Shena Grodecki > Shena's Quotes

“Part of the hem floated loose. She spun around again—the fabric tightened like wool on a spindle. She breathed in fear. The boat was farther away. She swung her head around—so was the shore.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“You’ve enlarged your original mission parameters. That’s what happens in war.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“  “I am running back my tent to get my sub-machinegun. There are too many Noggies to kill using a pistol!” He then ran to where his scrape was and returned with the weapon.”
― Michael G. Kramer

“It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

“Smiling without good reason is demeaning.”
― Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game

“The name given me by my mother was, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey." I, however, had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so that I was generally known by the name of "Frederick Bailey.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass: By Frederick Douglass & Illustrated

“The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise. Only let me stay near you, and see you often."
"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at liberty to look and long: as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after the contents of the tart-woman's tray.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Beef had hit $300 a kilo. Not that he could recall the last time he’d tasted real beef.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“   In 1658, Francis Andrew Ransome stole the Alchemy Scroll from St. Julian’s college, my present employer. Ransome was a member of a transatlantic group called The Invisible College. They were alchemists, meaning they worked with matter and spirit together.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“That was followed by Sharp saying, “Mick, it is Sharp here. I have an urgent fire mission for you. This is greatly bigger than I thought, and I just know that the Noggies will attack us soon! Request fire upon grid reference which will be given to you by Sunray Delta Six”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“El mundo era tan reciente que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para nombrarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo".”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“First. I give a damn. About everything you do”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“Always have a 'Plan C”
― Zoltan Andrejkovics, The Invisible Game: The Mindset of a Winning Team

“Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend