Joleen > Joleen's Quotes

“Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...”
― R.D. Ronald

“The future is ‘now’.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“Still, in 1877, Engels wanted to protect us from false socialism. Still then, in Anti-Dühring, he wrote that not any nationalization is socialist, because in the contrary case both Bismarck and Napoleon would have to be arranged among the founders of socialism.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“Say ‘Ah.’”
A-H-H-H-H, he fingerspelled.
Doctor Frost glanced at his mother.
“He just said ‘ah’ for you,” she said weakly, and smiling.
“Okay, sense of humor intact,” the doctor said. “Try anyway.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“on a summer day winter always seems like something you have dreamt or heard spoken of and not a thing you have lived.”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River

“Willy: I am building something with this firm, Ben, and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he?
Ben: What are you building? Lay your hand on it. where is it?
Willy [hesitantly]: That's true, Linda, there's nothing.”
― Arthur Miller

“Cuando el sol y la luna habían nacido en Teotihuacan, habían sacado a los hombres de la oscuridad. Ella sabía por sus antepasados que la luz que emiten esos astros no es sólo física sino espiritual y que su tránsito por los cielos servía para unificar en el pensamiento de los hombres el ciclo de tiempo y espacio. La contemplación de los cielos, como en un juego de espejos, se convertía en una contemplación interna, se volvía un instrumento de transformación, era algo que ocurría adentro y afuera, en el cielo y la tierra. Año tras año, ciclo tras ciclo, tejiendo el tiempo, entrelazándolo, como si de un petate de serpientes se tratara,”
― Laura Esquivel, Malinche

“Greg found the coins just as interesting. He loved making rolls of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, stacks and stacks of them. And the golden Sacagawea dollar coins? He didn’t put them into rolls. He had collected twenty-seven of them, which he kept hidden in a sock in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Every once in a while he’d spread them out on his bed and count them again.”
― Andrew Clements, Lunch Money

“Soft skin warm against his nose, her pulse beating strong against his cheek, suddenly clear thinking and being the voice of reason were concepts as foreign as a different language.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“Various large trees— willowy peppers and especially the pines—seem to be reaching down to hold your hand.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“I see you made it Jack,’ he started to say, noticing a silver sphere roll across the loading bay floor. It stopped just short of his shoes before it exploded.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“Make no mistake: You will be challenged at some point in time. We all are. That’s just life.”
― Vernon Davis, Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond

“Every day is a battle. Still. She doesn’t need this…this mess. The nightmares. She doesn’t deserve what I’d put her through. And she probably wouldn’t stick around anyway. Who would?”
― 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

“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

“   In 1658, Francis Andrew Ransome stole the Alchemy Scroll from St. Julian’s college, my present employer. Ransome was a member of a transatlantic group called The Invisible College. They were alchemists, meaning they worked with matter and spirit together.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“How much is once in a while?” said Jack. “Once in a while ever four fuckin years?”
“No,” said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. “I goddamn hate it that you’re goin a drive away in the mornin and I’m goin back to work. But if you can’t fix it you got a stand it,” he said.”
― Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain

“Things
changing, failing apart, fading, another year, a few more
moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so
monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by
people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any
sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations
so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever
matching them.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Water from the Sun and Discovering Japan

“Mi problema consiste en que siempre que percibo o hago realidad algo que creía que quería, sea una novia, un piso, un empleo, educación, dinero y así sucesivamente, simplemente me parece tan aburrido y estéril, que ya no lo puedo valorar.”
― Irvin Welsh

“That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”
― George Eliot

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.”
― Kate Chopin