Emerald Taurus > Emerald's Quotes

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“There is no sinner like a young saint.”
― Aphra Behn

“People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.”
― Garret Keizer, No Place But Here Four Generations of American Literary Friendship and Influence: Melville & Hawthorne, James & Wharton, Porter & Welty, Bishop & Lowell

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If your kid needs a role model and you ain't it, you're both fucked.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they've simply heard of.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle.

For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.

They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world.

And the man breaks.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at all the beauty in the world? Only a monster god, a demon of the darkness.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Men of honor will do things for their children that they would never consider doing for themselves.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Sins may be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Valor is a poor substitute for numbers”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror. Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“It was too wet to see the sun go down, too grey to see the moon come up.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise!”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Some would fight for any cause, some for none at all.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“A thief was a thief, whether he stole a little or a lot.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Pleasing one king is difficult enough. Pleasing two is hardly possible.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“His strength, his speed, his valor, all his hard-won skill . . . it was worth less than a mummer’s fart, because he flinched from killing.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows