Melvin Mendivel > Melvin's Quotes

“There was nothing between the ranch and the nearest town except a windy, two-lane mountain road edged with pine trees, meadows, cliffs and boulders. No Dairy Queen, no Circle K, nothing.”
― Cricket Rohman, Colorado Takedown

“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

“It had happened. Thucydides, his archrival, was a general. Glaucon, from his own tribe, was a general. And Pericles was no longer a general. He was just a citizen with one vote. And an idea”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“It was time to start thinking of darker things.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“For some people quitting foods, say chocolate, can be as hard as kicking heroin is for a junkie. Food hooks people by triggering the exact chemical reactions triggered in the brain by hard drugs. Or nicotine. Or alcohol. Or shopping. Or sex.”
― Rebecca Skloot

“but what they don't understand is that I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night-in the moments before I pass off to sleep-ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem.”
― Daniel Keyes

“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There”
― Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity

“What would I like to get away from? Complexity. Anxiety. A feeling I've had my whole life that at any given time there's something I'm forgetting, some detail or chore, something that I'm supposed to be doing or should have already done. That nagging sensation - I get up with it, I go through the day with it, I go to sleep with it. When I was a kid, I had a habit of coming home from school on Friday afternoons and immediately doing my homework. So I'd wake up on Saturday morning with this wonderful sensation, a clean, open feeling of relief and possibility and calm. There'd be nothing I had to do. Those Saturday mornings, they were a taste of real freedom that I've hardly ever experienced as an adult. I never wake up in Elmsford with the feeling that I've done my homework.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“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

“No one else can close the door that God has opened for you,” she quietly said under her breath. That was something that Grandma Alice had said to her many times before her death.

“I miss you, Alice,” she whispered, “and wish you were here with me now.”
― Diane Merrill Wigginton, A Compromising Position

“I'm afraid!" She cried breaking free from his embrace.
But this time, he refused to let her go.  "No, no, no, you're not afraid of me!  What am I...a foot and half taller than you and out weigh you by 130 pounds, how could you possibly be afraid of me!" He laughed.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“And Tarquin,’ Semilla said quietly. ‘He has been in league with them all along?’
‘Yes, I am afraid so,’ Rupert confirmed.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“You shall address me as ‘My Dearest’,’ he repeated in a mocking voice, trying to copy her tone. ‘You will forget all about this conversation when you leave this room.’ It was interesting that tone; it had a sort of hypnotising ring to it.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Oh, so now I'm getting in trouble for things I didn't tell anyone I didn't know?”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“And she was right. No matter how they tried, the two humans, with the cat but without the microchip, couldn’t connect to headquarters. Raya heard a loud popping sound in her mind, like a huge rubber band being snapped, like a glider plane released from a Piper Cub.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“The fact that we can't see the beauty in something doesn't suggest that it's not there. Rather, it suggests that were are not looking carefully enough or with a broad enough perspective to see it.”
― Richard Carlson

“But he'd never seen anything like this before. And he'd never felt anything like it, either. The closest he could think of was when he and Blink were immersed in a book together. Sometimes a strange feeling would come over them as they'd race through the pages, and the words would dissolve, and they'd find themselves deep inside Oz, or Narnia, or the Andes, or Africa, where everything was real and vidid and alive.
Stories could do that, but this wasn't story. This was a house. And no matter how real a story seemed, you still couldn't eat the food, or pick up the plates, or warm yourself by the fire.”
― Brian Selznick

“I incline my agreement with Toirdealbhach,' said Gareth. 'After all, what is the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything? It would be much better for the people who are angry to fight each other themselves, knight against knight.'

'But you could not have any wars at all, like that,' exclaimed Gaheris.

'It would be absurd,' said Gawaine. 'You must have people, galore of people, in a war.'

'Otherwise you could not kill them,' explained Agravaine.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“I'm Losing Faith in My Favorite Country

Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans.

I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians.

Then everything changed.”
― Stephen Douglass

“Perhaps the early indicators of the end times were not birthed in these later events. But were rather the symptoms of a fundamental flaw in the human condition.”
― Rohith S. Katbamna, Down and Rising