JHM > JHM's Quotes

“The Love of a lonely wolf,
full of secrets and strange midnights-
drawn out of the darkness
from hills thick with black oaks
valleys riddled with riddles-
that love is sharper than a bed of thistles;
each kiss pares away flesh.

The love of a wolf
can eat you up all the better.”
― Sandra Kasturi

“Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead, and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Writing about the futility of trying to force a wolf into a vehicle, Martino describes the final stage of the conflict. The italics are hers:

"But if I continue, perhaps muttering 'Get up you lazy old dusty thing,' The wolf grabs my arm in his teeth, snarling, as if to say, Look, move me where I don't want to go, and we're going to have problems. Your problems will be bigger than mine. He then looks at me with a frank arresting stare, the strength of the mountain rumbling in his eyes.”
― Teresa Tsimmu Martino

“I love you. I love the way you rub the scar on the back of your hand when you're nervous. I love the way you make a sword into a living part of your body. I love the way you burn your eyes into me, as if you're seeing me fresh every time. I love the black streak in you that wants to kill the world, and the soft streak that is sorry afterward. I love the way you laugh, as if you're surprised that you can laugh at all. I love the way you kiss my breath away. I love the way you breathe and speak and smile. I love the way you take the air out of my lungs when you hold me. I love the way you make a dance out of death. I love the confusion I see in your eyes when you realize you are happy. I love every muscle and bone in your body, every twist and bend in your soul.”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Are you a princess? I said & she said I'm much more than a princess, but you don't have a name for it yet here on earth. ”
― Brian Andreas

“Watch for the ones who leave your mouth hanging open. Study them, find out what they love and what they fear. Dig the treasure out of their soul and hold it to the light.' He leaned in even closer now, so that Neb could smell the wine on his breath. 'Then Be like them.”
― Ken Scholes, Lamentation

“All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined those dead, those living, those generations yet to come that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”
― Dean Koontz, From the Corner of His Eye

“Don't leave me alone!
A cry in the night,
Of anguish heart-stiking,
Of soul-killing fright.

Live for my living
Or else I must die
Don't leave me alone.
A world heard that cry.”
― Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsinger

“Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.”
― John Milton, Comus and Some Shorter Poems of Milton: Harrap's English Classics

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!”
― Roald Dahl

“Choice, and all its attendant energy, is a characteristic of youth. It is before one chooses that one feels desire and longing without fulfillment, which gives an edge to any artistic endeavor. Galway Kinnell recently said in an interview that a young poet has so many choices but an old poet must simply endure his chosen life.”
― Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures

“TARKIN: The wench hath lied! Deceiving,
cut-throat girl,
Most cunning princess born of
Hell’s own heart!”
― Ian Doescher

“Magicians are not made, they make themselves.”
― William G. Gray

“          Your desires,           Whether or not you achieve them           Will determine who you become.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“As difficult as it was to decipher Two’s expression when she was on the ground, it was next to impossible when she was at her ease hanging upside down in her office.”
― Susan R. Matthews, Hour of Judgment

“In Varieties of Religious Experience, William James says that for an experience to be visionary or ecstatic it must be passive (that is, it must happen to us—it cannot be induced); it must, perforce, be transient, fleet, swift; it must be noetic (that is, it must inspire a sense of new or profound knowing); and it must be ineffable, beyond the reach of words.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“And so it’s hard for a certain kind of naïve mind at a restless, awakening time of year not to wonder, for example, what a seasonless world might mean for poets, for poems. Shall I compare thee to a weirdly hot, dry purgatorial spell of days broken by torrential spates of relentless rain whose climactic aberrations may be caused by ozone depletion? Or to the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi wreaking havoc in Western Australia? To devastating eruptions of the earth in New Zealand? Well, maybe yes. Because poetry is about nothing if it’s not about transformation.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“Armed strife and violent conflict between and among people are as old as human experience itself, older perhaps than singing, and certainly predating the writing of verse. Awareness of wars near and far, inner and outer, must always be a subtext of the examined life, even of the most private and interior sensibility, and can be a source of empowerment, despair, and anxiety for those wielding pens instead of swords.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“William Blake admired the work of William Wordsworth but is said to have once been so mad at him over a theological point in a poem that he contracted a bowel complaint.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“Spain is a million things, it’s lantanas and hibiscus, it’s roses that aren’t ashamed to split their skirts for love, rude flowers pushing out of their skins, and all-new vines hugging the old walls, new ascendency, shooting up into skies like something about to matter.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“An angel bends the date palm branch within Joseph’s reach. I am neither the angel nor Joseph, but am the hunger One knows intimately and the other can only imagine.”
― Lisa R. Spaar, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotation of Contemporary Poetry

“She probably had the only 3-D CAD program in the world that used bat wing-beats as a unit of measurement. ”
― James A. Hetley, Dragon's Eye (Contemporary Fantasy)

“Be calm.  Do your breathing exercises.  You'll never be able to rule the universe if you can't control your own heartbeat.”
― James A. Hetley, Dragon's Eye (Contemporary Fantasy)

“Get a grip, Haskell.  Find a target, blast it, cook up an alibi.  What's complicated about that?”
― James A. Hetley, Dragon's Teeth

“Trust Mama to start a hypnotism-based cult with a nudist body slave.”
― Cat Amesbury, The Guests of Honor

“Do those Guests really cover themselves in honey and run naked into the bear enclosure?” “Oh yes.” Kay grinned. “The bears are well-compensated for their trouble.”
― Cat Amesbury, The Guests of Honor