Mark Vayngrib > Mark's Quotes

“There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“What the hell are you getting so upset about?' he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrive amusement. 'I thought you didn't believe in God.'
I don't,' she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. 'But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him to be.'
Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. 'Let's have a little more religious freedom between us,' he proposed obligingly. 'You don't believe in the God you want to, and I won't believe in the God I want to . Is that a deal?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Kools never did get along with partners. He once stabbed a fella over whose turn it was to drive. Kools says I want to drive and the other fella says sure and Kools stabbed him in the face.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“Reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“Is this going to be one of those times when you pretend not to have a plan until the last moment? And then turn out to really not have one?- Sir Makin to King Jorg”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“Geordie wrote a letter to Mr. Webster in which the shrieking figure of Apology was hounded through a labyrinth of agonized syntax.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“Children, don’t speak so coarsely,’ said Mr. Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters’ speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“There he lay, in a pale frothing liquid which she had, for a dreadful moment, believed to be some eccentric vital fluid of his own, but which issued from a case of broken bottles which lay near him.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“I think I'd rather get a job."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Jobs are for people who need them. You don't need one. You'd be taking it from somebody else who did.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“The borborygmy, or rumbling of the stomach, has not received the attention from either art or science which it deserves. It is as characteristic of each individual as the tone of the voice. It can be vehement, plaintive, ejaculatory, conversational, humorous -- its variety is boundless. But there are few who are prepared to give it an understanding ear; it is dismissed too often with embarrassment or low wit.”
― Robertson Davies

“They needed me, Mackilwraith; they needed me. And if there is one thing which utterly destroys a boy's character, it is to be needed. Boys are unendurable unless they are wholly expendable.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“I feel moved to sing. It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue. It makes a man spiritually costive, and plugs him up with hard, caked, thwarted merriment. This, in the course of time, poisons his whole system and is likely to turn him into that most detestable of beings, a Dry Wit. God grant that I may never be a Dry Wit. Let me ever be a Wet Wit! Let me pour forth what mirth I have until I am utterly empty -- a Nit Wit.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“one elderly teacher, who had seen generations of neophytes pass through these early tests, was known to have sobbed a little, in professional ecstasy of joy, when describing Hector's lesson on the Lowest Common Denominator.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“She had an ability, invaluable in a weak person, to persuade herself that whatever was inevitable had her full approval, and was in some measure her own doing.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“Hector was sent to his office to wait, while Rat-face was restored to such limited consciousness as his heredity and his fate permitted him to enjoy.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“There is a touch of the fascist in most adolescents; they admire the strong man who stands no nonsense; they have no objection to seeing the weak trampled underfoot; mercy in its more subtle forms is outside their understanding and has no meaning for them.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“I suppose you really like them dirty," said Miss Vyner. "That’s it. Dirty and full of divine mystery," said Cobbler, rolling his eyes and kissing his fingers. “Sheer connoisseurship, I confess, but I’ve always preferred a bit of ripened cheese to a scientifically packaged breakfast food.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“It was plain that he had had a lot of training, for nobody ever sang so by the light of Nature.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“It is doubtful if, at any time in her life, anyone had sung directly at Miss Pottinger, and she was flustered in a region of her being from which she had had no messages for many years.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“Secondrateness comes out of his pores like a fog.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“He fetched a large and unpleasant-looking rag from under his pillow and blew his nose loud and long. "E flat," said he, when he had finished. "Funny, I never seem to blow twice on the same note. You’d think that the nose, under equal pressure, and all that, would behave predictably, but it doesn’t. See this?" He held out the rag. "Piece of an old bedsheet; never blow your nose on paper, Bridgetower. Save old bedsheets for when you have a cold. They’re the only comfort in a really bad cold, and the only way of reckoning its virulence. I consider this to be a two-sheet cold.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“What would you do if you were me?" said Solly.

"What would I do in your place?"

"No, no; you’d do something fantastic and get farther into the soup. I want to know what you would do if you were intelligent but prudent. What would you do if you were me?”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“Lots of people do," said Cobbler, "but don’t delude yourself. You’re not the suicidal type."

"Why not?"

"You’re too gabby. People who talk a lot about their troubles never commit suicide; talk’s the greatest safety-valve there is.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“She’s too much like him in temperament. Married couples should complement each other, and not merely double their losses. There’s much to be said for the square peg in the round hole, as the Cubist told the Vorticist.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“He blew his nose resoundingly. "B natural," said he, "my cold drops more than a full tone every hour. Obviously I am dying.”
― Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice

“Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”

“Idiots?”

He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”

“Optimists.”

“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”

“How’s it working out for you?”

“Not great, but I keep hoping.”

“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place? That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all...fit. Be right."

"All my life, more of less"

“All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain’t no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I’ve learned … just to stick in the place I’m at. Just to be the man I am.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“You were a hero round these parts. That's what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold