Chantell Clontz > Chantell's Quotes

“Charlie said your friend’s disappeared,” chirped Wendy.
“No, he hasn’t.” Adam denied it. “He’s in the house. Now, look, what’s all this you’ve been telling them?”
“Nothing, I haven’t told them anything.” Charlie looked drunk.
“He said you’ve turned your friend into a crayfish,” insisted Wendy.
“He’s always making little jokes like that, and you fell for it. How am I supposed to do that, for heaven’s sake?” Adam was angry.
“With your little book you found. What’s that under your arm?”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“Your own setbacks aren’t what they first appear to be; rather than viewing them as failures, view them as learning opportunities that are the building blocks for future preparation.”
― Steve Pemberton, The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World

“When it’s over, all the equipment used is destroyed, even your clothing. Once it’s over every operator wipes his cranial hard drive clean of every moment of the mission, and you collectively go into blackout mode.”
― John M. Vermillion, Awful Reckoning: A Cade Chase and Simon Pack Novel

“You humans destroyed my life, my family’s life, everything I loved and treasured. It was because of your ancestor that my kind fell. And then, the one thing I could still love in the shadows of the Night Realm was Oliara. When that was taken away from me, I became empty. So do not tell me you love me; even if I could give it back – which would never be given to a human – I could not: I no longer know how to.”
― Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Two

“I marveled at the beauty of all life and savored the power and possibilities of my imagination. In these rare moments, I prayed, I danced, and I analyzed. I saw that life was good and bad, beautiful and ugly. I understood that I had to dwell on the good and beautiful in order to keep my imagination, sensitivity, and gratitude intact. I knew it would not be easy to maintain this perspective. I knew I would often twist and turn, bend and crack a little, but I also knew that…I would never completely break.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“Peter on the Transfiguration: “So, trying to be helpful, I offered to build three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. The minute those words left my mouth, I realized how stupid they were. Seriously, Peter? Build them tents? Like Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were going to spend the weekend on the mountain watching sunsets and sitting around the bonfire making s’mores? What is wrong with me?”
― Spencer C Demetros, The Bible: Enter Here: Bringing God's Word to Life for Today's Teens

“hey be ur own heck of a person, and dont copy what other people do or say. cause then it just makes u look really bad, then that person who u copyied will get mad at u. so grow up a little”
― greg mortenson

“Hang on, the cats are demanding their second breakfast. One second.”
― Jon Scieszka, Who Done It?

“The natives knew better than to screw around with Tarzan. He was one bad dude. Lions, rhinos, just him and his knife. Great penthouse and elevator. Wouldnt last long in Brooklyn. Busted for indecent exposure. Me Tarzan you Judge. That is absolutely correct, and you are going to do sixty days. Try dressing as Beau Brummel the next time. Next case!”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Waiting Period

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”
― Mark Twain

“He came cripping slowly back up the driveway - when an African remembrance flashed into his mind, and near the front of the house he bent down and started peering around. Determining the clearest prints that Kizzy's bare feet had left in the dust, scooping up the double handful containing those footprints, he went rushing toward the cabin: The ancient forefathers said that precious dust kept in some safe place would insure Kizzy's return to where she made the footprints. He burst through the cabin's open door, his eyes sweeping the room and falling upon his gourd on a shelf containing his pebbles. Springing over there, in the instant before opening his cupped hands to drop in the dirt, suddenly he knew the truth: His Kizzy was gone; she would not return. He would never see his Kizzy again. His face contorting, Kunta flung his dust toward the cabin's roof. Tears bursting, from his eyes, snatching his heavy gourd up high over his head, his mouth wide in a soundless scream, he hurled the gourd down with all his strength, and it shattered against the packed-Earth floor, his 662 pebbles representing each month of his 55 rains flying out, ricocheting wildly in all directions.”
― Alex Haley, Roots

“An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.”
― Malcolm X

“Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“I don't believe in the no-win scenario”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“That is the most odiously aristocratic belief,”
― Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

“Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

“The fraudulence paradox was that the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside -- you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn't find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were.”
― David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

“That contraption -- listen, Brother, they claim it thinks. I didn't believe it at first. Thought, implying rational principle, implying soul. Can the principle of a 'thinking machine' -- man-made -- be a rational soul? Bah! It seemed a thoroughly pagan notion at first. But do you know what?"

"Father?"

"Nothing could be that perverse without premeditation! It must think! It knows good and evil, I tell you, and it chose the latter.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It was the kind of "here" your mother or your big sister or your great-aunt or your grandmother would have said. It was the kind of "here" that let you know this was hard-earned money but, also, that you needed it more than she did, and the kind of "here" that said she wished you had it and didn't have to borrow it from her, but since you did not have it, and she did, then "here" it was, with a kind of love. It was the kind of "here" that asked the question, When will all this end? When will a man not have to struggle to have money to get what he needs "here"? When will a man be able to live without having to kill another man "here"?”
― Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying

“Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafés in Mont Marte, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries with diplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarian waltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlight and adventure.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“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

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
― Founding Fathers, The United States Constitution

“People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.”
― Marcel Proust

“Her resolutions against Jim Meserve were just like the lightning-bugs holding a convention. They met at night and made scorning speeches against the sun and swore to do away with it and light up the world themselves. But the sun came up next morning and they all went under the leaves and owned up that the sun was boss-man in the world.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Seraph on the Suwanee

“Why shouldn't the living cords which lace our being together flick softly against a loved one in the very moment of their unraveling?...Sometimes, all the miles between are as nothing, sometimes, they are narrowed to the little silence between the beats of a heart.”
― Colleen McCullough, Tim

“Under many houses, people screamed for help, but no one helped; in general, survivors that day assisted only their relatives or immediate neighbors, for they could not comprehend or tolerate a wider circle of misery.”
― John Hersey, Hiroshima

“You've witnessed what you c-c-c-call a miracle and now you believe-you believe everything," Pastor Merrill said. "But miracles don't c-c-c-cause belief-real miracles don't m-m-m-make faith out of thin air; you have to already have faith in order to believe in real miracles.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.”
― Malorie Blackman