien in this environment; pulling up his hood he hurried through the crowds, dodging pushchairs, lit cigarettes and charity collection tins.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“The skies were filled with an unreal fire; blue, burnt with amber, red, orange and yellow. This fire was no natural thing. It clawed across the sky, and below it all life shivered and retreated. The land lay scorched, the mountains and glens trembling.
The man stood pale in the false light, a statue, watching. Then he moved, shaking off the stillness, and looked towards the power that shook the world. His clenched fist opened and clean white light leapt to the sky. A huge concussion rocked the mountains. All light was quenched. The sky turned black, then clear and blue. A distant rainbow promised that all was well and God still cared for this lost land.
Alastair Munro fell back, the soft heather a safety net, all power gone, all anger lost. Angus Ferguson was beside him as ever, a reassuring voice, a reminder of why Munro was there, why he must go on, why this was his destiny”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“Raya knew this type of girl – they never liked her. Usually they’d make fun of her, behind her back, but loud enough for her to hear. She was too alternative, too poor and too cynical – the foster kid – to be of any interest to these social climbers.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“For her, it was a transaction—a weight traded for money, risk traded for survival.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: Stolen

“Something was very wrong, somewhere, and if I didn’t get away soon, I feared it would be too late: I’d have no choice but to join them.”
― Gary Clemenceau, Banker's Holiday: A Novel of Fiscal Irregularity

“The very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady.”
― Thomas Malory

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story