Eoghan Walsh > Eoghan's Quotes

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“You're broke, eh?"
I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They're topped by too many smart minds.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“This is the mainstream now, Mike. This is how life in America is. Moment by moment, our country has grown sicker. Our borders, Mike, have come to encompass the nine circles of Hell.”
― Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein

“Consider this, though. If I’ve seen it on the Internet, is it still underground? ‘Underground’ always connoted something hidden, something difficult to see and find. Something underneath the surface of things, yes? But if it’s on the Internet—and I do praise the Lord that I lived long enough to see such a wondrous thing—it cannot possibly be underground.”
― Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein

“I’ve said I love you when I’ve meant it, and I’ve said I love you when it was the right thing to say, and I’ve said I love you when saying anything else would have hurt someone without reason. And I couldn’t say a word, there in the dark.”
― Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore

“No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“If your strength is only the other’s weakness, you live in fear,”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“You can water a stone," she said, "but it won't grow”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“With writing, we have second chances.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated