Athelstan > Athelstan's Quotes

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“Somebody has been fuckin my watermelons.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“Tilting back in his chair he framed questions for the quaking ovoid of lamplight on the ceiling to pose to him: Supposing there be any soul to listen and you died tonight? They’d listen to my death. No final word? Last words are only words. You can tell me, paradigm of your own sinister genesis construed by a flame in a glass bell. I’d say I was not unhappy. You have nothing. It may be the last shall be first. Do you believe that? No. What do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“Mr Suttree in what year did your greatuncle Jeffrey pass away?
It was in 1884.
Did he die by natural causes?
No sir.
And what were the circumstances surrounding his death?
He was taking part in a public function when the platform gave way.
Our information is that he was hanged for a homicide.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“He said having a smoking section in a restaurant was just like having a pissing section in a swimming pool.”
― Ted Bell, Hawke

“Eating and sleeping are the two periods in your life where writers get a pass for not reading. Check that.
Only sleeping.”
― Ted BELL

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , White Nights

“The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“and what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“Grandmother was always regretting the old days-she was younger in old days,and the sun was warmer in old days,and cream did not turn so sour in old days-it was always the old days!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , White Nights

“وهكذا، عندما نكون تعساء، فإننا نحس بمحنة الآخرين بصورة أفضل. إن الإحساس لا يتبدد، بل إنه يشتد....”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“The imagination is not an escape, but a return to the richness of our true selves; a return to reality.”
― George Mackay Brown

“We never find what we set out hearts on. We ought to be glad of that.”
― George Mackay Brown, Beside the Ocean of Time