Bernard Fiddler > Bernard's Quotes

“She stared at the center of the target, a face she’d never seen before, but recognized. The image she’d pieced together in her mind of the bastard that murdered her darling Grandpa Anders. She aimed the gun, hands steady, pulled the trigger. Kaboom. Blew his face apart.”
― Nancy Mangano, Deadly Decisions

“Don't be afraid to speak out. Your human rights story could be the inspiration that opens the window to someone else's awakening. Let's draw open the curtains together.”
― Janine Myung Ja, Adoption Stories

“What’s wrong with nature shows?”
“You can’t believe anything the narrators say. One claimed that some animals mate for life. Come on, they need time off to eat and sleep, don’t they?”
― Steve Bates

“No white person could possibly understand what it is like to be black in America, even someone like me, a descendant of Holocaust victims and survivors.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“If Adam were honest with himself, which he rarely was, he’d come to terms with the fact that beyond his work and the view, he was floundering a bit. His plan had been to take the insurance money, leave his old life behind, and start completely over somewhere new. A place where memories didn’t lurk around every corner.
He hadn’t figured on the memories coming along with him.”
― Kirsten Fullmer

“911. What is your emergency?”
“Dead body.”
“You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear you.”
“There’s a dead body in the woods!”
“Where are you located?”
“I’m on one of the trails off Summit Road in Wild Oaks Mountain Park. I’m near the summit.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“No, I can’t! Just get someone here!”
― Behcet Kaya, Body In The Woods

“Bad news does not get better with time.”
― Mark Villareal, Shortcuts Get You Lost: A Leadership Fable on the Dangers of the Blind Leading the Blind

“Any other man would have done either of two things by now: they would have tried to run, or they would have begged for mercy. But Loch isn’t just any man.”
― S.G. Blaise, The Last Lumenian

“I watched him spread out his arms with a smile before he crashed through the table in a beautiful crescendo, the glass sounding like tinkles from a piano as its shavings glittered across the floor and sliced through his face and body.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“It was odd–talking to the trees, so I made a joke out of it. While sitting by a pawpaw tree, I whispered, “Is this where you grew up? . . . (Yes, and I never left home) . . . I hope to leave home . . . (Wish I could).” I laughed so hard at a tree wanting to leave home, I keeled over. Then I cried. I knew why but I couldn’t think about it or I’d cry all day.”
― G.M. Monks, Iola O

“The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.

All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.

If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.

They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.

I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.

I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.

You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.

Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.

After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.

It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.

He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.

The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.

You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]

Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.

You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.

In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.

There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.

Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.

The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.

The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.

I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.

Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.

Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.

Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.

Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.

A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.

Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.

It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.

Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?

She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.”
― John Richard Spencer

“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.”
― Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

“I was wrong. I admit it. I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive.”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“There were no toys under the bed--that wasn't why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn't anything under the bed--no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no "no"s. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all”
― Jane Smiley

“was trembling”
― Fred Gipson, Old Yeller

“I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Too pissed off to care, Aurelia interrupted him. "No, I will not wait just one moment!" Piercing him with her best scary stare, she said, "It surprises me that no one has pointed out your glaringly obvious agenda, so let me be the first.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“He summoned you into the circle, Scott. For whatever reason, I don't know. But now you've left, you've become a loose thread. He won't sit back with the possibility you might cause his whole world to unravel around him.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“At seventeen the young woman had worked out how to improve her future prospects; she would seduce the Prince.”
― Robert Reid, The Emperor

“Science Fiction, is the last great escape.”
― A.R. Merrydew

“When it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason.”
― Ransom Riggs, Hollow City

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”
― Franz Kafka

“No, I’m afraid I’m like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn’t even got the makings. He’s got only the habit.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night

“His shrill cries flood the forest like light engulfing a silhouette.”
― Nelou Keramati

“who opposed Hanoi not so much on ideological grounds, but because of its methods. They had seen the VC execute or imprison leaders who did not fall in line.”
― Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

“Fiction is just a mirror of reality for the most part. Many things that happen in fiction don’t even happen here. But as far as pain and sadness. Joy and love, life and death, it’s all real here. Here it’s real.”
― Lucian Bane, The Scribbler Guardian