James Boyde > James's Quotes

“Everybody has scars, and every scar has a story. Especially the ones you don’t see. Those go deeper. And cause more damage.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“Make no mistake: You will be challenged at some point in time. We all are. That’s just life.”
― Vernon Davis, Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond

“The adrenaline rush subsides as it becomes harder to catch your breath. You become light headed, then dizzy and confused as the air runs out. Reason and sense evaporate as the darkness claims you. That is how it felt to be a Tunnel Rat.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The first impressions with the ashram people
are these sparkling interior experiences. The eyeballs can be peepholes into the Milky Way and beyond. You may mumble under your breath that the ashram people could be on something.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“The hunters’ crossbow bolts are capable of bringing down most of the animals they hunt, but not the auroch. To kill an auroch the hunters would fire three bolts into the animal, each of them coated with what they call ‘the juice of the yew’.”
Robert Reid – The Son”
― Robert Reid, The Son

“Raya knew this type of girl – they never liked her. Usually they’d make fun of her, behind her back, but loud enough for her to hear. She was too alternative, too poor and too cynical – the foster kid – to be of any interest to these social climbers.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“Meantime, a midsize Labrador mutt cut me off at the cul-de-sac. He was in desperate need of a rubdown. I gave it a thought but feared his bark and constant gruff. I locked eyes then noticed his black and white patches rotated with agitations. He yapped and yapped and bluffed mightily, but he cautiously stayed a safe distance away. Eventually, he lost all courage and quietly ran for shelter. As for me, I never stopped advancing toward my brother’s place. It took some effort but

I serpentine and zigzagged my way through dandelions and fast-food wrappings lying in the
yard.
 
The closer I got, the more definite the sounds of dishes breaking, kids playing, infants testing

their lungs, and TVs watching themselves became. Jerry and his wife had separated some time ago. Regardless, he was left with four adult daughters still in the nest. Obviously, the girls brought kids of their own to the mix. But everything unfolding before me appeared chaotic on the other side of that threshold. That entire scene grew larger andmore intimidating with every timid step I took.”
― Harold Phifer, My Bully, My Aunt, & Her Final Gift

“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people.”
― Alexander Hamilton

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the Little Blue Engine. “I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can - I think I can.”

[…]

“I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could.

I thought I could.

I thought I could.

I thought I could.”
― Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could

“Cant fight City Hall. But maybe you can burn it down.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Waiting Period

“Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Within tears, find hidden laughter
Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. ”
― Jalaludin Rumi

“The further you chase the truth, the more you’ll be repulsed by the deception.”
― H. Meadow Hopewell, Rage Against the Machine

“The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strain of supporting his ruined bulk. He collapsed to the floor, his throat issuing a final sound like a bubbling casserole.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“Only human after all, she whispered.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“Leaders have historically misused both religion and science equally in their inhumanity for the sake of power.”
― Guy Morris, The Image: A Quantum Portal Has Opened

“One of them had something small and black in his hand that Johnson very much feared was  a gun. He was considering his options when he saw Goldberg’s head emerge above the latch door.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“It was the tone of a woman who wrapped needles in silk.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“Yes, there was a great power and satisfaction in giving up all hope.”
― Gary Clemenceau, Banker's Holiday: A Novel of Fiscal Irregularity

“… the primitive comprehension that the state property represents a social one, their identification, and their equalization  could not resist the criticism of the time. The state property is not socialism. The state-monopoly property, as it was on the both sides of the Berlin Wall and which continues to be such one even after it dropped down, is not social property. There was never and nowhere any socialism! In the twentieth century, we passed through a system of utopian socialism as proof that this was not socialism that was not possible, but the utopia of the writers before Marx and after Marx. We were visited by a utopian socialism, which at the contemporary stage is simply capitalism—state, monopolistic.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“With Finn, Vic, and Maeve shooting darts at him, Buster thought better of bellyaching and took off down the street with Finn.”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“We inherit wealth and poverty”
― Omar Farhad, Need a Ride?

“Percy: Don't I get a kiss for luck? It's kind of a tradition, right?
Annabeth: Come back alive, Seaweed Brain. Then we'll see.”
― Rick Riordan

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“America, there’s no question that you’ve had my heart from the beginning. By now you have to know that”
― Kiera Cass, The Elite

“Then when you want free association, you could stretch your patient out the way the barber does to lather up his customer, and when the fifty minutes are up, you could tilt the chair forward again and hand him a mirror so he can see what he looks like on the outside after you’ve shaved his ego.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon