Lorena Closson > Lorena's Quotes

“The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Venetian laws last but a week. They keep making new laws because no one follows the old ones…. Or enforces them.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“She's cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest.”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“It beats me,” he said, “why they call a south wind a norther, and how a wind from the south can be so tarnation cold. I never saw anything like it. Down here in this country, the north end of a south wind is the coldest wind I ever heard of.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

“It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi State tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them. It did not. A people who had so lightly given up their political and cultural and economic freedoms were not, except for a relatively few, going to die or even risk imprisonment to preserve freedom of worship. What really aroused the Germans in the Thirties were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity, restoring Germany’s military might, and moving from one triumph to another in his foreign policy.”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

“I have had prayers answered - most strangely so sometimes - but I think our Heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Both Jamie and Claudia had acquired a talent for being near but never part of a group. (Some people, Saxonberg, never learn to do that all their lives, and some learn it all too well.)”
― E.L. Konigsburg, Literature Guide: From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

“I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“And now insane men adrift in a world without order formed a line at the door.  They rendered unto her every evil act brought into this world by God.  They fell upon her with brutality that none of them at any other time would have thought possible.  There was once no scenario that would lead them to behave this way.  At any other time in their life there were no words or arguments that could convince them to treat a woman with such wanton disregard.  No one now asked, “What brought me to this?” Not one of them asked, “Who are these men?  How did we end up here, doing these things? Who am I now?”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta

“Great. Abducted by aliens. She’d never live this one down. She wondered if they would dissect her. Maybe grab a steak of the tender parts and cook her up. Any sex stuff was too weird and horrible to think about, though it had been awhile. What the hell did she know? Brad Pitt. Surely, he wasn’t entirely human. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”
― William Kely McClung, LOOP

“Some days are better than others, for human optimism has no limits.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“The structure was like an aquarium filled with air instead of water, and Dani and Zephyr were the “fish” inside, there for the enjoyment of the Water People, or for whatever other purpose their captors had in mind.”
― Steven Decker, The Balance of Time

“There are four steps to gaining ownership and intentionality over your personal identity and beliefs: Determining your objective function What is the purpose of my life? Determining your ideological tree How do I best fulfill that purpose? Determining your personal identity Who do I want to be? Determining your public identity How do I want others to think of me?”
― Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life: A Guide to Creating Your Own Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selected Works: The Custom-House, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun

“I regard Clarissa and In Search of Lost Time as the two most eminent of all novels, surpassing even Tolstoy and Dickens.”
― Harold Bloom, The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Reread

“Children serve as impossible-to-ignore, in-your-face timepieces, marking the relentless march of one’s life through what otherwise might seem an infinite sea of minutes, hours, days, and years.”
― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

“But don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King