Alden Campainha > Alden's Quotes

“Do you know the song Violet Crowned Athens?” he asked. Yellow hair like hers was rare among the Greeks. Though some people say that Helen of Troy . . .”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“You can’t escape me, I’m coming for you soon,” shrieked his hellish voice. Whether the beast was a man in a mask or a demon of his imagination, made little difference to Adam, He was petrified.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“That woman grinds my grits, and that's a fact.”
― Nancy Turner

“There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow - of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body - has been pleasant to dwell upon. But such contemplations vanish in the hour of peril. No man, in his full strength, can stand undismayed, in the presence of the "king of terrors." Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

“If we don't pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational, and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those unsaid prayers will fester.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

“As she made coffee in the kitchen and tried to spoon the frozen ice-cream from its carton without snapping the shaft off the spoon, Elizabeth was struck, not for the first time, by the thought that her life was entirely frivolous.
It was a rush and slither of trivial crises; of uncertain cash-flow, small triumphs, occasional sex and too many cigarettes; of missed deadlines that turned out not to matter; of arguments, new clothes, bursts of altruism and sincere resolutions to address the important things. Of all these and the other experiences that made up her life, the most significant aspect was the one suggested by the words 'turned out not to matter'. Although she was happy enough with what she had become, it was this continued sense of the easy, the inessential nature of what she did, that most irritated her. She thought of Tom Brennan, who had known only life or death, then death in life. In her generation there was no intensity.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong

“Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries

“El que se humilla como este niño... ¿Qué es la humildad infantil? No es falta de inteligencia, sino falta de maña, falta de intereses ocultos. Es esa preciosa y efímera etapa antes de haber acumulado suficiente orgullo o actitud como para que nos importe lo que piensan los demás. Es la misma honestidad genuina que hace que un niño de tres años pueda chapotear alegremente en un charco de lluvia, revolcarse en el césped como un cachorrito mientras ríe a carcajadas o decir en voz muy alta que tienes un moco colgando de la nariz, la que se necesita para entrar en el cielo. Es lo opuesto a la ignorancia.”
― Todd Burpo, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

“The scent of the stuff was familiar, evocative. Yet how? And when? It smelled of a damp meadow, the edge of a pool, a stream lapsing through green weeds. I could almost hear the rustle of Cousin Geillis’s dress, feel her peering over my shoulder as I started to replace the poultice. Comfrey, that was it; called knitbone, bruisewort, consound. The roots boiled in water or wine and the decoction drunk heals inward hurts, bruises, wounds and ulcers of the lung. The roots being outwardly applied cure fresh wounds or cuts immediately. (‘In or out, that’s sovereign.’) The recipe – Home Remedy or Receipt? – unreeled in my mind as if I had made it a hundred times. For the ointment, digest the root or leaves in hot paraffin wax, strain and allow to cool … And from somewhere faint and far back, a sentence that ran like a tranquil psalm: Comfrey joyeth in watery ditches, in fat and fruitfull meadowes; they grow all in my garden.”
― Mary Stewart, Thornyhold

“Words are not enough. Not mine, cut off at the throat before they breathe. Never forming, broken and swallowed, tossed into the void before they are heard. It would be easy to follow, fall to my knees, prostrate before the deli counter. Sweep the shelves clear, scatter the tins, pound the cakes to powder. Supermarket isles stretching out in macabre displays. Christmas madness, sad songs and mistletoe, packed car parks, rotten leaves banked up in corners. Forgotten reminders of summer before the storm. Never trust a promise, they take prisoners and wishes never come true. Fairy stories can have grim endings and I don’t know how I will face the world without you.”
― Peter B. Forster, More Than Love, A Husband's Tale

“Chapter 8”
― Robin Waterfield, Who Was Alexander the Great?

“I feel homesick but I don’t know where for.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“Why do you have such faith in me, Aurelia?" 
"I've told you a million times that I love you, you make me feel safe and cherished, and you care deeply for our people. Why wouldn't I have faith in you?”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“I was heading to Nebraska. Now there's a sentence you don't want to say too often if you can possibly help it.”
― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

“I sat in the ground, with the warm sun shining on my back, and I realized that the earth had not rejected me and the sunlight had not snapped me in two.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“One ought perhaps not to count Moses, as he was a mere executor of the will of God; he must nevertheless be admired, if only for the grace that made him worthy of speaking to God.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“A man’s children should have an education. They should get out and see the world and meet people.”
― Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows

“Everything that men have written about women should be viewed with suspicion, because they are both judge and party,’ wrote Poulain de la Barre,11 a little-known seventeenth-century feminist.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Extract From: The Second Sex

“She couldn’t have done it. It wasn’t possible. Something sticky covered her lips. She rubbed at it and pulled her hands away. Something dark, congealed and clinging, covered them. It wasn’t only on her hands either. It was on her breasts as well. And her belly. It had left streaks down her legs. And matted the hair around her sex.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Princess Dracula

“The feeling of that moment defined earthly rapture for James Ed. Before his state of mind could enjoy a full minute of the ultimate feeling, the six-year-old memory intervened. “Goddamn that memory!” he thought.”
― Shafter Bailey, James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted Crime Against Children

“The Geneva peace accords said that it recognized the nationality and fundamental rights of the Vietnamese people including their sovereignty, their territory and unity. Due to the Geneva Conference allowing the imperialist combined forces of the Franco-USA coalition, on the one hand to hold South Vietnam under the 17th parallel and allowing the National resistance by the People of Vietnam to hold the north on the other, it stopped the Vietnamese from completely liberating their country. (Vein, 2009)”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“The wilderness is uncomfortable, pushes your limits and is unavoidable.”
― Kathryn Krick, The Secret of the Anointing: Accessing the Power of God to Walk in Miracles

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers. Since Johnny's father died, Mr. Corleone feels his responsibility even more deeply. As for trying you again, Mr. Corleone is much too sensitive. He never asks a second favor where he has been refused the first.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“If you’ve been exiled, why don’t you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don’t believe that. It means you were exiled and died … Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! …’ Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: ’You are free … am I holding you?’ Then she objected to him: ’No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I’ll be free … ”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“If you was my wife, she say, I'd cover you up with kisses stead of licks, and work hard for you too.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I'm more than just a piece in their Games.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“History is the record of what human beings have been impelled to do by their ignorance and the enormous bumptiousness that makes them canonize their ignorance as a political or religious dogma”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.”
― Scott Westerfeld