Terrence > Terrence'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

“If Adam were honest with himself, which he rarely was, he’d come to terms with the fact that beyond his work and the view, he was floundering a bit. His plan had been to take the insurance money, leave his old life behind, and start completely over somewhere new. A place where memories didn’t lurk around every corner.
He hadn’t figured on the memories coming along with him.”
― Kirsten Fullmer

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

“his throat, but his voice remained”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best.”
― D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Back in the nineteen-thirties, Duke university did a study with a machine that could throw dice. First they had it throw dice when nobody was in the building, and the numbers came up strictly according to the law of averages. Then they put a man in the next room and had him concentrate on various numbers to see if that would beat the odds. It did. Then they put him in the same room, still concentrating, and the machine beat the odds again, by an even wider margin. When the man rolled the dice himself, using a cup, he did better still. When he finally rolled the dice with his bare hand, he did best of all.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“There's so much more to a book than just the reading.”
― Maurice Sendak

“People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“And all this, she thought, is only momentary, is only a fragment in time that will never come again, for yesterday already belongs to the past and is ours no longer, and tomorrow is an unknown thing that may be hostile. This is our day, our moment, the sun belongs to us, and the wind, and the sea, and the men for'ard there singing on the deck. This day is forever a day to be held and cherished, because in it we shall have lived, and loved, and nothing else matters but that in this world of our own making to which we have escaped.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman's Creek

“...A mountain you're plannin' on climbin' ain't the same as the one you ain't. It ain't so pretty...”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Anger falling asleep at the heart”
― Allen Ginsberg, The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“If you marvel at your good fortune, you should marvel in secret: never let people see you.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Imagine your worst day, multiply it by a hundred, and pray to your God
that you never experience what some of the people in this war zone go
through, everyday, without any hope of it getting better. Ever. Compared
to these people, every day, no matter how bad, is the best day ever. I
know nothing about pain, nothing about suffering and hopefully never will.”
― Hendri Coetzee, Living the Best Day Ever

“When first I arrived in the woods, I became aware of how unprepared I was for what I was about to experience." ”
― John-Paul Cernak, The Odyssey of a Hippie Marijuana Grower

“the new wave of artificial intelligence does not actually bring us intelligence but instead a critical component of intelligence—prediction.”
― ajay agrawal, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence

“We are aware of your association with the Russian mafia, Mr. Linkov. Of course, you do not want this publicized. It would mean the end of your diplomatic career, perhaps imprisonment.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“The call from Momma was like a bullet piercing my Washington bubble. Janice had been on short trip with her baby daughter locked safely in a car seat in the back. The baby was fussy and, as Janice reached back to grab her daughter’s pacifier that had fallen, another vehicle had blindsided her car. She survived it but her baby girl didn’t.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“At one point, approximately halfway through her remarks, Merkel stated in German something about ‘being able to greet the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama,’ and an overly ambitious Obama, who perhaps thought that was his cue, headed toward the podium.  Perhaps catching the president’s movement out of the corner of her eye, Merkel thought quickly, and without even looking up from her notes, she told the excited American president, in English, ‘Not yet, dear Mr. President, dear Barack Obama.’ Obama sheepishly returned to his seat to allow the chancellor to finish her speech.”
― Claudia Clark, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel

“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“I suppose it has gone out of fashion and they are out spraying slogans on walls, sniffing glue or trying to get laid.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“Shank’s got more guts than I’ve fried up from every pig and cow in the last year.” He paused, as if expecting a laugh, but none came. “How stupid is this—he saves Alby’s life, kills a couple of Grievers, and we’re sitting here yappin’ about what to do with him. As Chuck would say, this is a pile of klunk.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition.

They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide hipped mother, auwesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, mothers who would fight for us, who would kill for us, and die for us.”
― Janet Fitch

“We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Hi, Anya. Can I join you?"
Anya looked up from her meal with a dour expression. "I'm not a blond."
An obvious statement, it made no sense without a context. She added, "I'm not a twig."
"You're not a twig, that's also true." He gave her a smile, curious where this was going.”
― Dennis K. Hausker, Anya

“Yamamoto sensed a feeling of culmination about the huge success of the first strike, and the same incisive intuition that guided his brilliant moves at the gaming tables told him what the next move on the bridge of Akagi would be. In (Vice Admiral) Nagumo he knew his man. Nagumo had never been committed to the Pearl Harbor mission. He had not been Yamamoto’s choice to command the Striking Force; his assignment was the decision of the Navy Ministry in Tokyo, based on seniority. While the exultation of the officers and sailors on his staff swirled around him, Yamamoto sat quietly. Finally, he fixed a steely gaze on his chief of staff, and in a low, intense voice: “Admiral Nagumo is going to withdraw.”
― Dale A. Jenkins, Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway

“Jesus, I wonder if that sound was our listening receiver falling to the floor.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity