Page 10 Quotes

“يعجبه نسيانه هذا، يؤكد له وحدته، يؤكد كونها أصيلة قديمة معتّقة غير طارئة غير مستجدة.”
― ربيع جابر, شاي أسود

“He was smothered by dread. Fear. A horrible sense of being hunted.
And then one of the automaton lions turned its head toward him. The eyes shone red. Red like blood. Red like fire.
They could smell it on him, the illegal book. Or maybe just his fear”
― Rachel Caine, Ink and Bone

“A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die.”
― Sylvia Plath

“For the last five centuries, ever since Gutenberg's printing press made book reading a popular pursuit, the linear, literary mind has been at the center of art, science, and society. As supple as it is subtle, it's been the imaginative mind of the Renaissance, the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind of Modernism. It may soon be yesterday's mind.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

“...religion focused far more on damnation than on consolation.”
― Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

“You can’t describe light very easily. You can tell where it is, but not what it is. Light was where she was. There may have been prettier girls, but there have never been lovelier ones. It came from inside and out both; it was a blend. She was everyone’s first love, as he looks back later once she is gone and tells himself she must have been. She was the promise made to everyone at the start, that can never quite be carried out afterward, and never is.

Cynics, seeing her go by, might have said, “Why, she’s just another pretty girl; they’re all about like that.” Cynics don’t know about these things. The way she walked, the way she talked, the little slow smile she had for him as they drew toward one another upon meeting, or the same smile in reverse, going backward as they parted—those things were only for Johnny Marr to see. He had special eyes for her, just as she had for him.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Rendezvous in Black

“Tapping his foot lightly, not in impatience, but because his foot was singing love songs to the ground.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Rendezvous in Black

“For nearly forty years Vinnie has suffered from the peculiar disadvantages of the woman born without physical charms. Even as a child she had a nondescript sort of face, which gave the impression of a small wild rodent: the nose sharp and narrow, the eyes round and rather too close-set, the mouth a nibbling slit. For the first eleven years of her life, however, her looks gave no one any concern. But as she approached puberty, first her suddenly anxious mother and then Vinnie herself attempted to improve upon her naturally meager endowments.”
― Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs

“Indeed, it would be kinder to draw a veil over some of Vinnie’s later attempts at stylishness: her bony forty-year-old legs in an orange leather miniskirt; her narrow mouse’s face peering from behind teased hair and an oversized pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.”
― Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs

“He didn’t cry out. He made no sound. He reached down and placed his courtship flowers gently on the death-stretcher as it went by. Then he turned and went away.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Marguerite, a name. That was all he had left.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The boy of twenty-two died into a young man of twenty-nine. Then he in turn was still faithful to the name his predecessor had been faithful to, until he too died. The young man of twenty-nine died into an older man of thirty-six.

And suddenly, one day, the cumulative loneliness of fifteen years, held back until now, overwhelmed him, all at one time, inundated him, and he turned this way and that, almost in panic.

Any love, from anywhere, on any terms. Quick, before it was too late! Only not to be alone any longer.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“The sun suddenly whitened his back like flour as he leaned over the railing, pressing down the smouldering magenta bougainvillea that feathered its edges.”
― Cornell Woolrich, Waltz into Darkness

“Goodness was lukewarm and light. It smelt of raw meat kept for too long. Without entirely rotting in spite of everything. It was freshened up from time to time, seasoned a little, enough to keep it a piece of lukewarm, quiet meat.”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart