Berry > Berry's Quotes

“Imagine your worst day, multiply it by a hundred, and pray to your God
that you never experience what some of the people in this war zone go
through, everyday, without any hope of it getting better. Ever. Compared
to these people, every day, no matter how bad, is the best day ever. I
know nothing about pain, nothing about suffering and hopefully never will.”
― Hendri Coetzee, Living the Best Day Ever

“Some days are better than others, for human optimism has no limits.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence

“One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“She had what I'd call a lemming ass - that is, an ass that you would follow right over the edge of the cliff.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“Eritrea”
― Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

“I know they are naught things, but I devour novels.” (p. 57).”
― Shannon Hale, Austenland

“I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd. ”
― Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.”
― Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

“And yet if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is.” —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER”
― Lou Marinoff, Plato, Not Prozac!: Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems

“One of the greatest realizations that I clumsily stumbled upon during this process, was that these people didn’t need someone like me to tell them what to do; they needed someone like me to show them what can be done, together.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“God is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
― John Ramirez, Armed and Dangerous: The Ultimate Battle Plan for Targeting and Defeating the Enemy

“God is the Cure, Love is the Answer”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, God is the Cure, Love is the Answer : A Memoir

“no one seemed to be thinking about how the “scandal” was affecting the lives of WE Charity’s beneficiaries. Her constant refrain was “The biggest loss was to the children.”
― Tawfiq S. Rangwala, What WE Lost: Inside the Attack on Canada’s Largest Children’s Charity

“One thing that became very clear during my own war service is that those who are actively taking part in war-like activities very seldom hate their former enemies. The reverse is the case with a great respect developing among the veterans, even if they happened to be on opposing sides.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“No man, no matter how smart or strong, can compete with a motivated woman.”
― J.K. Franko, Killing Johnny Miracle

“Blake shook his head and smiled as the attorney general of the United States closed the door. As usual, the forecast called for a wonderful day at the United States Department of Justice. Unfortunately, the daily forecast would soon change, as would the life of Blake Hudson.”
― Chad Boudreaux, Scavenger Hunt

“Intellectual honesty means pursuing the truth regardless of whether or not it serves your interests or goals.”
― Milan Kordestani, I'm Just Saying: A Guide to Maintaining Civil Discourse in an Increasingly Divided World

“Our good friend and fellow sportsman George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act into law back in 2005. Essentially, unless we make a terribly defective gun, the law creates a complete shield from liability. God bless Citizens United, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, tort reform, and needy and greedy politicians.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal High

“Nathan had never wanted children of his own. Plenty of reasons. Babies screamed as soon as they were born – wasn’t that warning enough of what was to come? And when they grew into toddlers, and then young kids, they were far worse: tantrums, more screaming, whining. How many business trips, restaurant dinners, theatre visits, you name it, were ruined by one small, precocious loud brat and its doting, utterly useless parents? No discipline any more. Nathan had sure been disciplined.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“i prefer to die on my feet,than live on my knees”
― Frank Miller, 300

“Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.”
― Katherine Dunn

“When I got home, I cried and cried. I didn’t want to stop learning. I was only eleven years old, but I felt as though I had lost everything.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“Even now I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it.

Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem.

It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face.

I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now.

I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“What in the name of Llar was that all about?’ Colin asked, his face still drained of colour.
‘I have no bloody idea,’ William said his voice quivering.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“You can’t have trust without fairness”
― Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction

“Iris kissing the lips of a dying boy. Imagine! So very kind, so killingly funny! Cross-eyed Iris in her specs, whatever did the poor boy think?”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“When we hold health and abundance in our self-identity, we create experiences of that quality. If we choose to be attuned to the energy of our heart and feel love and compassion, we create experiences in the same energy spectrum as that of peace, love and joy.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness