Avery Sprau > Avery's Quotes

“The music machine played away - far away - and when I started to understand the lyrics of a Cocteau Twins song, I knew I was wrecked.”
― Iain Banks, The Crow Road

“There was a layer of grey-blue smoke in the room at about shoulder level, and a big wave in it, probably produced by me as I came in through the double doors of the back porch. The wave rose slowly between us while my father stared at me.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“All of it dust now, all of their precious humanoid civilization ground to junk under glaciers or weathered away by wind and spray and rain and frozen ice - all of it. Only this pathetic maze-tomb left.
So much for their humanity, or whatever they chose to call it, thought Unaha-Closp. Only their machines remained. But would any of the others learn? Would they see this for what it was, this frozen rockball? Would they, indeed!”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Yes of course I know it's all a dream. Isn't everything?”
― Iain Banks

“Hair on a man's head is like the opposite of salt in a dish; you can take it away but you can't add it in.”
― Iain Banks, The Business

“But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can.”
― Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

“This is not ambition. This is desperation.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“I was sick of wanting money. I was sick of being without a goal.”
― Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

“Society indeed conspires to keep you ball and chained.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those
broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and
Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern
movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just
waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my
makeup in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm
alive, but so what.”
― Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

“And yet she was wholly herself: a rarity.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Tulips, I thought, staring at the jumble of letters before me. Had the ancient Greeks known them under a different name, if they’d had tulips at all? The letter psi, in Greek, is shaped like a tulip. All of a sudden, in the dense alphabet forest of the page, little black tulips began to pop up in a quick, random pattern like falling raindrops.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.”
― Charles Bukowski

“When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress…a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.”
― Charles Bukowski, Post Office

“I have no patience for revelations, for new beginnings, for events that take place beyond the realm of my immediate vision.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“The only cheese I have in the apartment is a wedge of Brie in the refrigerator and before leaving I place the entire slice--it’s a really big rat--along with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, delicately on the trap, setting it.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing, "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“How embarrassing to be human.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“The staircase was deserted—the higher up the building the more reluctant were the residents to use the stairs, as if this in some way demeaned them.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“People no longer need enemies--in this millennium their great dream is to become victims. Only their psychopathies can set them free...”
― J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes

“Miriam - I'll give you any flowers you want!' Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: 'I'll grow orchids from your hands, roses from your breasts. You can have magnolias in your hair...!'
'And in my heart?'
'In your womb I'll set a fly-trap!”
― J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company

“He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“The owner of the Post Office was called Maurice. A sixtyish-year-old with a large red nose that was pebble-dashed with broken capillaries, and a smooth bald head with a fuzz of grey hair around the side like the tide mark on a dirty bath. He had a gruff manner, distrusting eyes and a cough like kicked gravel.”
― R.D. Ronald

“He summoned you into the circle, Scott. For whatever reason, I don't know. But now you've left, you've become a loose thread. He won't sit back with the possibility you might cause his whole world to unravel around him.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree