Lizzie > Lizzie's Quotes

“A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

“Rosamond, what are you doing here?”
“You invited me for the weekend, don't you remember?”
“But how could you be so cruelly literal, darling?”
― Stephen Tennant

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories: Volume 1

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.”
― Andy Warhol

“As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
― David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

“Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“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

“All in all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-and-Baileyest, rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the possum down the road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to have been a part of it.”
― John Varley

“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture, and this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls. You think just because you've made a little money you can get a new hairdo and some expensive clothes and turn yourself into a lady. But you can't, because you'll never be anything but a common frump, whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing. With this money, I can get away from every rotten, stinking thing that makes me think of this place or you!”
― James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

“Yossarian - the very sight of the name made Colonel Cathcart shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word "subversive" itself. It was like "seditious" and "insidious" too, and like "socialist," "suspicious," "fascist" and "Communist." It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The cowboy has now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown away the white ashes of his campfires; but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the face of the Western earth.”
― Owen Wister, The Virginian

“During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.”
― H. L. Mencken

“People are no damn good.”
― William Steig, The Lonely Ones

“I've got a library copy of Gone with the Wind, a quart of milk and all these cookies. Wow! What an orgy!”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“I personally have a cunt. Sometimes it's 'flaps' or 'twat', but most of the time, it's my cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word. I like that my fire escape also doubles up as the most potent swearword in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say 'cunt'. It's like I have a nuclear bomb in my pants, or a tiger, or a gun.

Compared to this the most powerful swearword men have got out of their privates is 'dick', which is frankly vanilla, and I believe you're allowed to use on, like, Blue Peter if something goes wrong. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing, and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer simple act of calling someone 'a girl' - I love that 'cunt' stands, on its own, as the supreme unvanquishable word. It has almost mystic resonance. It is a cunt - we all know it's a cunt - but we can't call it a cunt. We can't say the actual word. It's too powerful. Like Jews can never utter the Tetragrammaton - an must make do with 'Jehovah', instead.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“That which does not kill us,” I said, “has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“I wasn't sure I found that particularly reassuring, but in the event of an attack I wasn't going to be as much use as Thomas 'Oh sorry, was that your Tiger Tank?' Nightingale.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“A lifetime of disappointment had made him cynical, but you don’t stay an activist without a core of stubborn belief that things can get better – it’s a bit like being a Spurs supporter really.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“God bless busybody community matriarchs, and all that sail in them.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.

'I would love you to do something for me,' I said.

'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously.

'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said.

'Anything, sir, anything!'

'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?'

He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”
― Alec Guinness, A Positively Final Appearance

“Some folks want their luck buttered.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time.”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

“A cock was strutting among his hens and gave a throaty, growling cluck as the intruders arrived. To make himself the centre of attraction, this great bird was pretending to find scraps of food and continuously calling his proteges to come and get it. They ran to him eagerly each time, only to return empty, but hen-like repeated the caper indefinitely. One white hen monotonously leapt at a hanging cabbage, pecking-off bits with each jump, like a little clockwork toy.”
― George Bellairs, The Dead Shall be Raised & Murder of a Quack

“Without moving he gave a short whistle. The dog lying so quiet beside him was away like smoke, almost too fast for Macdonald's unaccustomed eyes to follow it. Keeping perfectly still, whistling different notes and occasionally calling words which were unintelligible to Macdonald, Tegg's old eyes followed the dog's progress up the fell as it ran in a wide circle. From nowhere the sheep appeared, bleating and lamenting: at first scattered, running here and there, backward and forward, but gradually being driven into a compact flock as the indefatigable dog ran round them in decreasing circles. Then, after a longer whistle, the dog brought them down to within a few yards of the shepherd and Tegg changed his note again and raised his arms. Slowly, with uncanny skill, the dog edged the bunch forward, allowing none to break away, and drove them in at the shippon door until the small building was packed tight with the ewes and lambs, and the dog sat down panting, on guard beside the door, and Macdonald could have sworn there was a smirk of pride and pleasure on the collie's face.”
― Lorac. E C R.