Burton Gnas > Burton's Quotes

“Though your steps may falter
persevere with the climb,
You will achieve the summit
at the appropriate time.”
― Patricia D'Arcy Laughlin, Sacrifice For A Kingdom

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Aspasia had herself fallen into very good fortune. So good that at the age of twenty years, she’d probably used up the whole life’s portion of good luck that Tyche had allotted her. To make good fortune last—for herself and the child in her womb—would be up to her.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“Ano snorted in a very unladylike and elkish way.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“AI-powered passive monitoring is taking off and has huge advantages over the traditional way of monitoring patients. The advantage of passive monitoring, as opposed to data collected from wearables, is that it doesn’t require patients or seniors to actively wear a device at all times. Used in a hospital setting, the tech reduces healthcare workers’ risk of exposure to COVID-19 by limiting their contact with patients and automating data collection for vital signs. Also, camera-based monitoring is unpopular for the simple reason that a lot of people don’t like being watched by a camera.”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“Her hair fragrant with hints of vanilla and cinnamon, subtle enough to make him wonder if it were the spices or truly the way she smelled.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“We grew in age - and love - together
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather -
And, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven - but in her eyes.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Poetry

“She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity.”
― Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

“Nobody knows you.
You don't know yourself.
And I, who am half in love with you,
What am I in love with?
My own imaginings?”
― D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence

“As I lay in bed, I experienced continual, yet gentle, throbbing throughout my face, but most pronounced directly under my eyes. At one point, around 1 a.m., I felt a build-up of pressure in my left eye, then a release. It was followed by quite a bit of crusty discharge. Suddenly, my eyes feel living—rooted.”
― Traci Medford-Rosow, Unblinded: One Man's Courageous Journey Through Darkness to Sight

“The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“Al igual que nuestro pariente el chimpancé, siempre nos hemos matado unos a otros para disputarnos el territorio y las hembras, pero con el advenimiento de la esclavitud nos redujimos a nosotros mismos a algo nuevo: a un cultivo de exportación.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“Just now he was on a mind-blowing adventure and it was rapidly spiralling out of control, and this is what he needed to concentrate his mind on. How could he squeeze Daley to get the book back; that’s if Daley had it in his possession in the first place? The next few days were going to be crucial.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

“It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god?”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don't want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he's so old and there's nothing to be happy about any more.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”
― Arthur C. Clarke