Antonis > Antonis's Quotes

“He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl’s tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human being’s wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die
(any time!)
and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child’s hands could feel.”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary

“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside--neither part of themselves, nor yet free...They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn’t love him?”
“Maybe that’s the reason,” Adam said slowly, feeling his way. “Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe—maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure—never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe—why, maybe it’s a kind of reverse.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“A man without words is a man without thought.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus, he was real nice."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Μπορούμε να συγκεντρωθούμε μονάχα όταν διασκεδάζουμε. [...] Παρατήρησε τα παιδιά την ώρα που παίζουν, Είναι πολύ προσηλωμένα σ' αυτό που κάνουν. Γιατί; Επειδή κάνουν μια "προσπάθεια προσήλωσης" ή επειδή απλά παίζουν; Είναι προφανές, γαμώτο: είναι προσηλωμένα επειδή διασκεδάζουν, επειδή το απολαμβάνουν. Είναι παράλογο να προσπαθείς να συγκεντρωθείς στην Ακινησία. Αυτό που πρέπει να κάνεις είναι να το απολαμβάνεις.”
― José Carlos Somoza, The Art of Murder

“Απ' όλα τα εργαλεία του ανθρώπου, το πιο εκπληκτικό είναι, χωρίς αμφιβολία, το βιβλίο. Τα άλλα είναι προεκτάσεις του σώματός του. Το μικροσκόπιο και το τηλεσκόπιο είναι προεκτάσεις της όρασής του, το τηλέφωνο, προέκταση της φωνής του, έχουμε επίσης το αλέτρι και το ξίφος, που είναι προεκτάσεις του χεριού του. Το βιβλίο, όμως, είναι άλλο πράγμα: το βιβλίο είναι προέκταση της μνήμης και της φαντασίας του.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

“You fight a war to change the world, and it changes into a world with no place in it for you, the fighter. Those who fight for the bright future are not always, by nature, well fitted to live in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

“But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: 'Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial?”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

“Firstly,” said Ponder, “Mr Pessimal wants to know what we do here.”
“Do? We are the premier college of magic!” said Ridcully.
“But do we teach?”
“Only if no alternative presents itself,” said the Dean. “We show ‘em where the library is, give ‘em a few little chats, and graduate the survivors. If they run into any problems, my door is always metaphorically open.”
“Metaphorically, sir?” said Ponder.
“Yes. But technically, of course, it’s locked.”
“Explain to him that we don’t do things, Stibbons,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “We are academics.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

“Πέρασαν είκοσι πέντε χρόνια για να ξαναιδωθούν και να ξαναμιλήσουν. Κατά τη διάρκεια αυτής της χαμένης ζωής, πρέπει να θυμήθηκαν πολλές φορές εκείνη την ημέρα, ν'αναρωτήθηκαν γιατί και πώς έφτασαν σ'αυτό το σημείο και αν άξιζε τον κόπο να γίνεται κανείς εκτός εαυτού με κάποιον για ασήμαντα πράγματα που με τον καιρό ξεχνιούνται. Η μνήμη μας είναι έτσι φτιαγμένη, ώστε να διαγράφει τις κακές αναμνήσεις και να κρατάει μόνο τις καλύτερες.”
― Jean-Michel Guenassia, Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes

“Κρίνοντας εκ του αποτελέσματος, το ψέμα είναι, με διαφορά, η πιο ανώφελη και αναποτελεσματική λύση. Το μόνο που καταφέρνεις είναι να μπαίνεις σε μπελάδες.”
― Jean-Michel Guenassia, Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes

“Έχει την επιλεκτική μνήμη των επιζώντων. Ό,τι μας ενοχλεί ή μας αφήνει αδιάφορους, το ξεχνάμε. Κρατάμε μονάχα ό,τι μας εξυπηρετεί, ειδάλλως δεν έχουμε καμιά ελπίδα να επιβιώσουμε.”
― Jean-Michel Guenassia, Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes

“Το να διαβάζεις και να σου αρέσει το μυθιστόρημα ενός παλιανθρώπου δεν σημαίνει ότι του δίνεις, τρόπον τινά, άφεση αμαρτιών, ότι συμμερίζεσαι τις πεποιθήσεις του ή γίνεσαι συνένοχός του: σημαίνει ότι αναγνωρίζεις το ταλέντο του και όχι ότι ασπάζεσαι την ηθική του ή τις ιδέες του.”
― Jean-Michel Guenassia, Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes

“Αποφεύγουμε να λέμε στα παιδιά τι έγινε πριν γεννηθούν. Αρχικά είναι πολύ μικρά για να καταλάβουν, ύστερα είναι πολύ μεγάλα για ν' ακούσουν, μετά δεν έχουν καιρό για τέτοια, ώσπου στο τέλος είναι πια πολύ αργά. Αυτά έχουν οι οικογένειες. Ζεις με ανθρώπους που νομίζεις ότι τους γνωρίζεις, όμως είστε τελείως άγνωστοι. Ζητάμε θαύματα από τους δεσμούς αίματος: μια αρμονική συνύπαρξη που είναι εντελώς ανέφικτη. Απόλυτη εμπιστοσύνη. Σχέσεις που μένουν αναλλοίωτες στον χρόνο. Παραμυθιαζόμαστε με το ψέμα της συγγένειας.”
― Jean-Michel Guenassia, Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes

“Who shot him? I asked.
The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun.”
― Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest