Leta Padgett > Leta's Quotes

“Sometimes truths are what we run from, and sometimes they are what we seek.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”
― Gillian Flynn

“Her mum thought gourmet cooking was putting a load of fish fingers under the grill instead of in the frying pan.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“As so often when Mr Rhodes gets grateful and reverent, you have to read the sentence twice, even though you didn’t want to read it once.”
― Martin Amis, The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

“The future is just wasted on some people.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“In the talcum on the floor around him he could see the imprints of his mother's feet. She had moved from side to side, propelled by an over-eager partner, perhaps one of the Japanese officers to whom she was teaching to tango. Jim tried out the dance steps himself, which seemed far more violent than any tango he had ever seen, and managed to fall and cut his hand on the broken mirror.”
― J G Ballard

“Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“ennui”
― Alissa Nutting, Tampa

“But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I never saw such crazy musicians. Everybody in Frisco blew. It was the end of the continent; they didn't give a damn.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.”
― William S. Burroughs