Bee Applebaum > Bee's Quotes

“There was no private ownership of land. "You could own a knife, or you could own a horse, but you couldn't own ground any more than you could own the sun or the wind. The Earth was their mother and part of the Cosmos given to all creatures by the Great Spirit.”
― John-Paul Cernak, The Odyssey of a Hippie Marijuana Grower

“For now, I had escaped. I was free. And I wanted to know what freedom really felt like, at least for a while.”
― Steven Decker, Child of Another Kind

“Maybe the flies knew we were leaving. Maybe they were happy for us.”
― Eli Wilde, Orchard of Skeletons

“Nothing screams SUMMER like strawberry shortcake, and yet in Florida the season for strawberries is December through March! But then, by March the daytime temperature is likely to be in the mid-70s to low 80s. So, it’s really easy to think “Ahhh, summer’s almost here.” So, when we planned a BD Party for our friend Bob Mason, we said, “It’s strawberry season! Let’s party!”
― Mallory M. O'Connor, The Kitchen and the Studio: A Memoir of Food and Art

“We…realized that no matter who won the race, we were girls, and we were from Soso, Mississippi, population 434, which meant we were destined to be last in pretty much everything else.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“Obama’s next words captured the attention of the world and the amusement of those present. As he wagged his finger at the crowd, he scolded, ‘So stop it, all of you. I know you have to find something to report on, but we have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.”
― Claudia Clark, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel

“Charlie said your friend’s disappeared,” chirped Wendy.
“No, he hasn’t.” Adam denied it. “He’s in the house. Now, look, what’s all this you’ve been telling them?”
“Nothing, I haven’t told them anything.” Charlie looked drunk.
“He said you’ve turned your friend into a crayfish,” insisted Wendy.
“He’s always making little jokes like that, and you fell for it. How am I supposed to do that, for heaven’s sake?” Adam was angry.
“With your little book you found. What’s that under your arm?”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“The reality is that the lives of the smallest patients are in our hands, and their clinical condition can change in an instant. No matter how many times you are involved in situations such as this, the physical stress and anxiety as well as the emotional and psychological effects of being immersed in that environment are dramatic and lasting on the human body, mind, and central nervous system. These effects are severe, and I firmly believe that they are cumulative over your lifetime.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“I am not familiar with your personal lives, except to know you are scientists representing Iran.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his hands, arms and neck a dull blue, sharp eyes and a thick beard that made his mouth look like an axe wound on a bear.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
― E.B. White

“And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing... this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea...”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Choose your partners wisely. Always use protection, and always protect your heart.”
― Patricia D'Arcy Laughlin, Sacrifices Beyond Kingdoms: A Provocative Romance Torn Between Continents and Cultures

“We’re not here to argue with you about the wisdom of our alliance that has kept the Persians at bay for forty years. An argument requires a measure of equality between those in the dispute and Samos is not the equal of Athens.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“It does little good to regret a choice. So often people say, “If only I had known,” implying they would’ve acted differently in a given situation. It is true that desires of the moment can blind one’s sight of the future. Revenge is not as sweet as the adage claims. Yet who could pass a chance to taste it? And if the chance were allowed to slip by, would the fool regret his lack of action? ”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Why do you have such faith in me, Aurelia?" 
"I've told you a million times that I love you, you make me feel safe and cherished, and you care deeply for our people. Why wouldn't I have faith in you?”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“And she was right. No matter how they tried, the two humans, with the cat but without the microchip, couldn’t connect to headquarters. Raya heard a loud popping sound in her mind, like a huge rubber band being snapped, like a glider plane released from a Piper Cub.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“She could see the headlines now.

‘Spinster dies alone in her condo. No one discovered her corpse for three days.’

She had been so preoccupied with work, that she’d neglected to do the grocery shopping and was now regretting it.”
― Diane Merrill Wigginton, A Compromising Position

“We can be beacons of light”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer God is the Cure

“Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Do not dwell on what once was, but rather look forward and ponder how you can make the future brighter”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“Sintiéndose satisfecho de que todo estaba en orden, tomó una larga respiración, se acostó y en cuanto puso la cabeza sobre la almohada se quedó profundamente dormido.”
― Laura Esquivel, Como agua para chocolate

“Its funny how certain objects convey a message -- my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: "You are going to die.”
― David Sedaris

“I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

...

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:

“Well, what’s the matter with you?”

I said:

“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.”

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn’t keep it.

I said:

“You are a chemist?”

He said:

“I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.”

I read the prescription. It ran:

“1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.”

I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Helen slowly became aware of an unnerving red light. She lifted her head and looked around. The glow bounced off the cold stone walls and intensified quickly. It filled her with thoughts of despair and hopelessness. She tried to shake them off.
You have what’s mine! Where is it? I want it!
Helen shuddered violently. She recalled the inner voice that urged
her to use the stone to keep Prince Harnak from dying. That voice was
comforting and encouraging. This voice was oppressive and angry and
beat on her relentlessly.
“No!” she muttered. “Go away. I have nothing for you or anyone
else, not even me.”
The red light flickered out. Only the numbing cold and her utter
isolation, cheerless companions, remained.”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“Fairness is a leadership superpower. ”
― Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction

“The written word
Like a stone pillar
May last for centuries
Even if its meaning is forgotten.”
― Jack Borden

“The birth of quantum physics brought science and spirituality into alignment. It was the realization by physicists that photons have consciousness, and not just limited consciousness, but awareness of the entire cosmos.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness