Lynn Jessen > Lynn's Quotes

“Before she knew it, Remy found herself daydreaming about Logan holding her tight against his lean, muscular body.”
― Hope Worthington, Shifting Moon: Shifting Moon Saga, Book 1

“Oscar looked up from his plate, and if a cat could laugh, he would have. ‘Boy, that’s ugly, even for a jinn. Looks like a cross between a rat, a frog and a bottlebrush.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“He used his large shoulders and movements to impose his dominance over others as he strutted around but his facial expressions were a giveaway to people like Maeve who was born into a gritty group of native born fighting Irish. While many saw him as a man who worked his way up to power and influence and attained success that others fail to achieve, she saw him as a sham. He didn’t acquire loyalty by goodwill, but by corruption, fear, and loathing.”
― A.G. Russo, The Cases Nobody Wanted

“I know you don’t believe me, but you’re here for you own fucking protection, Kara. If I have to tie you to my bed to keep you safe, don’t think I won’t.”
― Becky Wilde, Bratva Connection: Maxim

“If there was one thing a former sniper could do well, it was wait. Patiently. Quietly. Without a sound. Barely a movement. Just him, a quiet mind and his breath.”
― J. Rose Black, Losing My Breath

“Change comes whether we are ready or not.”
― Rebecca Rosenberg, Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne

“While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.”
― Todor Bombov, Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel

“Falconers,” she continued, sternly. “Pull yourselves together. People are dying. The police don’t have the family history to solve murders forty years apart.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Gli amanti degli animali sono una speciale razza umana, generosa di spirito, piena di empatia, forse un po' incline al sentimentalismo, e con cuori immensi come un cielo senza nuvole.”
― John Grogan, Io & Marley

“If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“The fire on the mountain.” That was Anna. “Alchemy,” she said. “I feel it singing in my bones.”
“Singing?” Mary would never understand Anna. The young woman turned away.
Wiseman’s reply was tinged with respect.
“That great pair of alchemists, Francis Ransome and Roberta Le More, believed the work they did affected the world’s spirit, the anima mundi. The Native Americans they met believed they too could and should interact with the Great Spirit. They lived with reverence for the land and all its peoples, the ancestors, the animals, the rocks, the trees, mountains.” 
Mary’s jaw dropped; Caroline glowed; Anna pretended not to listen. Wiseman nodded, then continued.
“You mean…?” began Mary.
“Yes, it could have been so different, a meeting of like-minded earth-based spiritualities. Just imagine, what could have been?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Frenssh-fry”
― Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game

“Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“In a movie he could dream without effort; all he had to do was lean back in a seat and keep his eyes open.”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

“Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

“To be a mass tourist, for me,...is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
― David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“An unguarded comment often proves every bit as valuable as a response to a direct question.”
― Jeffrey Archer, Be Careful What You Wish For

“Life is based on comparisons”
― Henri Charrière

“Unwashed and undernourished, having spent over four days on five different trains and four military jeeps, Alexander got off at Molotov on Friday, June 19, 1942. He arrived at noon and then sat on a wooden bench near the station. Alexander couldn’t bring himself to walk to Lazarevo. He could not bear the thought of her dying in Kobona, getting out of the collapsed city and then dying so close to salvation. He could not face it. And worse—he knew that he could not face himself if he found out that she did not make it. He could not face returning—returning to what? Alexander actually thought of getting on the next train and going back immediately. The courage to move forward was much more than the courage he needed to stand behind a Katyusha rocket launcher or a Zenith antiaircraft gun on Lake Ladoga and know that any of the Luftwaffe planes flying overhead could instantly bring about his death. He was not afraid of his own death. He was afraid of hers. The specter of her death took away his courage. If Tatiana was dead, it meant God was dead, and Alexander knew he could not survive an instant during war in a universe governed by chaos, not purpose. He would not live any longer than poor, hapless Grinkov, who had been cut down by a stray bullet as he headed back to the rear. War was the ultimate chaos, a pounding, soul-destroying snarl, ending in blown-apart men lying unburied on the cold earth. There was nothing more cosmically chaotic than war. But Tatiana was order. She was finite matter in infinite space. Tatiana was the standard-bearer for the flag of grace and valor that she carried forward with bounty and perfection in herself, the flag Alexander had followed sixteen hundred kilometers east to the Kama River, to the Ural Mountains, to Lazarevo. For two hours Alexander sat on the bench in unpaved, provincial, oak-lined Molotov. To go back was impossible. To go forward was unthinkable. Yet he had nowhere else to go. He crossed himself and stood up, gathering his belongings. When Alexander finally walked in the direction of Lazarevo, not knowing whether Tatiana was alive or dead, he felt he was a man walking to his own execution.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Even some of our cookbooks are banned. (Though it's been centuries, at least, since the Pitches ate fairies.) (You can't even find fairies anymore.) (And it isn't because we ate them all.)”
― Rainbow Rowell, Carry On

“But we're not humanity, we're just one culture - one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing, then we'd be out of luck. But it isn't humanity that needs changing, it's just...us.”
― Daniel Quinn

“Nhưng đối với người lớn thì bố tuyệt đối không thấy lời biện hộ nào cho việc đánh giá một điều tốt đối với người khác cao hơn là người đó tự đánh giá điều gì tốt cho mình”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader