Tarsha Molton > Tarsha's Quotes

“As she had done when she introduced the US president in Berlin, she addressed him publicly with the informal du for the first time since the NSA controversy in 2013.”
― Claudia Clark, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel

“But sir…’
     ‘Don’t worry I said I’ll do it,’ snapped the President.
     ‘But sir there’s just one other thing.’
     The President held the club in his hands like a seasoned baseball star. He glanced over at the Phlegm-O-Matic resting in the legionnaire’s rusted hand. ‘What?’
     ‘That protocol doesn’t include you.’
     The President’s shoulders sank and the air left his lungs in a rush. The legionnaire turned and aimed the gun at him.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“After March in 1945, the Japanese felt threatened by possibility of the people of Indochina rising against them. Therefore, they stated:
“We of the Imperial Japanese Army have only invaded other Asian countries in order to remove the European and American white man from Asia! Stick with us Japanese and together we shall make Asians great while we kick the whites out of the entire region!”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Ito finally, who had been keeping very quiet
up to this point.
“Indeed. How much will it cost?” asked Brown
“About twenty million Interplanetary Credits,” said Demba. “A modest investment for
a man of your means.”
“Indeed,” said Brown again. That was all the money he had, which started to strike
him as strange, when his thoughts were interrupted.
“We’ll arrange a visit to the mine,” said Ito. “Show you the place itself.”
“Indeed,” said Brown. Or had he said that? The strange waking memory he had fallen
into started to become repetitive. Reality started to flow back in.
Diamonds, thought Brown. All those diamonds in that mine.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“ “We think a spy scheme could be brewing with one or more of the Middle East scientists going to Los Alamos.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?

That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…

Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.

I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.

I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.

I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.

History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.

'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.

It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.

I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'

He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.'

'What?'

He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.

'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'

Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.

'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'

1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.

'Is it open to the public?' I said.

'Not generally, no.'

I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.

'Are you happy here?' I said at last.

He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.

'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'

St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.

'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'

He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions they raise.
Don't ask me those questions! Don't ask me what life means or how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“We Are brothers, tied by blood, in our veins, what we spill. But it is a deadly secret that will forever bind us.”
― Tina Traverse, Destiny of the Vampire

“And the funny thing was if you made the best of it, if you smiled through every storm, the bad things were never as terrible as you expected them to be, and the good things were better than anything you could have wished for yourself.”
― Dean Koontz, 77 Shadow Street

“When I went back into the kitchen, I wanted to sit on my mum's lap. I know that sounds stupid and babyish , but I couldn't help it. On my sixteenth birthday, I didn't want to be sixteen, or fifteen or anyteen. I wanted to be three or four, and too young to make any kind of mess”
― Nick Hornby, Slam

“Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“strip a city of its leaders, journalists, and cultural examples and you will control an ignorant and vulnerable population. Do you understand now?”
― Jana Petken, The Vogels: On All Fronts

“Hurkos later told the press: “Three men killed Sharon Tate and the other four—and I know who they are. I have identified the killers to the police and told them that these men must be stopped soon. Otherwise they will kill again.” The killers, he added, were friends of Sharon Tate, turned into “frenzied homicidal maniacs” by massive doses of LSD. The killings, he was quoted as saying, erupted during a black magic ritual known as “goona goona,” its suddenness catching the victims unawares.”
― Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter

“History is more than data, more than facts, more than science and scholarship. These things are merely the means to a greater end. History is a story—the story of ourselves. Where do we come from? How have we survived? How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? Do we matter, and if we do, what is our proper place upon the earth? I shall put the question another way: Who are we?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Jack laughed behind him, a mirthless sound from a man who had been on the wrong end of life's ironies too many times.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“With our beloved prairie voles the female has her ovulation induced by the smell of male urine. It’s a sure sign there’s a male nearby and so her body gets ready for mating. The exact opposite of a human female getting a whiff of urinals in a nightclub and her vagina falling off in disgust”
― Sara Pascoe

“Inseparable as sibs—strained as a couple.”
― Andri E. Elia, Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel

“Audun, there is something I must now explain to you. You are the illegitimate son of Alberon, who now calls himself Emperor of the North.”
― Robert Reid, The Emperor

“A virgin," Flaminius smiled deviously. "I'll take her." Instantly, surprised chatter erupted. Mother Guardian held up her hand for silence. "You cannot be serious, Sire." "Oh, but I am," he replied with a smirk.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“From the vaulted arches several stories above us, entire, mature trees were growing, reaching leafy boughs down into the open air between the floor and ceiling. There was a full glade growing up there, oak, birch, maple, and elm, like someone had carved out a few acres of the park and fixed it there upside down.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I give you The Eagle’s Covenant.”
― Michael Parker, The Eagle's Covenant

“talentless airheads who are famous for absolutely nothing except being famous?”
― Malorie Blackman, Boys Don't Cry

“Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.”
― E. M. Forster, The Longest Journey

“But here God didn't come. We were all on our own.”
― Art Spiegelman, Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

“A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve.”
― Junot Díaz

“Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don’t pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.”
― E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler

“There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.”
― Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

“The girl flinched, even lying down. Mary continued through gritted teeth. “Murder can’t be walked away from. Just like you can’t walk away from Viktor. He’ll find you if you run. Richard can’t protect you if Viktor believes you have his babies.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“The demise of the human race rests mainly on the shoulders of stupidity, and the abuse of power in the hands of those we have elected.”
― A.R. Merrydew