Pei Devalk > Pei's Quotes

“But  Phidias was better than most men since he made beautiful sculptures. He was even making one of her—well, he called it “Athena,” but anyone could see it looked like her.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“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

“Playboy: Do you ever wonder how you have survived this long? Thompson: Yes. Nobody expected me to get much past 20. Least of all me. I just assume, “Well, I got through today, but tomorrow might be different.” This is a very weird and twisted world; you can’t afford to get careless; don’t fuck around. You want to keep your affairs in order at all times.”
― Alex Haley, Hunter S. Thompson: The Playboy Interview (Singles Classic)

“The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”
― Isaac Asimov

“In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“My brothers and sisters were my best friends, but when it came to food, they were my enemies.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water

“She's just one of the plethora of women you rotate through your bed." Lily looked scared out of her mind as the queen changed direction and stalked her. "I will not allow you to besmirch the Esca name with your filthy plot to steal the prince.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“It started to feel like this thing happening to me was an invisible wall between us, a barrier none of us wanted to acknowledge but that was continuously pushing us apart. I started to feel like an outsider even among my closest friends.”
― Edward Williams

“After that, nothing was the same. The very notion of my having a family turned vague, hard to credit, even weirdly jokey.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“He had an intrusive gaze and quietly confident manner, that seemed to strip away the layers of protective deception Scott would usually adopt around strangers.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Like a feather, I let you go. To where you belong.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“I really like Matilda and that's not a clever book, is it? It's for children. But she's my favourite main character because she comes from an awful family and likes reading, like I do. Those special powers must've made her life a lot easier, though. She wouldn't be working in a pub at thirty-two.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“It was hidden in a column in the middle pages of The Courier in June 2019. The headline did not stand out as anything special. It was headed ‘Ancient staff discovered near Kinfauns Castle mystifies archaeologists’.”
― Robert Reid, The Thief

“Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“The automobile, which began as a transportation convenience, has become a bloody tyrant (50,000 lives a year), and it is the responsibility of the park service, as well as that of everyone else concerned with preserving both wilderness and civilization, to begin a campaign of resistance.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“And if you need timber for a new home,” the second said. “I wood be honored. “ He boomed out a laugh. “I wood. Get it?” “Farewell”
― Lucian Bane, Seven Sons of Zion

“It's tough out there, boy, and as long as there are people, there's gonna be somebody trying to take what you got and trying to drag you down. It's up to you whether you let them or not.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry: By Mildred D. Taylor

“You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises.”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“Aurelia, not all those women are uppity aristocratic bitches. Most of them are normal nice girls trying to survive in shark-infested waters, so if you want to make a difference, why not go in there and change the way things work?" "How?" Marcus smiled deviously. "By unseating the queen bee and changing the rules." "That sounds like a great idea, Colonel. Lead me to the beehive.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“I have decided it's my mind that's woman. It's my narrator. It's my relationship to myself, and oddly, nothing at all to do with my body.”
― Sara Pascoe

“She adjusted her body weight and caught his eyes, her gaze shiny and with a tinge of sadness. “My grandmother told me once that the world is filled with ghosts. The longer we live the more ghosts will haunt us.” She paused glancing at her palms. “But they’re here to remind us we are alive. That our hearts beat, blood runs through our veins, we breath air into our lungs.”
― Simon W. Clark, The Russian Ink

“How hideous is the semicolon.”
― Samuel Beckett

“….So much crueller than any British colony, they say, so much more brutal towards the local Africans, so much more manipulative after begrudgingly granting independence. But the history of British colonialism in Africa, from Sierra Leone to Zimbabwe, Kenya to Botswana and else-where, is not fundamentally different from what Belgium did in the Congo. You can argue about degree, but both systems were predicated on the same assumption: that white outsiders knew best and Africans were to be treated not as partners, but as underlings. What the British did in Kenya to suppress the pro-independence mau-mau uprising in the 1950s, using murder, torture and mass imprisonment, was no more excusable than the mass arrests and political assassinations committed by Belgium when it was trying to cling on to the Congo. And the outside world's tolerance of a dictator in the Congo like Mobutu, whose corruption and venality were overlooked for strategic expedience, was no different from what happened in Zimbabwe, where the dictator Robert Mugabe was allowed to run his country and its people into the ground because Western powers gullibly accepted the way he presented himself as the only leader able to guarantee stability and an end to civil strife. Those sniffy British colonial types might not like to admit it, but the Congo represents the quintessence of the entire continent’s colonial experience. It might be extreme and it might be shocking, but what happened in the Congo is nothing but colonialism in its purest, basest form.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart

“You know, there's a 12 step program for gambling. You should look into that.

Twelve steps. Coyote laughed. I'll bet I can do it in six.”
― Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue

“Fire’s the sun, unwindin’ itself out o’ the wood.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“The truth of what one says lies in what one does.
حقيقة ما يقوله الواحد كمن فيما يفعله.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader