Clemente Russer > Clemente's Quotes

“He kept hearing his mother calling out, Anderson dear, you must go hide now. Mommy needs to entertain this nice gentleman.”
― Behcet Kaya, Murder on the Naval Base

“Pericles let a moment pass, then another. The Spartans needed time to set in balance the risks of accepting the offer and the joys of being rich. Not as much time as he’d expected, though.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“I want to propose a toast!" Taking a spoon he noisily tapped it against the crystal glass.  "Everyone!" He thundered, the large amount of whiskey he had consumed making him reckless.  "To Victor,  Ste. Genevieve's own inventor and my best friend, all the happiness in the world!"  The happy crowd shouted their approval.  "And to the ever, ever fair beauty Celena..." His voice cracking under the strain, and he wondered if he should stop now, before he embarrassed himself, before he made some horrible declaration.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“Chase looked like a drowning man without a life preserver, and by the look in his eyes, he was going under for the third time.

“I knew you would be like the waters of the South Pacific Ocean.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I liken people to different bodies of water,” he quickly explained.

“You what?”

“Each ocean has a different personality,” he said to clarify. “The Pacific Ocean is warmer and inviting, but the color is muddied in places. The Arctic Ocean is cold and very uninviting, one might even say that it is not very appealing, but it’s full of life. Then there is the South Pacific Ocean, warm, inviting, and crystal clear. It has this purity to it. Why, the coloring of the water is some of the brightest blue I’ve ever seen in my entire life. There are even places that you can see thirty meters down.”
― Diane Merrill Wigginton, A Compromising Position

“The night is dark, the lamps are all off, and the moon is new. But my inner eye sees the path. I follow my feet, and my feet follow my soul.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“I really like Matilda and that's not a clever book, is it? It's for children. But she's my favourite main character because she comes from an awful family and likes reading, like I do. Those special powers must've made her life a lot easier, though. She wouldn't be working in a pub at thirty-two.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small.”
― Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses

“People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.”
― Toni Morrison

“Haven’t I succeeded in the struggle that every poor man here should be making—the struggle not to take the lashes your father took”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.”
― Milan Kundera

“Do you really think you'd win a PR war against a bunch of committed librarians?' He thought about this, but he knew I was right. The libraries were a treasured institution and so central to everyday life that government and commerce rarely did anything that might upset them.Some say they were more powerful than the military, or, if not, they were certainly quieter. As they say: Don't mess with librarians.
Only they use a stronger word than 'mess'...”
― Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died a Lot

“The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“I felt amazingly confident,—it’s not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass.”
― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

“Without warning a lady appeared.
She came from the direction of Friday-street, for she had just been with Mr. Newbolt. She strode capably through the snow. She wore a black silk gown and something very queer swung from a silver chain about her neck. Her smile was full of comfort and her eyes were kind and happy. She was just as Mr. Newbolt had described.
And the name of this lady was Death.”
― Susanna Clarke, The Sandman: Book of Dreams

“По някакъв вълшебен начин ние образуваме литературен клуб всеки път, когато услужим на някого с книга ...”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“We all have ideas, sometimes good ones, not to mention the gift of emotional turmoil that every childhood provides.”
― Ann Patchett, The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life

“Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“The management no longer depends upon the talents or skills of its workers---those things are built into the operating systems and machines. Jobs that have been "deskilled" can be filled cheaply. The need to retain any individual worker is greatly reduced by the ease with which he or she can be replaced.”
― Eric Schlosser

“If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!" -- do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“...Or should you mourn the rapist, which I guess Christians mourn the people who kill them too.”
― Nikolas Schreck

“Heresy is the life of a mythology and orthodoxy is the death.”
― Joseph Campbell, Mythology and the Individual

“You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“If. It’s the worst word in the world.”
― Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen

“How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The cruciform does not like pain. Nor do I but, like the cruciform, I am willing to use it to serve my purposes. And I will do so consciously, not instinctively like the mindless mass of alien tissue embedded in me. This thing only seeks a mindless avoidance of death by any means. I do not wish to die, but I welcome pain and death rather than an eternity of mindless life. Life is sacred--I still hold to that as a core element of the Church's though and teachings these past twenty-eight hundred years when life has been so cheap--but even more sacred is the soul.
I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so--but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ. It must go into the darkness not willingly but well--bravely and firm of faith--like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerful that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices., All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable conviction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I... and so must the Church.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“It gave her a sense of pride and accomplishment”
― Jean M. Auel, The Clan of the Cave Bear

“There is just so much excess in terms of the market for self-remodeling. I think most women are perfectly gorgeous and beautiful the way they are,”
― Eve Ensler

“Mileski had once been caught in a home burglary and had been shot in the leg by police. Afterward, he limped.”
― Mark Bowden, The Last Stone