Christine > Christine's Quotes

“18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.”
― Bill Bryson

“Sorry," [Hamlet] said, rubbing his temples. "I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“It surprised him that his grief was sharper than in the past few days. He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book. Instead, it was almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full both of heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one’s problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care—and humility." He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. "But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?"

"My dear boy," said the Major. "Is there really any other kind?”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“I believe in trees. I can touch them. And they have true names. They do not change in terms of what they are to me.”
― Ned Hayes, The Eagle Tree

“Things... well, things suck sometimes. And sometimes you can fix it. And sometimes you can't. It's just the way it is.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Stealing Heaven

“As late as 1742, London hatters beat to death a man who dared shape headgear without having gone through the apprentice system.”
― Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist

“With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild / White Fang