Ricky Stoldt > Ricky's Quotes

“I’ll test the station the day after tomorrow. If it’s good, we’ll make the jump the day after that. So three days. I need three days.”
― Steven Decker, The Balance of Time

“On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“In the back of my mind, I thought maybe I would find my Robert Redford in New Orleans. We made our way to the city by afternoon and planned to drive home when the sun rose over Lake Pontchartrain. We had no idea where else to go, except to Bourbon Street. We walked toward the bright lights and glowing colors of one strip club after another…. In 1975, Big Daddy’s was the top, topless go-go joint on Bourbon.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“You understand, gentlemen,” explained Jabir, “that you are working under my supervision?”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“With one hand disturbing a colony of parasitic life forms in his uncombed hair, he yawned loudly.
     ‘Morning Steve,’ Thomas said scratching his grubby face. His breath drifted across the space between them making Steve’s nose twitch involuntarily.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“The disturbing part is that no one teaches us how to deal with death at any point during our medical training, or even during our lifetime for that matter, particularly in a field such as mine where death was an inevitable certainty for some patients.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“In her usual manner, Merkel spoke in German. It is worth pointing out, however, that before the translator had an opportunity to convert her statements to English, Obama gave the chancellor and the press a big smile, saying, ‘I think what she said was good. I’m teasing.’ The laughter in the room drowned out the sounds of the cameras clicking and flashing, with Merkel’s giggle and smile among the loudest.”
― Claudia Clark, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel

“Death has this much to be said for it: You don’t have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free. —Kingsley Amis”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“Fiction gives us empathy: It puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”
― Ray Bradbury , Fahrenheit 451

“You're better than this. Better than whatever it is you're going to do now.”
― Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice

“The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Just to get through life was no ambition. It was the opposite of ambition.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Asa, as I Knew Him

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“I have watched people come to revival meetings burdened, broken, and hopeless, and then leave completely transformed. The difference is undeniable—their eyes are brighter, their posture changes, and their spirit is lighter because Jesus set them free.”
― Kathryn Krick, Unlock Your Deliverance: Keys to Freedom From Demonic Oppression

“Mead.
O sweet elixir,
Ye bless the lips and steal the wits.
 ”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“A French lieutenant was asked by the commander of the French forces, “Jean, it seems to me that many people are only saying the things they think that I want to hear. Accordingly, what I am getting is not information, it is fucking bullshit!”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“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

“I suggest you write I love you in your daily diary when we hang up so that you can refer to it should you ever develop that need to read those words again.”
― Shafter Bailey, James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted Crime Against Children

“Inside he was hurt. Not so much with Linda, but his failure to impress women generally with his abilities. There she was, an example: lending – no, giving –thirty thousand pounds to a smooth-talking old bastard, but she would not part with a penny to him after living with him for a year or more.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“بجدية كافحت لأكون جاداً أكثر ، أن أعيش وأبدع . ولكن عند كل محاوله جديدة أفقد عقلي ، أهرب إلى ظلالي كما يهرب الفرد إلى المعبد .”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“Would you like me to put you out of your misery, before I put you out of your misery?”
― Paul Cude, Bentwhistle the Dragon in a Threat from the Past

“France was at peace; one couldn't shoot the bearers of bad news.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

“However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There”
― Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity

“Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by biological patterns as social patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns. There is no direct scientific connection between mind and matter. As the atomic scientist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language." Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“what’s wrong with a person wanting to be more intelligent, to acquire knowledge, and understand himself and the world?” “If you’d read your Bible, Charlie, you’d know that it’s not meant for man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon