Zora Devanski > Zora's Quotes

“Just been poisoned by my gran. Nothing says Christmas better than familicide and anaphylactic shock.”
― R.D. Ronald

“Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless. The work we have to do is with ourselves if we're ever going to be at peace with each other...the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people or set of ideas.”
― Ian Mcewan

“If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

“I was terrified as only grown men and women can be when they wake up in the middle of the night and begin to realise, in the absolute silence and solitude all around them, that it is not only their dream that has woken them, that it is their whole way of life.”
― M. Ageyev, Novel with Cocaine

“My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.”
― Jack Kerouac, Satori in Paris & Pic

“You must have wished a million times to be normal.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’ve wished I had two heads. Or that I was invisible. I’ve wished for a fish’s tail instead of legs. I’ve wished to be more special.”
“Not normal?”
“Never.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“What would you rather?" yelled Sybil from the distant sandpit. "Know everything or know nothing?"
"Know nothing," I yelled back. "Then you have the fun of finding everything out.”
― Martin Amis

“Her firm belief was that things would be better in society if there was a periodic ‘social cleansing’ to eliminate those influences that are considered unsavory. She sounds like she’d be fun at parties,” the officer joked.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“She looked to Roy as though she lived in Oz, in the land of color, like she carried it with her everywhere she went. When they began dating, he found that her energy was the perfect counterpoint to the world into which he sank at regular intervals, that black and white Kansas that he inhabited.”
― J.K. Franko, Eye for Eye

“Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“With his arms outstretched, nailed to the cross, Jesus was saying, “This is how valuable you are to me. I love you this much! I’d rather die than live without you.” You are priceless.”
― Rick Warren, The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life

“For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren't looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give
Me up to the Devil this very minute.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you then so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror; because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”
― Mary Shelley

“Aelin had promised herself, months and months ago, that she would not pretend to be anything but what she was. She had crawled through darkness and blood and despair-she had survived.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“...pot roast. It could be reheated. It might
taste like a sneaker, but it would be warm.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in - particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“There are only two living American authors fully deserving of the Nobel Prize. One is Lewis Mumford. The other is Wallace Stegner, whose novels and essays provide us a comprehensive portrait of industrial society in all its glittering corruption and radiant evil.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Finally, we can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“the domestic enemy’s inner sanctum, the National Press Club.”
― Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

“Because you can’t do this unless I make you.” He tugged the front of her panties down, exposing her dark triangle. “Your convictions forbid you.”
― Lucian Bane, Sadistic Games 3 & 4

“We Are brothers, tied by blood, in our veins, what we spill. But it is a deadly secret that will forever bind us.”
― Tina Traverse, Destiny of the Vampire

“No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?”
― Tamora Pierce, Emperor Mage

“Diedrichson looked at her a moment as if processing a foreign and generally unwanted thought—then, to her surprise, his frown up-ended itself into a smile.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“The price one pays for having a kind man at one’s elbow.”
― John Hersey, Fling and Other Stories

“These scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you – you would have seen that the greatest wordly distinction and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathizing hearts and souls.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“As he was about to leave, she said, "Murtagh."
He paused and turned to regard her.
She hesitated for a moment, then mustered her courage and said, "Why?" She thought he understood her meaning: Why her? Why save her, and now why try to rescue her? She had guessed at the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it.
He stared at her for the longest while, and then, in a low, hard voice, he said, "You know why.”
― Christopher Paolini, Inheritance