Antwan Hamlette > Antwan's Quotes

“The violence of nature masks the beauty and joy that hide just beneath the surface.”
― Jack Borden, The Lost City: An Epic YA Fantasy Novel

“Her body faded away so far, she almost lost her connection to it. Utter
blackness enveloped her, shutting off all warmth. All light. All love. All
support. All hope. She was pinned, alone, naked, and freezing before a
beast so terrifying she struggled to avert her gaze but could not.
Horns arose from the top of what had to be a head. Fangs protruded
obscenely from a frowning hole that must have been a mouth.
Unsheathed claws threatened instant evisceration. Horrifying eyes.
Two cesspits of black fury in which red flames churned like burning
blood. They bore down on Helen, intensifying the pressure on her to
the point of agony.
Inside her head a message played over and over. You are helpless.
Helen’s fragmented thoughts spun wildly. What to do? How to stop
this nightmare?
The wretched voice roared again, like nails clashing against slate.
“Give me the stone! Now!”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“Following his ordeal at the hands of the angry residents in Dusty Bottom Lane yesterday, he felt particularly disinclined to exhibit any form of enthusiasm whatsoever.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“A look of absolute terror locked onto her features.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Fairness isn’t about charity. It’s smart business.”
― Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction

“Well, it's like this: if you're forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank—you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That's what we do here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else—we either plan it or dream it.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“The more you pray, the less you'll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You'll feel more patient and less pressured.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose of Christmas

“Colonel Talbot? he is a very disagreeable person, to be sure. He looks as if he thought no Scottish woman worth the trouble of handing her a cup of tea.”
― Walter Scott, Waverley

“Come morning, his memory would be of a night spent watching over them all. And each of them - dog and boy, mother and old man - would feel the same.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“I’ve been at this a long time. The good guys don’t always win. You take what you can get...”
― A.G. Russo, Bangtails, Grifters, and a Liar's Kiss

“Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...”
― R.D. Ronald

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“I can't say." Miranda mimicked a very grown-up sound with her imperious tone. "I wasn't at the morgue. I was in school.”
― Theasa Tuohy, Mademoiselle le Sleuth

“Being born upside-down was just the first irony in Suzanne's life, a forewarning that her struggle with existence had just begun.”
― Ashby Jones, The Little Bird

“If we attempt to explain, in an easily accessible and clear way, how positive and negative actions affect the filling and decreasing of their life ether, we can state that physically it depends on their intentions.”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“See to it that you send out the best warriors we have and that they all know exactly what to do and how to do it!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Full Story of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion

“It seems that by the time the singular beauty of a flower in bloom can no longer pierce the veil of black or obsessive thoughts in a person's mind, that mind's connection to the sensual world has grown dangerously frayed.”
― Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

“Mr. Fresh sat down on the stool behind the counter and stared into the eyes of the cardboard cutout of Cher, hoping to find answers there. But the bitch was holding out.”
― Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job

“Childermass knew what games the children on street-corners are playing - games that all other grown-ups have long since forgotten. Childermass knew what old people by firesides are thinking of, though no one has asked them in years. Childermass knew what young men hear in the rattling of the drums and the tooting of the pipes that makes them leave their homes and go to be soldiers - and he knew the half-eggcupful of glory and the barrelful of misery that await them. And all that Childermass knew made him smile; and some of what he knew made him laugh out loud; and none of what he knew wrung from him so much as ha'pennyworth of pity.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“That Mack McGuire, he makes my heart flutter like a clean sheet on a long line.”
― Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars

“For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead a kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bimental, existence. With Women, we speak of “love,” “duty,” “right,” “wrong,” “pity,” “hope,” and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may also say, idiom. “Love” them becomes “the anticipation of benefits”; “duty” becomes “necessity” or “fitness”; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken of—by all but the very young—as being little better than “mindless organisms.”
― Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

“Bernstein looked like one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised. Bernstein thought that Woodward's rapid rise at the Post had less to do with his ability than his Establishment credentials.

They had never worked on a story together. Woodward was 29, Bernstein 28.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward”
― Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men