Paz Ott > Paz's Quotes

“She stared at her console, wanting to punch it. Her dream, running to save her life, to save everything, was all going to come true down on the planet’s surface. And when it did, she knew this time she wasn’t going to wake up.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“When Hannah’s life hangs in the balance, is Trace willing to face his greatest fear to rescue the woman he loves?”
― Cricket Rohman, Colorado Takedown

“What is the nature of your emergency?”
“I was assaulted in the street,” Krissa responds.
“What is the location of the assault?”
“At my current coordinates.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“No, but my attackers do.”
― Stephen Alder, Deehabta’s Song

“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

“Too pissed off to care, Aurelia interrupted him. "No, I will not wait just one moment!" Piercing him with her best scary stare, she said, "It surprises me that no one has pointed out your glaringly obvious agenda, so let me be the first.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“From the onset of polio in 1921 until his death, Franklin, his family, his inner circle of advisers, and teams of physicians assiduously disguised the state of his health, promoting the fantasy of a robust leader who was always in excel- lent physical condition for a man his age. Severe heart disease was not admit- ted until twenty-five years after his death, and then only as part of a new and larger cover-up to conceal other severe medical problems. These deceptions still dominate the present-day narrative of Franklin’s health, especially so in his later years.”
― Steven Lomazow, FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History

“As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“When the State withers, humanity flowers.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed

“Think of this: If it weren’t for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no van Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong. The civilization that devises the infrastructure to allow these wonderful things to be created is essentially a product of war—death and suffering—and commerce—deceit and inequality. Even your liberty to discuss the shortcomings of your own species has its foundations in blood and hardship.” “That’s a depressing thought,”
― Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy

“Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. And today you need no longer hesitate to use the word "saints": think of Father Maximilian Kolbe who was starved and finally murdered by an injection of carbolic acid at Auschwitz and who in 1983 was canonized.

You may be prone to blame for invoking examples that are the exceptions ot the rule. "Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt" (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority . More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

So let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.

And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”
― Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

“I don't "lol". I tried it once but it just didn't agree with me.”
― R.D. Ronald

“The beautiful stranger cuddled Cindy, and she rocked the chair slightly as she spoke softly to her. “Suicide is a problem, not a solution. Humans you love would be hurt deeply if you left them. Becky Johnson and her parents would be crushed. Your grandparents in Florida never”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“Where’s my uncle?” she asked.
“I don’t know who your uncle is, but if it as the guy who owned this place before I bought it, then he’s pushing up daisies.”
“But it can’t be, he’s still young.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Rather than get hung up on theological debates, why don’t we focus on the depraved state of the people who need freedom? While debates rage, the devil is laughing as people stay in bondage.”
― Kathryn Krick, Unlock Your Deliverance: Keys to Freedom From Demonic Oppression

“Whither be the heart of Justice?
            Lo, in stone, child. Lo, in stone.
            Whither be the heart of Justice?
            Lo, tis fast in stone.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“I suppose knowing where you are is better than having you skulk around, popping out of dark alleys and doorways. It eliminates the possibility of shooting you by accident. If I know where you are, I can shoot you on purpose.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“9. Delicately Sylva moved the upper layers of paper and vellum away and saw, lying on the table, a small book. It was an ornately inscribed little volume with a beautifully worked golden motif; this was what had glittered and caught her attention. The book’s cover was edged in gold and in the centre of the cover was the motif: a letter O superimposed with the letter I, forming the symbol Φ, also marked out in gold.”
― Robert Reid, The Empress

“After March in 1945, the Japanese felt threatened by possibility of the people of Indochina rising against them. Therefore, they stated:
“We of the Imperial Japanese Army have only invaded other Asian countries in order to remove the European and American white man from Asia! Stick with us Japanese and together we shall make Asians great while we kick the whites out of the entire region!”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“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

“As we left Hava Java, I reached into my purse and discretely pulled out the Smith & Wesson handgun, putting it in my jacket pocket and keeping my finger on the trigger.”
― Steven Decker, INNOCENT AGAIN: A LEGAL THRILLER

“These were virtuoso odours, executed as wonderful little trifles that of course no one but he could admire or would ever take note of. He was enchanted by their meaningless perfection; and at no time in his life, either before or after, were there moments of such truly innocent happiness as in those days when he playfully and eagerly set about creating fragrant landscapes, still lifes and studies of individual objects.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Los conocimientos que Francis recibió en la abadía no le habían preparado para nada que tuviese un valor práctico en el mundo oscuro e ignorante de todos los días; donde la cultura no existía y un joven educado, además, no tenía valor para una comunidad, a menos que supiese cultivar la tierra, pelear, cazar o mostrase algún talento especial para el latrocinio intertribal o para el descubrimiento de aguas subterráneas o metales maleables.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Cántico por Leibowitz

“(Really, thought Lib, who ever died exultingly? Whatever fool penned that phrase had never sat by a bed with his ears pricked for the last rasp.) Aged”
― Emma Donoghue, The Wonder

“We. Us. Our little family. With our problems and our routines. Fucking bitch. She’s a cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest. She has taken everything from me. She has taken everything and now she calls me to tell me that my distress is inconvenient for her?”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god’s wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him–the helpless, innocent victim, that is–into let’s say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a dish of turtle food just out of his reach and leaves him out in the sun forever to be repeatedly disemboweled by army ants and stung by hornets or something. So if Arachne had dissed anyone else in the Pantheon, she would have been just a smoking hole in the ground before she knew what hit her.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon