Al Matava > Al's Quotes

“The third story is told in a long and detailed letter written to a friend by Sergeant Benjamin Katz, an orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps. … This letter is completely different from the other accounts, emotional, shocking, heartbreaking, funny and unforgettable.”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942

“Mary stared at the dreamlike happenings on the page. Human figures faced each other; the man’s head was a golden ball with rays reaching up to huge stars and out to the distant mountains; the woman’s silver head was sickle-shaped and surrounded by birds like eagles with white beaks. Some of the black letters glowed because they had tips like tiny flames.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“Americans have a love affair with weak coffee.’ ‘And you’re a coffee expert, too,’ Gwen said, cutting a thick slice of apple pie.”
― Gary Clemenceau, Banker's Holiday: A Novel of Fiscal Irregularity

“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 filigreed iron gates of the Navy Yard were open wide between two pillars that featured large spread-winged eagles on orbs. Men were standing around as women came out together in their overalls after their shifts. Before the war women didn’t work at the Navy Yard, but with men joining up or drafted and a new campaign with a poster of 'Rosie the Riveter' it did its job encouraging woman to work outside the home for the war effort.”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“Daring to raise my eyes,
I call out, a bird-like sound,
giving myself to this day,
abandoning desire
for all except you.”
― Don Hynes, Something Will Change Me: Poems of Soul and Spirit

“When you imagine, anything is possible.”
― Robert Agnello, The Glimmers Save Christmas

“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 premiere was as exciting as the 1938 boxing match between Max Schmeling and Joe Lewis.”
― Dorlies von Kaphengst Meissner Rasmussen, Escaping the Russian Onslaught: A Family’s Story of Fleeing the Russian Army after Hitler’s Nazi Regime

“More yelling rolled out amid crashing sounds of a fight, the flat at the back of the stage swayed, the actors exchanged frightened looks, and the curtain abruptly fell.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“Socialism is not a competition; it is not a monopoly, either. Socialism is not a private property; it is not a state one, either. Socialism is a completely different thing. What is socialism in such case?”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“If nature has made you a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart. And though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett

“The Mother of God. Good-looking. Well-dressed. A good person. Knows how to make the absolute best of a situation. And never uppity about any of it.”
― Kathleen Zamboni McCormick, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood

“It was odd, moving naked through the forest. The breeze on her skin was at once distracting and invigorating. It teased her breasts and backside, making her nipples hard and her bottom bumpy with gooseflesh. It dried the water from her body, sending shivers over her. Her breasts moved in ways she wasn’t used to and bounced so much when she ran that she missed the first rabbit from sheer surprise.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Princess Dracula

“That evening it was announced that curfew would be postponed until midnight, so that the families of those ‘sent for labour’ would have time to bring them blankets, a change of underwear and food for the journey. This ‘magnanimity’ on the part of the Germans was truly touching, and the Jewish police made much of it in an effort to win our confidence. Not until much later did I learn that the thousand men rounded up in the ghetto had been taken straight to the camp at Treblinka, so that the Germans could test the efficiency of the newly built gas chambers and crematorium furnaces.”
― Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist

“practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even if photodegradable nets helped marine mammals live, he concluded, their powdery residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it. “Except for a small amount that’s been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady the oracle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.” That half-century’s total production now surpasses 1 billion tons. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with untold permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors, fillers, strengtheners, and light stabilizers. The longevity of each can vary enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared. Researchers have attempted to find out how long it will take polyethylene to biodegrade by incubating a sample in a live bacteria culture”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us