Mara Eppley > Mara's Quotes

“The Alchemy Scroll works on the heart,” he said. “It plants words as I plant stones. The Scroll-maker is my brother. He paints the mysteries of God while I, guided by the Mother, built the new Hall as a door to heaven,” he said.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“This world would be a pleasant place if people didn’t inhabit it.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Ruxandra pulled the blanket down just far enough to see the two girls shut the door behind them, stuff something under it to block any light, and throw a blanket over the shutters. A flint sparked one, twice, and a taper flared to life, lighting the faces of her friends. Adela was a short blonde whose breasts pushed against her nightdress and were the despair of the nuns’ attempts to instill modesty. Her parents had sent her to the convent in desperate hopes to keep her from scandal. And between her sweet, round face and her ability to lie shamelessly, she almost managed to make the nuns believe they were being successful. Valeria was slim and dark, a mischief-maker whose pranks had gotten her in trouble more than once. They were both her lovers. Adela called it practice for when they had husbands. Valeria called it wonderful. The nuns declared it a sin in no uncertain terms. And while Ruxandra did her best to obey the nuns in most matters, and to turn her thoughts to God and do his good work, she could not stop loving the girls. From the moment she’d first held Adela’s hand, she’d known that, whatever else their feelings were for each other, they were too sweet to be sinful.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Princess Dracula

“It wasn't raindrops at all. It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing first onto the seagulls and then onto the peach itself, while the poor travelers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of- the peach stem, the silk strings, anything they could find- and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them, bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing and swashing and swirling and surging and whirling and gurgling and gushing and rushing and rushing, and it was like being pinned down underneath the biggest waterfall in the world and not being able to get out.”
― Roald Dahl

“Among themselves, they had figured out how to go about marriage so as to accomplish the least damage. The husbands lived two hours away...”
― Charles Frazier, Nightwoods

“She's as dead as she'll every be, ain't she? Well, ain't she?”
― Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree

“Amelia Bedelia," said Mrs. Rogers,
"Christmas is just around the corner."
"It is?" said Amelia Bedelia. "Which corner?"
Mrs. Rogers lauhged and said,
"I mean tomorrow is Christmas Day."
"I know that," said Amelia Bedelia.”
― Peggy Parish, Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia

“Grandma put down her fork. She said she was getting fed up with all of this girlish nonsense from someone who was thirty-two years old. She wanted to remind my mother that in the eyes of the Church she was still a married woman and said she hoped Ma wasn’t reserving herself a room in hell for the sake of one little night of whoop-de-do. I had never thought of Ma as someone capable of whoop-de-do.”
― Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone

“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

“My people are taught from a young age to try to remember their dreams, to learn from them, and to aspire to achieve their dreams in the physical world.”
― Steven Decker, Projector for Sale

“This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“When pain and talent mix together, that’s when you’re able to persevere in your goals in life; the pain gives your talent something to feed into.”
― Vernon Davis

“Deciding to wait, Scott sat down with a pint away from the bar at a corner table and lit a cigarette. The clientele in there on Sunday afternoon were the same as most other afternoons. From middle-aged to old men, drinking and cursing at the world like it was the last bus which had just left the stop without them.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“… the primitive comprehension that the state property represents a social one, their identification, and their equalization  could not resist the criticism of the time. The state property is not socialism. The state-monopoly property, as it was on the both sides of the Berlin Wall and which continues to be such one even after it dropped down, is not social property. There was never and nowhere any socialism! In the twentieth century, we passed through a system of utopian socialism as proof that this was not socialism that was not possible, but the utopia of the writers before Marx and after Marx. We were visited by a utopian socialism, which at the contemporary stage is simply capitalism—state, monopolistic.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Herger said to me, "Be thankful, for you are fortunate."
I inquired the source of my fortune. Herger said in reply, "If you have the fear of high places, than this day you shall overcome it; and so you shall have faced a great challenge; and so you shall be adjudged a hero.”
― Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead

“bankruptcy is a scar that never comes off. It marks you as a fool or a shoddy dealer.”
― Herman Wouk, Youngblood Hawke: A Novel

“say it because I believe that what we don’t say we don’t see, acknowledge, or remember. What we don’t say becomes a secret, and secrets often create shame and fear and myths. I say it because I want to someday feel comfortable saying it, and not ashamed and guilty.”
― Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

“Az igazság az, hogy Leonora Penderton egy kissé gyengeelmejű volt.
Ez a szomorú tény nem tűnt fel sem az estélyeken, sem az istállóban, sem a vacsoraasztalnál. Mindössze hárman voltak tisztában vele: idős apja, akit nagyon aggasztott a helyzet, míg szerencsésen férjhez nem adta; a férje, aki minden negyvenen aluli nő termeszetes állapotának vélte a dolgot; valamint Morris Langdon őrnagy, aki csak annál jobban szerette érte.”
― Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye

“Be your own father, young man”
― Ralph Ellison Invisible Man

“It is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.”
― Anne Brontë