Samuel Maillard > Samuel's Quotes

“And I’m a sheriff,” Shuller jumped in. Willum’s demeaner faltered for a moment. It was so minor that it could have been missed by most, but Shuller caught it. The ever-so-slight blanching at the mention of law. Shuller was able to perceive the slight discomfort which concerned him. It was not a good sign to Shuller when someone bristled at the idea he was a sheriff. It never boded well for the type of person he was dealing with if the fact he was a man of law was what made them act oddly.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“The man took another long look at the dogs. "When they start chewing on things, try to steer them over to that chair, would you?" He jerked his thumb at an overstuffed armchair in the corner. It was upholstered in orange and brown. Images of ducks were involved in the pattern. "I hate that chair," he said. Edgar looked at him, trying to decide if he was making a joke.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Middle Ages”
― Mary Norton, Bed-Knob and Broomstick

“As Kevin climbed the three flights of stairs to his apartment, his brain formulated a vague plan of action. He could not have explained it to anyone or even to himself in coherent sentences. But the outline was there in Kevin’s subconscious. It would not only change his life, but many others, as well.
A Call to Action had been born.”
― Traci Medford-Rosow, Unblinded: One Man’s Courageous Journey Through Darkness to Sight

“So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home," but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began.
In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child's - Dorothy's point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn't focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child's faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn't articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed.
Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children's voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the longings of a child. This is the last and most terrible lesson of the film: that there is one final, unexpected rite of passage. In the end, ceasing to be children, we all become magicians without magic, exposed conjurers, with only our simply humanity to get us through.
We are the humbugs now.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

“Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence

“In this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.”
― Barack Obama

“Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.”
― Maurice Sendak

“He said he loved Blue. He said he loved the evil in Blue. He loves the evil in all people. Because in loving their evil, he loves the evil in himself enough to surrender it to God, who washes it clean. He’s loving what God made, is what he said.”
― James McBride, Five-Carat Soul

“He was rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls. His fur cape was caked with candle wax, his brow stained blue by wine - though the latter was seldom noticed due to the fox mask he wore at-all times. A quill in his teeth, a solitary teardrop a-squirm in his palm, he was the young poet prince of Montreal, handsome, immaculate, searching for sturdier doors to nail his poignant verses on.
In Manhattan, grit drifted into his ink bottle. In Vienna, his spice box exploded. On the Greek island of Hydra, Orpheus came to him at dawn astride a transparent donkey and restrung his cheap guitar. From that moment on, he shamelessly and willingly exposed himself to the contagion of music. To the secretly religious curiosity of the traveler was added the openly foolhardy dignity of the troubadour. By the time he returned to America, songs were working in him like bees in an attic. Connoisseurs developed cravings for his nocturnal honey, despite the fact that hearts were occasionally stung.

Now, thirty years later, as society staggers towards the millennium - nailing and screeching at the while, like an orangutan with a steak knife in its side - Leonard Cohen, his vision, his gift, his perseverance, are finally getting their due. It may be because he speaks to this wounded zeitgeist with particular eloquence and accuracy, it may be merely cultural time-lag, another example of the slow-to-catch-on many opening their ears belatedly to what the few have been hearing all along. In any case, the sparkle curtain has shredded, the boogie-woogie gate has rocked loose from its hinges, and here sits L. Cohen at an altar in the garden, solemnly enjoying new-found popularity and expanded respect.

From the beginning, his musical peers have recognized Cohen´s ability to establish succinct analogies among life´s realities, his talent for creating intimate relationships between the interior world of longing and language and the exterior world of trains and violins. Even those performers who have neither "covered" his compositions nor been overtly influenced by them have professed to admire their artfulness: the darkly delicious melodies - aural bouquets of gardenia and thistle - that bring to mind an electrified, de-Germanized Kurt Weill; the playfully (and therefore dangerously) mournful lyrics that can peel the apple of love and the peach of lust with a knife that cuts all the way to the mystery, a layer Cole Porter just could`t expose. It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song.”
― Tom Robbins

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
― George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

“So you're going to have to ask yourselves on simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?”
― Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book

“The rich wanted to be kaloi k’agathoi, the beautiful and the good—so let them use their graces in the service of the democracy”
― Robin Waterfield, Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece

“Permítame que me tome la libertad de preguntarle cómo se las arregla para vivir sin libros.”
― Emily Brontë, Cumbres Borracosas

“when we were eleven, say, we really weren't interested in each other's poems at all. . . . But we didn't know a thing about poetry. We didn't care about it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen

“went to the cross eight months before His”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch: A Novel

“Yes, he could walk forever. He could so easily continue to walk and all thoughts of death would fall away, absorbed by the silent snow.
[...]
And then he heard it, very faintly at first, but distinct just the same. He heard the snow falling gently through the air, each flake sounded distinctly different, yet just as each fell unhindered by another, so their sound did not clash or interfere with each other, but blended into a snow song that he knew very few had ever heard. And that song became louder, though always gentle, as he continued to be absorbed by the light, to become one with the light... and now there weren’t any feet to leave prints, or a body or eyes to glow, but just light and sound and pure joy, pure eternal joy. No past, no future, no, not even a present, just ever new joy where there wasn’t even a memory of pain or struggle or sorrow... just ever new joy...”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Song of the Silent Snow

“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“...and Miss Dietrich smiled and nodded at this and said that a girl in search of a husband should squeeze apple seeds between her fingers: if any struck the ceiling, she was sure to be happy in her quest, for apples were the fruit of love.”
― David Guterson, East of the Mountains

“He knew sometimes some fear can be good. When you are afraid things are going to get worse if you don't do something, it can prompt you into action. But it is not good when you are afraid that it keeps you from doing anything.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?

“Frankness is not a license to say anything you want, wherever and whenever you want. It is not rudeness.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“Fakat şu da doğru; hikayeler bizi kurtarabilir.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“In every part of my life, too, I stood outside myself and watched; I saw myself functioning at the university, with my parents and brother and sister and my friends, but inwardly I felt no involvement.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader