Stephine Heern > Stephine's Quotes

“Blood began to flow, at first cautiously, as if embarrassed by its appearance; a few thin red lines exploring the gravitational trajectory of its new terrain. Now it flowed faster, steadily staining her pale flesh a horrific red.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'
No, what?' I would say.
A piece of dust.'
Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.'
And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn't sleep.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running.

This ground runs under countless houses and mountains and rivers and seas, under everywhere. And I'm on it.

Don't be scared, I'd told myself, the world is still under me.”
― Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue

“Същият вятър, който облъхваше ноздрите на Майора, развяваше къдриците на Жаклин и разхлаждаше руменеещите слепоочия на прехласнатия Оливие.”
― Boris Vian, Мравките

“My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking things.”
― Henry Miller

“It's not about danger, it's about control. Keep people scared and stupid and you can make them do anything you want.”
― Kelly Braffet, Save Yourself

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.”
― Graham Greene, The Comedians

“All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“I call myself an agnostic, but I'm more like an atheist; though admittedly, an atheist who pays respect to religion. I'm both a skeptic and an optimist, a cynic and an idealist. I rely on reason yet I am superstitious. It makes no sense, I know, but there it is nonetheless.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia

“He was sure people detested accountants; they were boring. In fact, he had put down his profession as an airline pilot on the form he had filled in for a dating agency. As an airline pilot you could be away just the right amount of time, when you needed a break from your love life, without facing awkward questions from her when you got back.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“The terrified men did not move. Then Nadia Fedin did something instinctive; she drew her Nagant revolver and fired three short bursts into the head of the nearest soldier. Stepan Ivanovich’s skull burst like a ripe cabbage showering his horrified comrades with viscous brain and bits of bone.”
― KGE Konkel, Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two

“He glanced at Sally. She sat on the edge, her feet dangling over the two-hundred-foot drop, just like he’d done all those years ago, secretly hoping his parents would tell him to come back, that it was dangerous. They never even got out of the car.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
― Clement Clarke Moore, Twas the Night Before Christmas

“He knew he had a lot to learn—that was why he was asking questions.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“Friends are like books. You carry them with you forever, regardless of mundane impediments like geography.”
― Lawrence Hill, Beatrice and Croc Harry

“To foil the decrees of fate, I am now planning a vast saga in which the key witness is not a paralytic but a runner. You never know. Perhaps it will work.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly