Erna Boryszewski > Erna's Quotes

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“If you’re ever stuck for an idea try eating a peanut.”
― Molly Arbuthnott, Peanut the Hamster

“We had old architects and were working with what we had on hand. You’ve hired this new, young architect now, and, Pericles, I’m going to build you a statue of Athena—all gold and ivory, think of that, Pericles—and taller than our city walls.” Pericles raised his eyes toward the birds.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“The optimism was like the sun after a long spell of clouds and rain, a euphoric rush which produced both envy and awe in anyone who had become jaded, resigned, who had given up on their dreams.”
― John Rachel, Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun

“Do flyers become archers when you give them a bow? No. They need arrows, too.”
― Andri E. Elia, Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel

“Hestia sighed. ‘Stepping inside a mirror is like stepping into Pandora’s Box. It is a world of illusion and fragility. If the mirror is broken then so, too, will be whoever is inside the mirror at the time it is broken.”
― Frank Lambert, Xyz

“Actually, Louis, there was a time I thought all rules were made to be broken. And then, society's rules broke me." I press my thumb and forefinger on the bridge of my nose to relieve the pressure.
"I have no idea what you are trying to say."
I take a deep breath. "Rules are important, and we must understand them to get along in this world, but if we never think beyond the rules, we will miss a lot of opportunities.”
― Rebecca Rosenberg, Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne

“My ambitions for you are slowly being realised, and, even though you are unhappy, console yourself with the thought that it was part of my plan for you to be unhappy for a while. The fact that you associate intimately with girls who do not care for the things you do should strengthen your own artistic integrity and fortify you against the world; remember, Natalie, your enemies will always come from the same place your friends do.”
― Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman

“To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor close to being in love.”
― Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow

“Old Beliefs
Do Not Lead You
To New Cheese. Haw hadn’t found any Cheese yet, but as he ran through the Maze, he thought about what he had already learned. Haw now realized that his new beliefs were encouraging new behaviors. He was behaving differently than when he kept returning to the same cheeseless station. He knew that when you change what you believe, you change what you do. You can believe that a change will harm you and resist it. Or you can believe that finding New Cheese will help you and embrace the change. It all depends on what you choose to believe.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

“Morgana: ai miei tempi sono stata chiamata in molti modi: sorella, amante, sacerdotessa, maga, regina. Ora in verità, sono una maga e forse verrà un giorno in cui queste cose dovranno esser conosciute. E ora che il mondo è cambiato e Artù, mio fratello e amante, che fu re e sarà re, giace morto nell’isola Sacra di Avalon, la storia deve esser narrata com’era prima che i preti del Cristo Bianco venissero a costellarla di santi e leggende.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, Le nebbie di Avalon - Parte Seconda

“That is why every brother and sister will react differently according to how they learn to defend themselves and adapt to different circumstances. When our parents are constantly fighting, when there is disharmony, disrespect, and lies, we learn the emotional way of being like them.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Love is the source of everything and is the 'blood' of our souls and existence itself.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“When Booker first started working for her a few years ago and was living in their home, she saw him cower with apprehension every time she snapped a new order or made him redo tasks more than once, twice, or three times. Now, she knew that he understood her ways better, her need for order, cleanliness, and strict attention to details. She felt he was beginning to realize just what this fifty-seven-year-old Yankee schoolteacher expected of her thirteen-year-old house servant and pupil. He began to appreciate the books from which she taught him after his morning chores were completed. She gave him a few to start his own library and found he stored them in old dry goods boxes in his bedroom.”
― Sheridan Brown, The Viola Factor

“He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.

Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.

'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“Doubtless Princess Juliana intended for me to overhear her comment on seeing Theodora in wedding regalia. “She’s like wisteria: beautiful in a vulgarly decorative way, cloyingly scented and an unstoppable climber.” Her eyes met mine and she made a motion as if scribbling in the air, daring me to write down her words.”
― Carol Strickland, The Eagle and the Swan

“you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...”
― Saint-Exupery Antoine, The Little Prince

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“like a man who has jumped off a diving board, but then, through force of will, lowers himself inch by inch into the pool.”
― Jane Smiley, Moo

“And while each death would echo loudly halfway around the world, hurling families and even whole communities into grief, often with shattering consequences for generations, in Hue there wasn't even time to stop and look, much less grieve.”
― Mark Bowden, Huế 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

“We started out making men in about the state of mind which I suppose created them in the first place -- we had run out of kinds of women, and had to think of something else.”
― Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons

“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest—That which is best administered is best,"—yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers