Deon Wardinsky > Deon's Quotes

“I want to be Empress.”
“Oh, Theodora, don’t be insane.” Antonina took her friend’s hands. “Do you really think a circus clown can become a queen?”
“There’s no fruit without a flower.”
“But an Empress? Maybe in a thousand years.”
“All I have is today.” She stiffened her backbone, like a fluttery leaf changing into an oak. “And I won’t be defeated by a failure of imagination.”
― Carol Strickland, The Eagle and the Swan

“Semilla’s Phlegm-O-Matic promptly made an observation. ‘Wow Semilla look at that shuttle.’
     ‘Keep your voice down Raymond we’re in danger,’ Semilla hissed.
     ‘Raymond?’ Burt said incredulously.
     ‘I had to give him a name, didn’t I?”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“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

“Buy a whore a cup of tea and she'll tell you the world! Hookers know everything”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“We’re so very sorry about this latest murder. Ignore Simon’s levity.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“Agnes.”
― Katherine Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins

“What if, instead of being afraid of even talking about death, we saw our lives in some ways as preparation for it.
What if we were taught to ponder it and reflect on it and talk about it and enter it and rehearse it and try it on?What if, rather than being cast out and defined by some terminal category, you were identified as someone in the middle of a transformation that could deepen your soul, open your heart, and all the while-even if and particularly when you were dying-you would be supported by and be part of a community?”
― Eve Ensler, In the Body of the World

“I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. “So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide.
“But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question.
“But it’s burnt down?”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
“Many times.”
“And rebuilt.”
“Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
“With completely new materials.”
“But of course. It was burnt down.”
“So how can it be the same building?”
“It is always the same building.”
I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“Everything means something.”
― Philip Pullman, Lyra's Oxford

“His suit of armour was formed of steel, richly inlaid with gold, and the device on his shield was a young oak-tree pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado, signifying Disinherited.”
― Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
― Jack Kerouac