Text Publishing > Text's Quotes

“The liars among us will know that every lie must contain a certain amount of truth if it's to be convincing. A dash of truth is often enough, but it's indispensable, like the olive in the martini.”
― Sascha Arango, The Truth and Other Lies

“If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.”
― Magda Szubanski, Reckoning: A Memoir

“A writer friend who was born in England summed up her feelings for the semicolon in a remark worthy of Henry James: "There is no pleasure so acute as that of a well-placed semicolon." I guess the opposite of that is that there is no displeasure so obtuse as that of an ill-placed semicolon.”
― Mary Norris

“If you want to see your life, you have to see through the eyes of another.”
― Mark Henshaw, Snow Kimono

“This, in the end, is the prime purpose of a philosophy: to give us lucid ways to think about the world and how to live in it.”
― Daniel Klein

“My great Aunt Juliet was knocked over and killed by a bus when she was eighty-five. The bus was travelling very slowly in the right direction and could hardly have been missed by anyone except Aunt Juliet, who must have been travelling fairly fast in the wrong direction.”
― Robin Dalton, Aunts up the Cross

“I was not concerned about the dancing—I was confident that I could draw on my experience from preparing for martial arts competitions, with the supplementary advantage of an optimum intake of alcohol, which for martial arts is not permitted.”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“Few now would associate de-roofing with the police, but the verb 'to detect' originated in detegere—a detective raises the roof, figuratively.”
― Lucy Sussex

“In the mid-1980s, on a spring Sunday morning, a Volvo stationwagon parked in Brunswick Street. A young couple got out. She was trim, blonded, tanned. He was already broadening in the midsection, sockless, short and hairy legs ending in boatshoes. From a restraining chair in the back seat, he unloaded a child, complaining, flailing. They took it into a cafe.

They were going to have brunch.

The old Brunswick Street was dead, Brunchwick Street born. There was no turning back.”
― Peter Temple, White Dog

“I’ve always been intimidated by gyms, have never been able to enjoy the towel-round-the-shoulder confidence of somebody who knows he can bench-press 250 pounds, or even knows what that means or how much 250 pounds weighs. I just know I don’t like lifting heavy things, especially since I had this wrist injury which stopped me playing tennis and which means that I’ve gone from being fit and thin-looking to just a feeble streak of unshouldered manhood whose only saving grace is that he doesn’t take up much space, who leaves plenty of room for others—especially now that I was several days into a quasi-hunger strike.”
― Geoff Dyer, Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush

“When you’re dying, even your unhappiest memories can induce a sort of fondness, as if delight is not confined to the good times, but is woven through your days like a skein of gold thread.”
― Cory Taylor