Ashley Olson > Ashley's Quotes

“All night long Alec sat in his chair in his pyjamas and dressing gown, socks on his feet to keep out the cold, a cigarette in his fingers with a long ash hovering over a half-full ashtray. He attempted to go to bed but the incident with Father Joe kept his mind in turmoil. This girl, well, woman now – she would be around thirty – was a mystery during the war. She was kidnapped, it was thought, from her school, the day the Germans entered Paris. Her uncle, Sir Jason Barrett MP, was in England; her step-parents were somewhere else in France, on holiday, and found they could not get back; and Charlotte was being cared for by a Swedish couple, a nanny or housekeeper and her chauffeur husband.
Was Charlotte actually Freya? What had this baron fellow to do with Freya, apart from marrying her? Had she been a prostitute? And what was the old cleric babbling on about “finding her and protecting her”? From whom?”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap

“Life is complicated. If life was simple, wouldn’t that make us simpletons?”
― C. Toni Graham

“The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized carrier bags and infants behind them as they went. Scott felt alien in this environment; pulling up his hood he hurried through the crowds, dodging pushchairs, lit cigarettes and charity collection tins.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“A French lieutenant was asked by the commander of the French forces, “Jean, it seems to me that many people are only saying the things they think that I want to hear. Accordingly, what I am getting is not information, it is fucking bullshit!”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“I swallowed a sigh since, truthfully, I was glad she found the cabin.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Photons also are highly conscious beings. They know when they’re being observed, and they know how to get to where they’re going, regardless of obstacles. If there is a pathway or many, the photon will know them all instantaneously and use them all. It exists in the quantum state and can be in more than one place at the same time. Its awareness is unlimited. It can synchronize itself with the quantum state of the universe.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness

“At the edges, near the tracks, tall weeds have taken over -- tough plants with stringy stalks, small leaves, and compact flowers. Designed to waste energy on nothing but getting their blooms up toward the sun.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Let the Circle Be Unbroken

“You have a peace about you. You have a wisdom. You have a way of living life that kicks my butt and pushes me around, and it beats me out of my idiocy and narrow-mindness. You, Addy, you, have shown me what life is all about”
― Heath Sommer

“America, you are full of nothing but bad ideas. Great intentions but awful ideas.”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“Vince couldn't stop talking, spilling thoughts that had obviously churned inside him for years. "We could've stopped the spread of the disease a lot better than we've been able to cure the disease... Thought the magical cure would save them in the end. But if we wait any longer we'll run out of people to save.”
― James Dashner, The Death Cure

“Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage!”
― Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost