Leila Gerock > Leila's Quotes

“Mary’s hands clenched. She’d been through fire, what with a murder, and white supremacists. And what about Caroline, who had gone undercover to rescue the Scroll’s Key Keeper? Where were the College’s thanks for that?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“The Vietnamese soldier said, “Before I spoke to her, I had given her a cooked ration of rice. Instead of her being grateful for the meal, she abused me! What gives with these Kampuchean People?”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“next”
― Barry Kirwan, Eden's Trial

“A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“فالكبار يبدون دائما أكثر صبراً وجلداً وأكثر تحكماً في الزمن من الأطفال الذين يسعهم من الوقت حياة كاملة " ص٢٢”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Nothing makes you quite so aware of a person's presence as the loss of it.”
― Kiera Cass, The Crown

“We are the Stuff of stars. And there behind my desk, I seem to be returning to my source, in a quiet way. Recombining with the Stuff of the universe into who-knows-what. And I've a heightened respect for what's going on in the nooks and crannies of my very own room. It isn't dirt. It's cosmic compost.”
― Robert Fulghum, ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN: Uncommon Thoughts about Common Things

“Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

“He is half vampire. He would eat you.” Gatuika splashes her sister.”
― Tricia Copeland, To be a Fae Guardian

“The trees, in both Earth and Heaven, exist in the same form.”
― Rebecca Harlem, The Pink Cadillac

“Everyone is ready for the end of the day, ten-minute group meditation. The meditation is like the iciest beer you have ever
had after a hard day’s work.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“If there was one thing a former sniper could do well, it was wait. Patiently. Quietly. Without a sound. Barely a movement. Just him, a quiet mind and his breath.”
― J. Rose Black, Losing My Breath

“Water continued to explain about the life of the tree. “Trees can be as big below the ground as they are above it. And there are mother trees in the forests—these are the oldest trees. They have the most connections with the other trees. Trees communicate with each other and look after the young trees by sending them nutrients through their roots.”
― Ellen J. Lewinberg, Joey and His Friend Water

“I knew exactly what kind of effort I was going to need to get where I wanted to go.”
― Vernon Davis

“La vida es mejor, mas sana, cuando no meditamos de manera innecesaria en horrores. Como ya sabes, la historia de la humanidad está plagada de maldades, y tal vez deberíamos pensar en ellas con lágrimas, no con fascinación.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian

“Love is invisible, and comes in and goes out as he likes, without anyone calling him to account for what he does.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“She, of course, had to tell him that her knowledge was due to her great love of books and”
― Jana Petken, The Guardian of Secrets

“We must not see any person as an abstraction.
Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets,
with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish,
and with some measure of triumph. —ELIE WIESEL
from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code”
― Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”
― Albert Camus

“Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna