cg > cg's Quotes

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Then to give the kids a historical perspective, Chacko told them about the earth woman. He made them imagine that the earth - 4600 million years old - was a 46 year old woman- as old as Aleyamma teaacher, who gave them Malayalam lessons. It had taken the whole of earth woman’s life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The earth woman was 11 yrs old when the first single celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was forty. She was over forty five - just 8 months ago - when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole of human civilization as we know it, began only 2 hrs ago in the earth woman’s life…”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. But they are shapes, they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“If one morning in the Spring, a stranger came and said to me, your mother,father, brother, sister, uncle, lover, friend is dead from a b-52, napalm bombing, search and destroy misson, air attack, Tet offensive, My Lai massacre, failed escape, I would not scream but make of my body a net, a tarp, stretched taut across the sky, the sea, over every village and hamlet, prepared to catch everything from the sky, shade everything on the ground, rain water and receive yyou, war, with arms outstretched”
― Le Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For

“I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.”
― Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world.”
― Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

“Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I could not get my fill of looking.
There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“My heart is a ladle of sweet water brimming over.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo - If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Let me rage before I die.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“the dewy night unrolls a heaven thickly jewelled with sparkling stars”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Each morning, before Jackie started her studies, she wrote on a clean piece of paper: Tarde venientibus ossa.
To the latecomers are left the bones.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

“Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,
even so I will endure…
For already have I suffered full much,
and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.
Let this be added to the tale of those.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He smiled, and his face was like the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red