Øyvin > Øyvin's Quotes

“It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

“Austerity pleased her—it gave her the comfort of sacrifice.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“I was afraid I was going to die and then I was afraid I wasnt.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings. The trail of the argonauts terminated in ashes as told and in the covergence of such vectors in such a waste wherein the hearts and enterprise of one small nation have been swallowed up and carried off by another the expriest asked if some might not see the hand of a cynical god conducting with what austerity and what mock surprise so lethal a congruence. The posting of witnesses by a third and other path altogether might also be called in evidence as appearing to beggar chance, yet the judge, who had put his horse forward until he was abreast of the speculants, said that in this was expressed the very nature of the witness and that his proximity was no third thing but rather the prime, for what could be said to occur unobserved?”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe there is a beast." [...] "What I mean is, maybe it's only us.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye