Clive Handley > Clive's Quotes

“I don't want to be caught with my pants down.”
― March Lions, The Last Sunset

“Let’s get to know each other. My name’s William, William More, but you can call me Willy. I’m an engineer-chemist who graduated from MIT. So . . . but you’re all alike to me . . . of course, you would be . . . you’re robots. And all your names are that sort of, um . . . codes, technical numbers . . . I need some marker where I can pick you out. Well, well, to you I’ll call . . .,” and Willy pondered for a moment, “Gumball, yes, Gumball! Do you mind?” “No, sir, actually no,” CSE-TR-03 said, agreeing with its new given name. “Ah, that’s wonderful. And then you’re Darwin,” Willy said, accosting the second robot. “Look what a nice name—Darwin! What do you say, eh?” “What can I say, sir? I like it,” CSE-TR-02 agreed too. “Yes, a human name with a past . . . You and Gumball . . . are from the same family, the Methanesons!” “It turns out thus, sir,” Darwin confirmed its family belonging. “And you’re like Larry. You’re Larry. Do you know that?” More addressed the next robot in line. “Yes, sir, just now I learned that,” the third robot said, accepted its name as well.”
― Todor Bombov, Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel

“We had old architects and were working with what we had on hand. You’ve hired this new, young architect now, and, Pericles, I’m going to build you a statue of Athena—all gold and ivory, think of that, Pericles—and taller than our city walls.” Pericles raised his eyes toward the birds.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“Do you still distrust me?”
“No. Take your necklace with you so you can think of me when I’m not there.”
Brown brought the necklace over to her and put it on her neck.
“I think it rather suits me,” she laughed and left.
Brown didn’t understand what had made him insist she wear the necklace. Maybe it
was the readiness with which she had made love, or her frequent disappearances lately,
he was just curious. There was no harm in checking, before he parted with the money.
Later that evening, before going to sleep he decided to have a look at her location and
he was in for a surprise. She had not left Central City at all. In fact she was at the same
friend’s address as she had been the last time.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“I ain’t need no proof of puberty at fucking six o'clock on a Wednesday morning.”
― Lawrence Hill, The Illegal

“O Malalai of Maiwand, Rise once more to make Pashtuns understand the song of honor, Your poetic words turn worlds around, I beg you, rise again My father told the story of Malalai to anyone who came to our house. I loved hearing the story and the songs my father sang to me, and the way my name floated on the wind when people called it.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Von Trotha said, “The Wahehe are a tribe of about one quarter of a million people! On the 17th of August 1891, they defeated the German expedition against them which was led by Zeleski.”
― Michael G. Kramer, His Forefathers and Mick

“As in any proper fairy tale, there's a majick formula, in this case called the Rule of Nines.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

“The woman waved her long fingers in front of my face as if casting a spell, weaving her hands around one another while her fingers writhed like snakes”
― Steven Decker, INNOCENT AGAIN: A LEGAL THRILLER

“Whether you are on day one of being a Christian or day fifteen thousand, you should always have a teachable heart before God.”
― Kathryn Krick, The Secret of the Anointing: Accessing the Power of God to Walk in Miracles

“She made a face at him, and he could picture her, as a child princess—sticking her tongue out at a playmate in her princess castle. ”
― J. Rose Black, Losing My Breath

“Maybe we can politely ignore each other forever? I think that's the mature thing to do.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“I said to Hun Sen, “Thank you, Hun! You have also told me that there was a kidnapping incident which almost bankrupted your family! Can you please elaborate upon that?”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“Gabe suffers from survivor’s remorse. He won’t admit it because he doesn’t see it. Can’t recognize it in himself. He overcompensates for coming back alive, when so many didn’t. He’s got issues. You’ve got issues. Everyone has issues. But issues are a part of life. And whether we like it or not, even bad things happen for a reason.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“The early women rise before I do. Their lamps splinter the gloom of the kitchens. They chatter in whispers as they brew tea for the cooks. Windows are open to counter the heat of the ovens. Outside, the sky is as black as my soul.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The weather was as ready as the school and campus. The sky was cloudless and the temperature was expected to top out at 76 degrees. Early morning mowers had sugared the air with the fragrance of freshly mowed grass.”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“According to Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, for example, one’s “cultural worldview”—that would be political leanings or ideological outlook to the rest of us—explains “individuals’ beliefs about global warming more powerfully than any other individual characteristic.”16 More powerfully, that is, than age, ethnicity, education, or party affiliation. The Yale researchers explain that people with strong “egalitarian” and “communitarian” worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong “hierarchical” and “individualistic” worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.17 The evidence is striking. Among the segment of the U.S. population that displays the strongest “hierarchical” views, only 11 percent rate climate change as a “high risk,” compared with 69 percent of the segment displaying the strongest “egalitarian” views.18 Yale law professor Dan Kahan, the lead author on this study, attributes the tight correlation between “worldview” and acceptance of climate science to “cultural cognition,” the process by which all of us—regardless of political leanings—filter new information in ways that will protect our “preferred vision of the good society.” If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion.19 As Kahan explained in Nature, “People find it disconcerting to believe that behavior that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behavior that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.” In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today. Furthermore, leftists are equally capable of denying inconvenient scientific evidence. If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government. This can lapse into the kind of fact resistance we see among those who are convinced that multinational drug companies have covered up the link between childhood vaccines and autism. No matter what evidence is marshaled to disprove their theories, it doesn’t matter to these crusaders—it’s just the system covering up for itself.20 This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. As”
― Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

“Hair on a man's head is like the opposite of salt in a dish; you can take it away but you can't add it in.”
― Iain Banks, The Business

“I may be in pain, but I am not weak.”
― Veronica Roth, Carve the Mark

“Keep your warm hearts, your gentleness, and your courage. These will do just as well as magic.”
― Mary Norton, Bedknob and Broomstick

“Grown-ups are an untrustworthy, treacherous lot, they don't take their games in the serious wholehearted way children do, and yet they too have their own games, one more serious than the other, one game inside another, so that it's impossible to discover what the real one is.”
― Italo Calvino, The Path to the Spiders' Nests