Moira Buhmann > Moira's Quotes

“Sometimes abiding by the strictest rules is folly. Give me flexibility, imagination, and audacity over caution any day.”
― John M. Vermillion, Pack's Posse

“los barrios donde había cristianos orando, yo no podía penetrar. Podía entrar, pero no podía llevar a cabo mi propósito.”
― John Ramirez, FUERA DEL CALDERO DEL DIABLO

“I was alone. I had no one. No mother, no father, no brothers, no sisters, no grandmas, no grandpas, no uncles, no aunties, no cousins, and no tribe. I’d seen the children at the orphanage laugh or cry when they received news about a family member. I would never receive such news and no family would laugh or cry for me. That day I understood with sharp clarity that I didn’t have a mother who wanted me.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“But it is when the storm rages that we fully understand the courage the lighthouse represents. When the sea becomes a tempestuous beast, the lighthouse transforms to an urgent beacon signaling the way toward shelter, courageously defying the elements.”
― Steve Pemberton, The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World

“Not to change the subject, but…you do realize you’ve been going over the speed limit for quite a few miles? Never mind. And thank you Professor Ludefance. Somehow, I think this lecture is meant for me, but I have a lot more interchange of material and energy with my environment than most.”
“In a physical sense, you’re not decaying at all, you’re a very vibrant young woman. The decay I’m speaking about for you is emotional. As for the professorship, that very lecture was given to me from a Turkish friend who had inherited a great deal of wealth and didn’t know what to do with himself. I learned this from him. As for you, you interact with your environment, but you are predatory, fearless, irritable, and listless. You’re getting no emotional feedback.”
“And just where do you suggest I go to look for ‘emotional feedback,’ Mr. Professor?”
“Aha. That’s the catch. You can’t. It’s not that mechanical. You merely have to be receptive and hope it comes along.”
“Meanwhile, I’m being ground down by the second law of thermodynamics.”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Thank you so much, Professor. I never would have known.”
― Behcet Kaya, Appellate Judge

“Look, I can explain everything” was the most commonly used line of dialogue in the history of American movies”
― Richard Yates, Young Hearts Crying

“When you are an addict and you get caught, you always seem to be at your lowest point.”
― Andrew Mann, Such Unfortunates

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Poor things! I know what sort of treatment they have had. If they are timid, it makes them start or shy; if they are high-mettled, it makes them vicious or dangerous; their tempers are mostly made when they are young. Bless you! they are like children, train 'em up in the way they should go, as the good book says, and when they are old they will not depart from it, if they have a chance, that is.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

“boy,”
― Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree

“Breggie de Kok had now brought herself to a high state of adrenalin powered tension and was ready to kill.”
― Michael Parker, The Eagle's Covenant

“At this point, it’s as though a demon is haunting me. It’s as though every time I find myself in a difficult situation; it compels me to take the coward’s way out. And I’m fully aware it’s the coward’s way out, yet I cannot help myself”
― Cade Mengler, The Companions

“Kurt, could you please serve this invoice upon the Prussian Pickle, the Major General von Trotha for  the disrupting the legitimate working of F..H. Schmidt Engineering Services?”
― Michael G. Kramer, His Forefathers and Mick

“Life was about making sense out of the insensible. A ball of fire out of a clear blue sky? Must’ve been a meteorite, maybe debris from an airplane. Random flashes of light and color at night? A transformer blew up, you must’ve been dreaming, you’re talking crazy, quiet down, take your meds.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.

'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.

Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Gossip is like thread wound over a spindle of truth, changing its shape.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“It is weird that the same two parents can come together and make two such different people.”
― Sara Pascoe, Faber Faber Weirdo Intense, also BRILLIANT, funny and forensically astute. Marian Keyes.

“I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior.”
― Nikolas Schreck

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“He thought the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, as transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.”
― William Gibson

“I thought of God as being able to talk big and write *very* small.”
― John Hersey, The Child Buyer: A Novel in the Form of Hearings Before the Standing Committee on Education, Welfare, and Public Morality of a Certain State Senate

“MOST OF THE writers and artists I know were made for sheltering in place. The world asks us to engage, and for the most part we can, but given the choice, we’d rather stay home.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays