Erick Larry > Erick's Quotes

“Don't bullshit me, Olan. I know when a girl's getting screwed.”
― Kyle Keyes, Quantum Roots

“What's he saying?" Buggy asked, her voice shaky.
"That there's something up in the attic that we should be careful of because it could be dangerous.
"Oh, uh-uh, I'm not going up there," Buggy said, You can send Shaundelle up there, but I'm keeping my little white ass down here.”
― Deborah Leblanc, Toe to Toe

“The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go?”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“how much better it would be to have everything one needed, than lots of things one didn't need.”
― Thomas More

“There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“There were moments when life at school became a matter of utter indifference to him. Then the putty of his everyday concerns dropped out and, with nothing more to bind them together, the hours of his life fell apart.”
― Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless

“Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

“Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“For the rest of his life, he realized, he would be torn like this, aware of Phoebe's awkwardness, the difficulties she encountered in the world simply by being different, and ye propelled beyond all this by her direct and guileless love. By her love, yes, and, he realized...by his own new and strangely uncomplicated love for her.”
― Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter

“An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.'

Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Nothing dies in Hell.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Plague of Angels

“Most peasants did not miss the school.

"What's the point?" they would say.

"You pay fees and read for years, and in the end you are still a peasant, earning your food with your sweat. You don't get a grain of rice more for being able to read books. Why waste time and money?

Might as well start earning your work points right away."

The virtual absence of any chance of a better future and the near total immobility for anyone born a peasant took the incentive out of the pursuit of knowledge. Children of school age would stay at home to help their families with their work or look after younger brothers and sisters. They would be out in the fields when they were barely in their teens. As for girls, the peasants considered it a complete waste of time for them to go to school.

"They get married and belong to other people. It's like pouring water on the ground."

The Cultural Revolution was trumpeted as having brought education to the peasants through 'evening classes." One day my production team announced it was starting evening classes and asked Nana and me to be the teachers. I was delighted. However, as soon as the first 'class' began, I realized that this was no education.

The classes invariably started with Nana and me being asked by the production team leader to read out articles by Mao or other items from the People's Daily. Then he would make an hour-long speech consisting of all the latest political jargon strung together in undigested and largely unintelligible hunks. Now and then he would give special orders, all solemnly delivered in the name of Mao.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“I sometimes give recitals in the building at number 8 Narbutt Street in Warsaw where I carried bricks and lime – where the Jewish brigade worked: the men who were shot once the flats for German officers were finished. The officers did not enjoy their fine new homes for long. The building still stands, and there is a school in it now. I play to Polish children who do not know how much human suffering and mortal fear once passed through their sunny schoolrooms. I pray they may never learn what such fear and suffering are.”
― Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45

“We must go back to the firm discipline and simplicity of the one-room schoolhouse to find a better education for our children.”
― Shafter Bailey, James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted Crime Against Children

“If one does not react to gossip, the informer hushes more quickly.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“I stood up to go shake hands with him and I don’t remember anything else. What I do recall is the crowd yelling and me crying, while everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.”
― Vernon Davis, Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond

“Warmth radiated from her skin in waves. Her pulse beneath his fingertips. The telltale flutter in her neck. Life. It mattered, was precious. And could be taken away in an instant.”
― J. Rose Black, Losing My Breath

“I left you in charge in Banora and you allowed a ragtag army to beat you in battle!”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“Before going to breakfast, you are in your
room experiencing the gongs of a classic religious
bell, a unique and cuddly invitation to the morning meditation session. In ten minutes it will be 7:00 a.m.—dawn’s brisk reminder that life will never be easy. Mornings are a bit cruel.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“What's that Einstein quote about expecting different results from the same person? I shouldn't feel bad - I'm here, aren't I, I'm not the parent who didn't even text. Or the one who locked themselves in their bedroom half of Christmas. Talking like this, it's become clear that we are the main parts. This has all been about us, the sisters. I hadn't realised. I tell my mouth not to share these thoughts and Dana offers me another cigarette.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“McGregor went on to say, “Hamish, take word of this situation directly to Robert de Bruce, who is currently in the Glasgow area. Let him know that the Sassenach queen is at Tynemouth Priory and that we are going to capture her! She will fetch us a high ransom price from the Sassenach king!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“If I were seducing you, I’d have you spread out like fine cuisine, working my way through the menu. From appetizer… to dessert.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“Why did it take an illness for me to recognize the value of time with him? It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake them by the shoulders and tell them, “Seize the day! What matters is this moment!” Most of us can’t go back and make restitution. We can’t do a thing about our should haves and our could haves.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our main source of authority and meaning, and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms.’ In the eighteenth century, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. The”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

“Belgian colonial law barred Congolese from reaching senior positions in the army, civil service, judiciary or other organs of state, and by the time the colonialists left, the country had barely a handful of graduates. Control of the Congo fell into the hands not of a cadre of trained, experienced, educated leaders, but of young turks who suddenly found themselves vying for positions of enormous influence.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

“...power largely consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality, even if you have to kill a lot of them to make that happen. In this raw sense, power has always been very much the same everywhere; what varies is primarily the quality of the reality it seeks to create: is it based more on truth than in falsehood, which is to say, is it more or less abusive to its subjects? The answer is often a function of how broadly or narrowly the power is based: is it centered in one person, or is it spread out among many different centers that excercise checks on one another? And are its subjects merely subjects or are they also citizens? In principle, narrowly based power is easier to abuse, while more broadly based power requires a truer story at its core and is more likely to protect more of its subjects from abuse. This rule was famously articulated by the British historian Lord Acton in his formula "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God