Gordon Hartzell > Gordon's Quotes

“The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.

All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.

If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.

They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.

I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.

I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.

You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.

Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.

After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.

It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.

He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.

The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.

You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]

Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.

You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.

In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.

There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.

Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.

The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.

The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.

I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.

Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.

Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.

Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.

Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.

A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.

Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.

It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.

Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?

She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.”
― John Richard Spencer

“As I lay in bed, I experienced continual, yet gentle, throbbing throughout my face, but most pronounced directly under my eyes. At one point, around 1 a.m., I felt a build-up of pressure in my left eye, then a release. It was followed by quite a bit of crusty discharge. Suddenly, my eyes feel living—rooted.”
― Traci Medford-Rosow, Unblinded: One Man's Courageous Journey Through Darkness to Sight

“I should have seen his weaknesses and only given him a section of myself but I loved him to my core, no matter who he was. There were no hidden places in my heart that would not welcome him or any sacred ground inside my being that he could not walk upon.”
― Vera Jane Cook, Pleasant Day

“Frankly, Olan couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a ping pong paddle.”
― Kyle Keyes, Worm Holes

“It Is Our Duty To Remember”
― Steve Snyder, Shot Down: The True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth

“You have to admit that anatomically, this ear business rivals my father’s fear that a bicycle seat could ruin your virginity”
― Kathleen Zamboni McCormick, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood

“Arsinoe, are you ever going to listen to me?
Yes. Absolutely.
When?
When you're right.”
― Kendare Blake, Five ​Dark Fates

“School used to be an escape. Now it's just another place with too much pressure, too much confrontation, & so not enough joy.”
― Ellen Hopkins

“When we are more aware of our sin than of the blood of Jesus Christ which removes our sin, relationship will remain superficial.”
― Ami Loper, Constant Companion: Your Practical Path to Real Interaction with God

“The bar staff and croupiers all wore black with the same green triangle logo emblazoned on their shirts, and contact lenses which made their eyes shine an eerie, vibrant green. The bar optics glowed with the same green light, the intensity of which was linked to the music. As the bartender walked away to fetch the drinks, a breakdown in the techno track commenced and the bottles began to palpitate. The bartender's eyes glowed with a hallucinatory felinity that made Mangle feel nervous.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“12. The common man has to fight to survive each day
But when his Lord demands his homage to pay
The common man has to fight another way
With sword or axe or spear, whatever his Lord doth say
The common man just hopes to live beyond this frightening day
And asks for the courage not to turn and run away”
― Robert Reid, The Empress

“After that, nothing was the same. The very notion of my having a family turned vague, hard to credit, even weirdly jokey.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head.

"You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"

There is just no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"?”
― Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“Humans act as though we were the creators and masters of language, while in fact language remains the master of us. Perhaps it is, before all else, humankind's distortion of this relation of dominance that drives our nature into alienation.”
― Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking

“the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.”
― David Sedaris, Naked

“For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.”
― Phillip Pullman

“Sometimes when I felt the eyes crawling on me from all sides, I got scared thinking someone was looking who wasn’t just curious. I knew it was my imagination and I got used to it, learned to shunt it away. But sometimes I held onto it quietly, that feeling that someone behind or beside me in the crowd – some guy leaning on the target booth with a rifle, or some cranky sweating father spending too much on ride tickets to keep his kids away from him – anybody could be looking at me in the sidelong way that norms use to look at freaks, but thinking of me twitching and biting at the dirt while my guts spilled out of the big escape hatch he’d cut for them… a feeling like that is special. Sometimes you hold onto it quietly for a while.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Bend with me.”
― Andri E. Elia, Yildun: Worldmaker of Yand

“As a place to start, let us use a model to explain precisely
what this ‘Great Year’ actually is. The year 2012 is the year
that marked the end of a 26,000-year cycle, ending in a
great galactic alignment that was calculated on the Mayan
calendar and results in the calendar ending on the winter
solstice (December 21st) of 2012. But what exactly is this
galactic alignment?”
― Jody Summers, The Mayan Legacy

“Stepfather?" "It means he fucks your mum and isn't really your dad.”
― Adam Scott Huerta, Motive Black

“It started to feel like this thing happening to me was an invisible wall between us, a barrier none of us wanted to acknowledge but that was continuously pushing us apart. I started to feel like an outsider even among my closest friends.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Mary tried to look reassuring. “It’s a house party, he said,” she directed at the Falconers, “Sir Viktor’s holding a house party for the convenience of the police. It’s like an old-fashioned mystery novel.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“…. ‘George said he needed a break. And there was something about Jonathan taking over …’   ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Maxwell, ‘It seems like there’s all kinds of goings on there now.’ ‘What did the agents say then?’ ‘Your brother … he must still have a key. I told them to check, I told them. I expect they overlooked it. Hugo’s been going in and there are some women there apparently, I mean at the Manor House, Jonathan’s up to his usual tricks taking in every Tom, Dick and Harry and giving all kinds of undesirables a home, and there’s something about them chasing Hugo and taunting him, yesterday the buyers were viewing again and measuring up for curtains and things, I said they could, and they saw something going on outside, some shouting and laughing …’   ‘Women! What women? Jonathan’s not like that …’   ‘Not like that huh! He’s flesh and blood like the rest of us.’  ‘That’s not what I meant. Please don’t be angry Max, it’s not my fault.’ ‘Jonathan this and Jonathan that. Why do people think he’s so bloody marvellous eh! What the hell does he think he’s doing. People spilling over into my garden and wrecking the peace and quiet. George was completely mad to do this …”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness

“Moments of divine love transform the black-and-white of existence into a living palette of infinite colours.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them. ”
― Richard Dawkins

“You must have wished a million times to be normal.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’ve wished I had two heads. Or that I was invisible. I’ve wished for a fish’s tail instead of legs. I’ve wished to be more special.”
“Not normal?”
“Never.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Judith:"And where, then, is your sweetheart, Deerslayer?"

Deerslayer: "She's in the forest, Judith - hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain - in the dew on the open grass - the clouds that float about in the blue heavens - the birds that sing in the woods - the sweet springs where I slake my thirst - and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer