Sam Mcgray > Sam's Quotes

“After Bajju delivered a few beaming salutations, we walked northward up the makeshift, winding path through protruding brush, not much but a few stones placed here and there for balance and leverage upon ascending or descending. Having advanced about hundred steps from the street below, a sharp left leads to Bajju’s property, which begins with his family’s miniature garden – at the time any signs of fertility were mangled by dried roots which flailed like wheat straw, but within the day Bajju’s children vehemently delivered blows with miniature hoes in preparation for transforming such a plot into a no-longer-neglected vegetable garden. A few steps through the produce, or preferably circumventing all of it by taking a few extra steps around the perimeter, leads to the sky-blue painted home. Twisting left, hundreds of miles of rolling hills and the occasional home peeps out, bound below by demarcated farming steppes. If you’re lucky on a clear day and twist to the right, the monstrous, perpetually snow-capped Chaukhamba mountain monopolizes the distance just fifteen miles toward the direction of Tibet in the north.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Despite the business and auto-rickshaws and bantering Bengalis just beyond his brown front door, Sanjit cultivates a distinct learning environment and energy, one created and galvanized above the tile floors, within the thin walls, below the imperative ceiling fans, and embraced by books.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“We proceeded to make way across the mighty Hooghly River, a monstrous offshoot of the Ganges, where we contemplated for a moment, our thoughts seemingly caught in the roaring southward current; there we gazed, toward where the city transitions into mangrove jungle, and somewhere a bit further to the southwest where all the rivers split infinitely like capillaries, where those famous Bengal tigers trod among the sunderbans. Peering in that direction, Bajju gripped the vertical bars just above the horizontal pedestrian railing, breathing slowly and silently, knees locked, still, despite being on arguably the busiest and loudest bridge in the world.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Water is to India as blood is to the body, with the many rivers functioning as arteries – the Ganges being the aorta – and the monsoon timelessly arriving as a much-needed annual blood transfusion.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Yet, the work was not complete. Next, citing Bond’s veranda and our subsequent construction of it as an example, Sanjit elaborated on the thought which he had previously teased, but not fully explained: that when a reader reads, the reader constructs a setting and world and is able to view themselves through this world. However, he also added that when we read, we are not only able to see our constructed world, but to evaluate our constructed world. This is how, Sanjit would argue, we influence and better ourselves, even if unintentionally; for by pausing and analyzing our constructions we may be able to identify our assumptions about people, places, or things. And it is in this way that books may be an expressed form of art, not just for the writer, but also for the reader.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Again, the exercise begins. For me, the American in me, the city of Detroit comes to mind. A house, once within the bustling city, now lies on the outskirts. Industry has come and gone, and the car manufacturers have relocated. I recall images of the rough lifestyles south of 8 Mile. The city’s borders have changed. Post-apocalyptic, long grasses sway with the wind. The house is melancholy and lonely. The owners: maybe there, maybe not.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Sanjit says his apartment, the same one in which he grew up, has been flooded many times by the midsummer torrents. For what has been for millennia a primarily agricultural society, rains simultaneously destroy, create, and preserve life in India, similar to the functions of the three premier Hindu gods, Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu. Every time Kolkata gets pounded by a cyclone, or when the monsoon first erupts in June (although the recent warming of the Indian Ocean increasingly disturbs a once-consistent timeline), Sanjit never fails to send along a video, his house flooded – seemingly destroyed – but the smiles on his, Bajju’s, or other house-guest’s faces signify just the opposite, having been cooled and relieved of perpetual heat. Flooded, they remain preserved.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Her growing possessiveness felt both good and bad.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

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

“Death rides on all of our shoulders from the day we are born.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“The final sound of the rifle shot bounced around the lake.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“What the hell, if you are going to roll the dice with Lucifer, I say go the distance.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“You sound like you’re enjoying my suffering.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“The steps leading to the porch looked worn, cracked, and unpainted, ready for a nice hot fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“It was as if we played chess after denying me both bishops and knights.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“I swallowed a sigh since, truthfully, I was glad she found the cabin.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“It was not in my nature to gossip, which put me at odds with most of my sisters at San Zaccaria, who twittered hearsay like so many flocks of birds.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“To leave Venice felt as foreign as flying to the stars.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“I needed to bring my own gifts to my new home, not resist them, not sway to and fro like the tidal waters of the lagoon, but rather chart my own course through the shallows like an experienced boatman.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“One year from now, a decade, a century, half a millennium, will things be different? Dare we dream it? When we are seen for ourselves, not just as the conduit of progeny, heirs, lineage, not just as beautiful objects to be protected, inspected, appreciated, but for who we are at the core . . .”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“Despite the convent walls, when I was writing, my mind was free.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“I believe such compassion and prudence is good politics on the part of Mother Marina. If our convent cannot be completely virtuous, better to give the appearance of being so. Thus she keeps her nuns happy as well as the government and the church.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“Venetians prefer being merchants to philosophers.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“The day was perfect. Hot, yes, but with a refreshing zephyr sidling in from the west. The lagoon was flecked with small islands, and beyond lay the more ominous mainland, the papal army camped somewhere on it. But here, on this beautiful islet far from our usual universe, a warrior pope seemed a figment.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“Knowing I should get into the habit of praying on my knees before bed, I shrugged and instead huddled under the bedcovers, the rose clasped in my hands close to my heart. The stem was very long, with all thorns removed, and an old Venetian saying came to mind: The longer the stem, the greater the love.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“The evening blessed us with a sunset to rival a painting by Carpaccio in its colours. The sky mutated from shades of ultramarine and azure to vermilion and ochre, then strips of violet and finally indigo.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“The next week passed in a haze of mourning, as thick and disorienting as the unrelenting fog that crept over the stones of Venice each morning.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“A midwife knows too much . . .  But if she is truly a wise woman, she knows when to keep her mouth shut.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“Gardening is easier and quicker when spacings are correct for different plants.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing