Debbie > Debbie's Quotes

“The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like getting older, they say, and they touch our arms gently.”
― Dave Eggers

“There are, broadly speaking, three directly analogous progressions inthe history of art: in Antiquity, from the blockiness of Egyptian art to the loose, painterly handling of Roman landscape frescoes; in the Middle Ages, from the tectonic emphasis of Ottonian art to the flamboyance of late Gothic; and in later times, from early Renaissance linearity to the sparkling web of light spun by the Rococo. The wheel turns full circle, but more rapidly each time. ”
― Klaus Berger, Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse

“Nature is like a wild animal that you have trained to work for you. So long as you are vigilant and walk warily with thought and care, so long will it give you its aid; but look away for an instant, be heedless or forgetful, and it has you by the throat.”
― Kamala Markandaya

“Japonisme was a vertical phenomenon running through a number of successive styles; Art Nouveau was a horizontal, chronologically limited phenomenon that embodied the aim of giving expression to a new experience of life.”
― Klaus Berger, Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse

“The Senator did not know who owned the jet, nor had he ever met Mr. Trudeau, which in most cultures would seem odd since Rudd had taken so much money from the man. But in Washington, money arrives through a myriad of strange and nebulous conduits. Often those taking it have only a vague idea of where it's coming from; often they have no clue. In most democracies, the transference of so much cash would be considered outright corruption, but in Washington the corruption has been legalized. Senator Rudd didn't know and didn't care that he was owned by other people.”
― John Grisham, The Appeal

“[Medieval] Art was not just a static element in society, or even one which interacted with the various social groups. It was not simply something which was made to decorate or to instruct — or even to overawe and dominate. Rather, it was that and more. It was potentially controversial in ways both similar and dissimilar to its couterpart today. It was something which could by its force of attraction not only form the basis for the economy of a particular way of life, it could also come to change that way of life in ways counter to the original intent. Along with this and because of this, art carried a host of implications, both social and moral, which had to be justified. Indeed, it is from the two related and basic elements of justification and function — claim and reality — that Bernard approaches the question of art in the Apologia.”
― Conrad Rudolph

“These are small things; I am coming to things of greater importance, but which seem smaller, because they are more common.' — Bernanrd of of Clairvaux”
― Conrad Rudolph, The "things of Greater Importance" Bernard of Clairvaux's "apologia" and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art

“THE BOUNTY
In her kitchen, she saw many things she would like to eat. On the counter, there was a bunch of new bananas, yellow as a Van Gogh chair, and two apples, pristine. The cabinet was open and she saw a box of crackers, a new box of cereal, a tube of curved chips. She felt overwhelmed, seeing all of the food there, that it was all hers. And there was more in the refrigerator! There were juices, half a melon, a dozen bagels, salmon, a steak, yogurt in a dozen colors. It would take her a week to eat all of this food. She does not deserve this, she thought. It really isn't fair, she thought. You're correct, God said, and then struck dead 65,000 Malaysians.”
― Dave Eggers, How We Are Hungry

“Well, and what if we give in to our troubles at every step! We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man's spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes? As for our wants, they are many and unfilled, for who is so rich or compassionate as to supply them? Want is our companion from birth to death, familiar as the seasons or the earth, varying only in degree. What profit to bewail that which has always been and cannot change?”
― Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve

“To those who live by the land there must always come times of hardship, of fear and of hunger, even as there are years of plenty. This is one of the truths of our existence as those who live by the land know: that sometimes we eat and sometimes we starve. We live by our labours fromone harvest to the next, there is no certain telling whether we shall be able to feed ourselves and our children, and if bad times are prolonged we know we must see the weak surrender their lives and this fact, too, is within our experience. In our lives there is no margin for misfortune.”
― Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve

“For where shall a man turn who has no money? Where can he go? Wide, wide world, but as narrow as the coins in your hand. Like a tethered goat, so far and no farther. Only money can make the rope stretch, only money.”
― Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve

“Bernard undoubtedly was truly concerned with the well-being of the poor ... but the approach here is again largely from a monastic standpoint. It is not just a question of art or the care of the poor. It is also a question of debunking the traditional social justification of excessive art — that it was somehow similar to almsgiving ... In the same way that art for the honor of God is not the business of the monk since the monk has already offered the most precious gift one can to God, so there is no need for a rationale which sees these lesser gifts as a worthy form of honor for a monk to convey, a form of honor which as a spiritual undertaking is ultimately contradictory to the dictates of charity.”
― Conrad Rudolph, The "things of Greater Importance" Bernard of Clairvaux's "apologia" and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“He pulled out turned west and started driving towards the glow it was thousands of miles away, he started driving towards the glow.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“A contest was held in 1994 to rename the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center after an extensive renovation and expansion. The winning name, chosen from over ten thousand entries, was the Los Angeles Convention Center.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“In Britain, chinoiserie was eclipsed by the medievalism of Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Revival, while in Europe japonisme would be chinoiserie's successor. Japonisme never compelled the general middle-class British taste as did the indigenous medieval style. Nonetheless, through extensive importations to Britain of Japanese art and artifacts, notably by the shop Liberty's of London, as well as through the artists James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the architect E.W. Godwin, and the writer Oscar Wilde, the Japanese style of decoration was known in Britain well before 1894.”
― Linda Gertner Zatlin, Beardsley, Japonisme, and the Perversion of the Victorian Ideal

“Joe asks how long they've been there one of them says fuck off another says a week a third calls him a drunk homeless fuck and tells him to go away. Joe asks how long they will wait the singular answer is as long as it takes and somewhere inside the house five-day-old children sleep under siege because their mother has a nice smile and beautiful hair and can recite lines on camera.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“1954. Smog prevents airplanes from landing and ships from docking for three days.”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“At That Moment, it seemed the whole world cared what happened to him. All those people were hugging him and petting his hair. Everybody asked if he was okay.
It seemed that moment would last forever. That you had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“The old rule about how a thing of beauty is a joy forever, in my experience, even the most beauteous thing is only a joy for about three hours, tops. After that, she'll want to tell you all about her childhood traumas. Part of meeting these jail girls is it's so sweet to look at your watch and know she'll be behind bars in half an hour.”
― PALAHNIUK CHUCK

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”
― PALAHNIUK CHUCK

“This is the worst problem with living history museums. They always leave the best parts out. Like typhus. And opium. And scarlet letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The skin along the parts in her hair, the skin above and behind the doctor's ears, is as clear and white as the skin inside her other tan lines must look. If women knew how their ears come across, the firm fleshy edge, the little dark hood at the top, all the smooth contours coiled and channeling you to the tight darkness inside, well, more women would wear their hair down.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The only funny part about Colonial Dunsboro is maybe it's too authentic, but for all the wrong reasons. This whole crowd of losers and nutcases who hide out here because they can't make it in the real world, in real jobs — isn't this why we left England in the first place? To establish our own alternate reality. Weren't the Pilgrims pretty much the crackpots of their time? For sure, instead of just wanting to believe something different about God's love, the losers I work with want to find salvation through compulsive behaviors.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke