Ernesta Orlovaitė > Ernesta's Quotes

“...these fragile, worn, faded, thin, cheap paper-bound books. They smelled of dust, and mould, and age. They smelled, faintly, of pee, and tobacco, and spilled coffee. They smelled like things which had lived.

They smelled like history.”
― Lavie Tidhar, Central Station

“Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam.”
― Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

“There are some things worth giving up anything for, even your freedom, and getting rid of your period is definitely one of them.”
― Connie Willis, Even the Queen, & Other Short Stories

“You may not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms, and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods for processing data. But you should know that this is current scientific dogma, and it is changing our world beyond recognition.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

“1. Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms, and life is data processing. 2. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. 3. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

“Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Who is John Galt?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The horror! The horror!”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Harry: This book belongs to Harry Potter.
Ron: Shared by Ron Weasley, because his fell apart.
Hermione: Why don't you buy a new one then?
Ron: Write on your own book, Hermione.
Hermione: You bought all those dungbombs on Saturday. You could have bought a new book instead.
Ron: Dungbombs rule.”
― J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“someone's sent
a loving note
in lines of returning geese
and as the moon fills
my western chamber
as petals dance
over the flowing stream
again I think of you
the two of us
living a sadness
apart
a hurt that can't be removed
yet when my gaze comes down
my heart stays up”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.”
― James Clavell, Shōgun

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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

“Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“How often were you aware, while it happened, that you were living an hour that would change the course of your life forever?”
― Robert Galbraith, Lethal White

“It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park