Elfriede Daku > Elfriede's Quotes

“Ferret took out a folded scrap of paper and passed it to him.
'My guy Ben doesn't know where the other club is, but the girls are being shipped in from here, a rehab centre in Newtonville.'
'What's this other place called?' Tazeem asked as he slipped the scrap of paper into his pocket.
'The place is just known as The Club. But the behind-the-scenes bit that only the real big spenders get to see, there's no official name, 'cause officially it doesn't exist, that's know as The Zombie Room.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“… Some of my friends will never return, for they died on this the most extraordinary trek in history – a trek that caused untold suffering to thousands of people of many nationalities … from ‘Out of the Burma Night’ by Captain Gribble”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942

“Panting and out of breath all he can get out is, “Body! Body!”
“Mr. Ingly? Slow down! What’s the matter?”
“Dead body!”
Ingly, still panting and out of breath, sits down heavily in one of the cushy lobby chairs.
“Didn’t you hear me? There’s a dead man…lying on the sidewalk…just around the corner! Call the police! My dog is there. I couldn’t catch him!”
 ”
― Behcet Kaya, Murder in Buckhead

“Death is the ultimate test of faith.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.”
― Annie Dillard

“You are not my mother. You are a scary Snort!”
― P.D. Eastman & Roy McKee, Are You My Mother?

“Socrates’ method of building an argument through gentle queries, he “dropped my abrupt contradiction” style of argument and “put on the humbler enquirer” of the Socratic method. By asking what seemed to be innocent questions, Franklin would draw people into making concessions that would gradually prove whatever point he was trying to assert.”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short. ”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“Not to stretch belief so early, the story begins with a quotidian act of kindness - a kiss, a soft voice, a bar of chocolate.”
― Thomas Kenneally

“But solitude is sadness.'

'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“She had once called Fable a compass. Sabine was a metronome.”
― D.L. Maddox, Stolen

“The premiere was as exciting as the 1938 boxing match between Max Schmeling and Joe Lewis.”
― Dorlies von Kaphengst Meissner Rasmussen, Escaping the Russian Onslaught: A Family’s Story of Fleeing the Russian Army after Hitler’s Nazi Regime

“I can’t believe the way people act and the cruelty they have towards those they say they love or once loved...”
― A.G. Russo, Bangtails, Grifters, and a Liar's Kiss

“As his frustration grew he spoke to the orb. “I have the power, and you will obey me.” A few orange sparks danced down the staff and fizzed out as they hit the wet grass. Frustration turned to anger and Audun slammed the tip of the staff against the ground and shouted. “You will obey me.” In that moment the orb started to glow red and the staff became alive with amber flashes. Audun’s anger seemed to burn like the fire now emanating from the tip of the staff and as he raised the tip toward the first forge the red fire leapt across the open ground and the smithy exploded with a roar like thunder.
Robert Reid – The Son”
― Robert Reid, The Son

“You won’t be able to start your training either, and you won’t be able to meet your true teacher and return home, Theo, until you defeat your own inner dragon.”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

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

“Tenderly he reached for her and lightly took her hand, lifted it, and touched it to his lips.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“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

“Where Will You Spend Eternity? And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27 KJV) I want to know, my friend
Where will your life now end?
Where will you spend eternity?
Will it be Heaven or Hell? No one can run, or hide
So now, my friend, you must decide
Where will you spend eternity?
Heaven or”
― John Bunyan, Visions of Heaven and Hell: Where Will You Spend Eternity?

“What would you have me do?
Seek for the patronage of some great man,
And like a creeping vine on a tall tree
Crawl upward, where I cannot stand alone?
No thank you! Dedicate, as others do,
Poems to pawnbrokers? Be a buffoon
In the vile hope of teasing out a smile
On some cold face? No thank you! Eat a toad
For breakfast every morning? Make my knees
Callous, and cultivate a supple spine,-
Wear out my belly grovelling in the dust?
No thank you! Scratch the back of any swine
That roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns
Of Mammon with my left hand, while my right
Too proud to know his partner's business,
Takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire
God gave me to burn incense all day long
Under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you!
Shall I go leaping into ladies' laps
And licking fingers?-or-to change the form-
Navigating with madrigals for oars,
My sails full of the sighs of dowagers?
No thank you! Publish verses at my own
Expense? No thank you! Be the patron saint
Of a small group of literary souls
Who dine together every Tuesday? No
I thank you! Shall I labor night and day
To build a reputation on one song,
And never write another? Shall I find
True genius only among Geniuses,
Palpitate over little paragraphs,
And struggle to insinuate my name
In the columns of the Mercury?
No thank you! Calculate, scheme, be afraid,
Love more to make a visit than a poem,
Seek introductions, favors, influences?-
No thank you! No, I thank you! And again
I thank you!-But...
To sing, to laugh, to dream
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with a voice that means manhood-to cock my hat
Where I choose-At a word, a Yes, a No,
To fight-or write.To travel any road
Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt
If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne-
Never to make a line I have not heard
In my own heart; yet, with all modesty
To say:"My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own."
So, when I win some triumph, by some chance,
Render no share to Caesar-in a word,
I am too proud to be a parasite,
And if my nature wants the germ that grows
Towering to heaven like the mountain pine,
Or like the oak, sheltering multitudes-
I stand, not high it may be-but alone!”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“I want to marry a [guy], so i can rest my soul with [him] till we both get old. This can't go on all the time-- all this franticness and jumping around. We've got to go someplace, find something.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“The words shot through Vivi's bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.”
― Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“After all, the ultimate expression of capitalism is not Democracy. It’s a dictatorship not of individual men but of corporations with interchangeable leaders. I wasn’t sure if the Depression was straining the structural limits of our Constitution or simply revealing that its fundamental ideas were faulty. Those revolutionaries of old had left so much space in their documents, so much fog and vagueness. Like scribing a draft and getting a laugh imagining people in the future trying to figure out what in hell they meant.”
― Charles Frazier, The Trackers

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake