Phyllis Liebold > Phyllis's Quotes

“We don't have adoption issues, we have an issue with adoption.”
― Janine Myung-Ja, Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists

“Talking frankly about race may make white people uncomfortable. Taking a stand to demonstrate the impact of race on law enforcement is difficult. Look what happened when a National Football League star, protesting discrimination, decided to kneel during the national anthem. Some understood the protest and the right to peacefully demonstrate pursuant to the First Amendment to our Constitution. Others have used the protest to divide us further and rally the white supremacist elements of their constituency. Yes, I am speaking to you, Mr. President, the principal antagonist of racial harmony.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Embedded in their psyche was the story of what had happened to the world, and the boys felt glorious to be on the other side of the madness”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“From the antique Persian rugs covering the gleaming hardwood floors to the molded tin ceilings and ornate chandeliers, the house was a showstopper. Throughout its long life, no one had allowed this home to fall into disrepair. Every detail of the wainscoting, every pocket door, every window, floor tile, and bathtub was original to the house.”
― Kirsten Fullmer, Trouble on Main Street

“We must defend ourselves according to our opponents' ability, not their intentions.”
― Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

“Screw you, Aech! And your dead grandma!”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates through it.”
― Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

“And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Why,” went on Edna, clasping her knees and looking up into Mademoiselle’s twisted face, “do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself: ‘Go to! Here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.’ Or, ‘I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?’ Or, ‘This financier, who controls the world’s money markets?”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“A small fact:
You are going to die....does this worry you?”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him?”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“I can't go on, I'll go on.”
― Samuel Beckett, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader

“ما تخشاه لن يكون بنفس القتامة التي يصورها لك عقلك, والخوف الذي تتركه يسيطر على عقلك هو أخطر بكثير من الوضع القائم بالفعل”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? For Kids: An A-Mazing Way to Change and Win!

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing sermons, never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look upon foreign nations, or what I call the face of nature, if you wish him to understand his own character.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, Pathfinder; or, the inland sea

“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon

That night he had a stomach ache.”
― Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar

“Only Poe could have dreamed the rest.”
― Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City

“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“It seems to me that any time there are men making a war, somewhere there are women and children at home waiting and worrying.”
― Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901

“It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has, before all of us stood up to say enough is enough.”
― Nelson Mandela, Notes to the Future: Words of Wisdom

“I remember a song we used to sing, "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean." But I thought it was, "Columbus, Jump in the Ocean.”
― Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

“Now, then. What does ‘fucking’ mean?” My surprise must have shown plainly, for he said irritably, “If ye must call me names, that’s one thing. But I dinna care to be called things I can’t answer. I know it’s a damn filthy word, from the way ye said it, but what does it mean?” Taken off guard, I laughed, a little shakily. “It … it means … what you were about to do to me.” One brow lifted, and he looked sourly amused. “Oh, swiving? Then I was right; it is a damn filthy word. And what’s a sadist? Ye called me that the other day.” I suppressed the urge to laugh. “It’s, er, it’s a person who … who, er, gets sexual pleasure from hurting someone.” My face was crimsoning, but I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from turning up slightly. Jamie snorted briefly. “Well, ye dinna flatter me overmuch,” he said, “but I canna fault your observations.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“one crucial fact must be kept in mind: none of the roughly seventy thousand nuclear weapons built by the United States since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently or without proper authorization. The technological and administrative controls on those weapons have worked, however imperfectly at times—and countless people, military and civilian, deserve credit for that remarkable achievement. Had a single weapon been stolen or detonated, America’s command-and-control system would still have attained a success rate of 99.99857 percent. But nuclear weapons are the most dangerous technology ever invented. Anything less than 100 percent control of them, anything less than perfect safety and security, would be unacceptable. And if this book has any message to preach, it is that human beings are imperfect.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“One morning last week He gave me an assignment: for one day I was to go on a "fast" from criticism. I was not to criticize anybody about anything. Into my mind crowded all the usual objections, "But then what happens to value judgments? You yourself, Lord, spoke of 'righteous judgment.' How could society operate without standards and limits?" All such resistance was brushed aside, "Just obey Me without questioning: an absolute fast on any critical judgments for this day." ...Barbed comments about certain world leaders were suppressed. In our talkative family no one seemed to notice. Bemused, I noticed that my comments were not missed. The federal government, the judicial system, and the institutional church could somehow get along without my penetrating observations. ...That afternoon, a specific, positive vision for this life was dropped into my mind with God's unmistakable hallmark on it-joy. Ideas began to flow in a way I had not experienced in years. My critical nature had not corrected a single one of the multitudinous things I found fault with. What it had done was stifle my creativity-in prayer, in relationships, perhaps even in writing-ideas that He wanted to give me.”
― Catherine Marshall, A Closer Walk

“I'll be your family now," he says.
"I love you," I say. (....)
He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response.
He frowns at me. "Say it again."
"Tobias," I say, "I love you.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“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

“It seemed trivial. After the battlefield it was going to be difficult to take seriously some of the stuff people worried about in peacetime.”
― Ken Follett, Fall of Giants

“There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence