Alex > Alex's Quotes

“When a man does a queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Some things come with their own punishments.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined. ”
― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

“It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“To the pain means this: if we duel and you win, death for me. If we duel and I win, life for you. But life on my terms. The first thing you lose will be your feet. Below the ankle. You will have stumps available to use within six months. Then your hands, at the wrists. They heal somewhat quicker. Five months is a fair average. Next your nose. No smell of dawn for you. Followed by your tongue. Deeply cut away. Not even a stump left. And then your left eye—"

And then my right eye, and then my ears, and shall we get on with it?" the Prince said.

Wrong!" Westley’s voice rang across the room. "Your ears you keep, so that every shriek of every child shall be yours to cherish—every babe that weeps in fear at your approach, every woman that cries 'Dear God, what is that thing?' will reverberate forever with your perfect ears.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman, Four Screenplays with Essays: Marathon Man - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - The Princess Bride - Misery

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Love is many things none of them logical.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“We’ll never survive!”
“Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Who are you?"
"No one of consequence."
"I must know."
"Get used to disappointment.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“I am your Prince and you will marry me," Humperdinck said.
Buttercup whispered, "I am your servant and I refuse."
"I am you Prince and you cannot refuse."
"I am your loyal servant and I just did."
"Refusal means death."
"Kill me then.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“You seem a decent fellow," Inigo said. "I hate to kill you."
You seem a decent fellow," answered the man in black. "I hate to die.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“I’ll tell you the truth and its up to you to live with it.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Now what happens?" asked the man in black.
"We face each other as God intended," Fezzik said. "No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."
"You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that it?”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Why do you wear a mask and hood?"
I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride