Silas Lipani > Silas's Quotes

“The trail to the Assam frontier lies in that direction,” said the Duwa, pointing to the north … I am scared about proceeding further during the rains. I may not be able to recross the rivers and, moreover, I hear that numerous people have died on the trek and their sprawling bodies would be close companions for us all day and every day.” I felt a creepy sensation down my spine but I did not continue the subject just then. I knew that if the Duwa and his villagers decided not to come with us to the frontier we should be in a sorrier plight than ever. 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

“I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Like a gloomy and sinister paradox since its apparition until now, socialism suffered terrible and terrifying metamorphoses. With the name of the most human doctrine—Socialism—the most ominous and naughty crimes against humanity were done. The National Socialism of Hitler created Auschwitz and Majdanek and the People’s socialism of Stalin — Gulag and Kolima! And both of them buried more than fifty million people! That’s monstrous!”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...”
― R.D. Ronald

“V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion. On the old side, you’re left with wrinkled age and whatever fractured, end-of-the-line knowledge might have accrued. Wisdom as exhaustion. And on the other side—which V still remembers with molecular vividness—youth and yearning and urgency for something not yet fully defined. Undiluted hope and desire. But by fusing the best of both sides, a kind of intertwining consciousness arises—grandmother and granddaughter wisdom emerging from shared hope, relieved of emotions tainted by control and guilt and anger. —I’ll assume you’re right, James says. But I wouldn’t know much about long family relationships. When I was”
― Charles Frazier, Varina

“During discussions in his office, Bradlee frequently picked up an undersize sponge-rubber basketball from the table and tossed it toward a hoop attached by suction cups to the picture window. The gesture was indicative both of the editor's short attention span and of a studied informality. There was an alluring combination of aristocrat and commoner about Bradlee: Boston Brahmin, Harvard, the World War II Navy, press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, police-beat reporter, news-magazine political reporter and Washington bureau chief of Newsweek.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward”
― Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men

“Games lubricate the body and mind.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“A work of art meant growth from the particular to the universal. To a work of art, time brought timelessness.”
― Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Some people said that when God took the cart of vices around the world, He stopped for a rest in Arabia and the Arabs stole it.”
― Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings

“Say ‘Ah.’”
A-H-H-H-H, he fingerspelled.
Doctor Frost glanced at his mother.
“He just said ‘ah’ for you,” she said weakly, and smiling.
“Okay, sense of humor intact,” the doctor said. “Try anyway.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle