Joe Devoti > Joe's Quotes

“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

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest I that I go to than I have ever known."

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens”
― Barbara Sontheimer

“Oh, sorry, love. I was just getting out of the shower when I heard this loud commotion in front of my door.” Jake gave her a sloppy grin. “I didn’t realize there was a dress code when coming to the aid of a beautiful neighbor. I’ll keep it in mind for the next time I come running.”
― Diane Merrill Wigginton, A Compromising Position

“Kowkosvki? You handling this?”
“I am.”
The suit turned and stared at me with his dark eyes. “Detective Hayden. I take it you’re the shooter?”
“I am.”
“And you are?”
“Jack Ludefance. I’m a PI hired by Mr. Kingsley to investigate the murder of Professor Zambear.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard about you. Who’s in the bedroom?”
“Rudy Orkut. My computer tech.”
“Computer tech, huh? Any idea who this dead body is?”
“Not a clue.”
― Behcet Kaya, Uncanny Alliance

“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

“Oscar looked up from his plate, and if a cat could laugh, he would have. ‘Boy, that’s ugly, even for a jinn. Looks like a cross between a rat, a frog and a bottlebrush.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.”
― Émile Zola

“Those who pretend that they can mend others should first mend themselves, and then they will be more readily believed.”
― Aesop, Aesop's Fables

“Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn’t tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather’s fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall.”
― William Gibson, The Peripheral

“...for flowers that will bloom in a garden will die on a heath...”
― James Fenimore Cooper, Pathfinder; or, the inland sea

“On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“the entire dining room table on his shoulders and bounce it around the room, could now barely pull himself up. He groaned in pain when he lay down, and groaned again when he struggled to his feet. I did not realize just how weak his hips had become until one day when I gave his rump a light pat and his hindquarters collapsed beneath him as though he had just received a cross-body block. Down he went. It was painful to watch. Climbing the stairs to the second floor was becoming increasingly difficult”
― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”
― Tom Robbins

“Remember , that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”
― Mary Shelley

“John Maxwell says a budget (for your money) is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Managing time is the same; you will either tell your day what to do or you will wonder where it went.”
― Dave Ramsey, EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches

“The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Love is the Answer, God is the Cure!”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer God is the Cure

“The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me.
Momma fussed and told Daddy I was too young for that. He argued that I wasn’t too young to get arrested or shot.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“It's the journey that matters, soak it in. Learn lessons out of it. Impact positively so that if you never get to your destination, at least you'd leave a legacy to be remembered.”
― Emem Uko

“The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.

All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.

If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.

They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.

I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.

I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.

You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.

Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.

After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.

It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.

He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.

The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.

You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]

Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.

You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.

In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.

There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.

Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.

The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.

The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.

I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.

Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.

Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.

Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.

Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.

A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.

Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.

It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.

Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?

She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.”
― John Richard Spencer

“In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.”
― Paullina Simons, Tatiana and Alexander

“Sometimes I see me dead in the rain.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future too.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

“To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Nothing has more potential for strengthening one’s sense of well-being than effectively loving and being loved.”
― Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages: Singles Edition

“Para entonces ya estaba muerta. En realidad, puede que llevara muerta mucho tiempo. Físicamente, solo unos segundo; mentalmente toda una vida.”
― Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

“I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.”
― Anonymous, The Dhammapada

“We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

“No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“Who was it that said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch