Raymond Elmo > Raymond's Quotes

“What had I believed at ten? Anything I wanted. Any tale to make the day more fun, the night more alarming. In giant pigs rooting beneath the streets. In the corpse-eaters who pulled black carts by night, hunting children out past curfew.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan

“The street-crowd below held no one of interest. They bored me. They bored God. Surely they bored themselves. The beggars were dull, the passerby grey, the lounging riffraff leaned bereft of lazy charm. If any possessed magic, they kept it hidden. If they thirsted for miracles, they settled for drinking brown fog flavored with smoke, with a chaser of dust and horse-shit. Every tenth breath spitting it to the cobbles with a wet "splat".”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“WRITE YOUR NAME.

The first thing they teach you at school.

WRITE YOUR NAME.

Sign for your first bank account.

WRITE YOUR NAME.

At the top of your exam paper.

WRITE YOUR NAME.

On the back of your bedroom door with a drippy pen.

WRITE YOUR NAME.

To log in to facebook.

WRITE YOUR NAME.
WRITE YOUR NAME.
WRITE YOUR NAME.

As if you existed.

As if you were unique.

As if you were separate.

IN YOUR NAME.

The things you own are in your name.

YOUR NAME.

That which owns, that part of you which may possess things.

And that part of you that possesses your crimes and your crimes against possession.

Write your name on the police report.

Write your name on the caution.

Your name was written on you.

Write your name.”
― Banksy, Banksy You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”
― John Lennon

“In the war I once drove a gunpowder cart down a mountain,” declared Black. “The cart aflame. Lightning
striking to left and right. Knife in teeth. One hand on the reins, the other firing a pistol. French dragoons leaping
from all sides.” He stared into the past, beholding glory. “City traffic is only a bit more difficult.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“Every soul is entitled to a daily ration of madness.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“We look into the eyes of a dog and know ourselves in the presence of a being that forgives all debts. Surely it is some natural relation twixt our species? We can’t all have been saved by our dogs. Unless that look in their eyes is itself a kind of salvation.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management”
― E B White

“I've found that there is always some beauty left -- in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Everyone goes on, " he repeated, with a taint of bitter mockery. "Oh, yes. They go on. With crippled spirits and broken ideals, they do go on. And with the passage of years they forget what crippled and broke them. They accept it grandly as they grow older, as if crippling and breaking were gifts from a king. Then those same hopeful spirits and large ideals in younger souls are viewed as stupid, and petty… and things to be crippled and broken, because everyone does go on." He looked into the woman's eyes. "Tell me. What is the point of life, if truth is not worth standing up for? If justice is a hollow shell? If beauty and grace are burnt to ashes, and evil rejoices in the flames? Shall I weep on that day, and lose my mind, or join the rejoicing and lose my soul? Shall I sit in my room? Should I go for a long walk, but where might I go so as not to smell the smoke? Should I just go on, Mrs. Nettles, like everyone else?”
― Robert R. McCammon, Speaks the Nightbird

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Over the years
a great deal has to be thrown out.
The notion, for instance,
that happiness is mild and enduring,
something like a southern climate
instead of a bolt of lightning
that leaves scars
cherished a lifetime.”
― Hanny Michaelis, Verzamelde gedichten

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Balance isn’t always a good thing. Or all the world would
be gray, lukewarm and taste like oatmeal.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“Math is poetry, kid,” she growled. “Math is sex in the head. All that work of making your mind stroke the
numbers? It’s a natural series of touches you already know by instinct. Once you get over your inhibitions, you
can sit in class or lie in bed and practice formulae and sums, caress the equation till you find the climax of an
elegant solution.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“Marissa Theodora took out her journal, put it on her lap so Mr. Alva would not see. She penciled thoughts as they came. ‘Picture the classroom plunged into dark,’ she wrote. A touchable darkness, like the fur of a black cat. A thick fog of ink. You can move through it; just not quickly. Can’t shout through it; only talk in low soft tones.’ She frowned. Why ‘plunged into dark’? Why not ‘opened’? Darkness was already everywhere. Under the floor, between the walls. Up in space and below the earth. Everyone’s pockets were full of Dark. Our heads? Stuffed with the stuff. Close your eyelids and roll your eyes inward, and gaze into the cavern of your skull. Behold: your secret vault of Dark. Marissa considered writing that. Decided not. It sounded gloomy, even creepy.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.”
― Christopher Marlowe "faustus"

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
― John Lennon

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“Entering an white tie and tails party wearing an ordinary suit, he announced,"Please, I don't want anyone to apologize for over dressing.”
― Noel Coward

“When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it. If we really want to escape this war, we have to stop bringing it with us.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 1

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“How can we know, for sure, that the universe is an immense tapestry? What proof is there that this is the case? Absolutely none! By simply asserting it’s a tapestry, without any evidence, believers cheat. What if, instead of a tapestry, the universe is a massive collage clumsily glued onto light-years of black construction paper by a drooling, psychotic lowlife? This seems to make far more sense to me. It would explain a lot.”
― Nicole Cushing, A Sick Gray Laugh

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe