Octavio Cortopassi > Octavio's Quotes

“She smiled again and the sun came back out. Raced backward up from the sea and lit her face. He told himself to ignore it. It wasn’t that special. Not really. He couldn’t be sure, but if his display of ignorance could make her do it again, it might be worth checking out.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“   In 1658, Francis Andrew Ransome stole the Alchemy Scroll from St. Julian’s college, my present employer. Ransome was a member of a transatlantic group called The Invisible College. They were alchemists, meaning they worked with matter and spirit together.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“He will tell you what's wrong in your society, who's to blame, and make you afraid of it, but he won't tell you how to fix it.”
― March Lions, The Last Sunset

“Where’s my uncle?” she asked.
“I don’t know who your uncle is, but if it as the guy who owned this place before I bought it, then he’s pushing up daisies.”
“But it can’t be, he’s still young.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Women always worry about the things that men forget; men always worry about the things women remember”
― Marjorie Rawlings

“The harsh blows of reality need to be felt before we begin to change; and we always prefer to change the form, that which is most clearly visible as being negative, rather than tackle the real essence of all the difficulties that exist today, which is this false conception of the communist human being based on a long-established economic practice that tends, and will always tend, to convert humans into little more than numbers in the production process through the lever of material interest.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967

“Do not contemplate what lies beyond failure while you are still trying to succeed.”
― Salman Rushdie, Fury

“the tired sunsets and the tired
people -
it takes a lifetime to die and
no time at
all.”
― Charles Bukowski

“For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.”
― Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

“Aurelia was just about to take a sip of a mimosa when Mother Guardian snatched the flute away and promptly downed the drink in one gulp. Burping unashamedly, she said, "We can't have the validity of the marriage contracts jeopardized because the bride got rat-assed on her wedding day.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“Buying loyalty can be as effective as fear when one’s rival is poorer than oneself.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Raya knew this type of girl – they never liked her. Usually they’d make fun of her, behind her back, but loud enough for her to hear. She was too alternative, too poor and too cynical – the foster kid – to be of any interest to these social climbers.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“I don’t like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn’t like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if I liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn’t like you.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

“There aren’t many people who can say they’ve vandalized a three-billion-dollar spacecraft, but I’m one of them.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Man sees only between the blinks of his eyes. He does not know what the world is like during the blinks. He sees the world in pieces, in fragments.”
― Chaim Potok, The Gift of Asher Lev: A Novel

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“But Seehund hurled his love at her, his entire body. It was a love she recognized—she’d felt it within herself but had never been able to demonstrate it with such abandon.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“This world we live in is confusing, overwhelming and painful because he has a condition known as autism.”
― Tina Traverse, Forever, Christian

“As I began to assess her, I have to say to be in Mirza Almazan’s presence was a strange feeling. She gave off a powerful aura of high spirt, intellect, and strength. I took it all in and literally basked in it.”
― Behcet Kaya, Body In The Woods

“It felt like stepping into a lie told very, very well.
          ”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“He had an intrusive gaze and quietly confident manner, that seemed to strip away the layers of protective deception Scott would usually adopt around strangers.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“At headquarters I tried to suppress some of the more fantastic rumours. After the bombing of Rangoon and many other places by Japanese Aircraft the local bazaars buzzed with rumours. One was to the effect the Germans had occupied Rangoon. …many villagers were openly discussing their coming flight to distant places of safety. Some hooligans, I had reason to believe, were planning to loot the Indian and Chinese shops and were storing large quantities of knives and spears in some caves in jungle places … One night I stood
at the door of my house which overlooked the surrounding country and watched the outline of flames in various directions. The dome of heaven was splashed with a bloody glare as one burst of flame succeeded another. The night seemed to emphasise the feeling of universal
unease … Captain Gribble”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942

“He pulled back onto the empty road. There were a few ranch lights miles away, the black sky against the black terrain drawing them into the hem of the starry curtain. As he drove toward the clangor and flash of the noon arena he considered the old saddle bronc rider rubbing leather for thirty-seven years, Leecil riding off into the mosquito-clouded Canadian sunset, the ranch hand bent over a calf, slitting the scrotal sac. The course of life’s events seemed slower than the knife but not less thorough. There was more to it than that, he supposed, and heard again her hoarse, charged voice saying “Everything.” It was all a hard, fast ride that ended in the mud. He passed a coal train in the dark, the dense rectangles that were the cars gliding against indigo night, another, and another, and another. Very slowly, as slowly as light comes on a clouded morning, the euphoric heat flushed through him, or maybe just the memory of it.”
― Annie Proulx, Close Range

“Would you like me to put you out of your misery, before I put you out of your misery?”
― Paul Cude, Bentwhistle the Dragon in a Threat from the Past

“The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.”
― Gregory Maguire, Mirror Mirror

“A fact was the hard outer cover of meaning, and meaning was the soft living stuff inside a fact. Fact and meaning were the driving cogs of living. If the gear of fact drove the gear of meaning, then they revolved in opposite directions, but put the gear of fantasy between the two and they both revolved in the same direction. Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie.”
― Jane Smiley, Private Life

“We were in the middle of a game of cards when I noticed a figure out of the corner of my eye. It was Maxon, standing at the open door, looking amused. As our eyes met, I could see that his expression was clearly asking what in the world I was doing. I stood, smiling, and walked over to him.
"Oh, sweet Lord," Anne muttered as she realized the prince was at the door. She immediately swept the cards into a sewing basket and stood, Mary and Lucy following suit.
"Ladies," Maxon said.
"Your Majesty," she said with a curtsy. "Such an honor, sir."
"For me as well," he answered with a smile.
The maids looked back and forth to one another, flattered. We were all silent for a moment, not quite sure what to do.
Mary suddenly piped up. "We were just leaving."
"Yes! That's right," Lucy added. "We were-uh-just..." She looked to Anne for help.
"Going to finish Lady America's dress for Friday," Anna concluded.
"That's right," Mary said. "Only two days left.
They slowly circled us to get out of the room, huge smiles plastered on their faces.
"Wouldn't want to keep you from your work," Maxon said, following them with his eyes, completely fascinated with their behavior.
Once in the hall, they gave awkwardly mistimed curtsies and walked away at a feverish pace. Immediately after they rounded the corner, Lucy's giggles echoed down the corridor, followed by Anne's intense hushing.
"Quite a group you have," Maxon said, walking into my room, surveying the space.
"They keep me on my toes," I answered with a smile.
"It's clear they have affection for you. That's hard to find." He stopped looking at my room and faced me. "This isn't what I imagined your room would look like."
I raised an arm and let it fall. "It's not really my room, is it? It belongs to you, and I just happen to be borrowing it.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection