Charles Melville > Charles's Quotes

“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”
― mao tse-tung

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects...”
― Charles Darwin, Letters. A Selection, 1825–1859

“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.”
― Hồ Chí Minh, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-1966

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.”
― Khalil Gibran

“I am a machine condemned to devour books.”
― Karl Marx

“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
― George R.R. Martin

“The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address.
Even the clearest water,
if deep enough can drown.
Never think to surprise them.
Your face approaching ever
so friendly is the white flag
they ignore. There is no truce

with the furies. A mirror’s temperature
is always at zero. It is ice
in the veins. Its camera
is an X—ray. It is a chalice

held out to you in
silent communion, where gaspingly
you partake of a shifting
identity never your own.”
― R. S. Thomas

“Three keys to success: read, read, read.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."

[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“I was there when the first dreams came off the assembly line. I was there when the corrupted visions that had congealed in the vats were pincered up and hosed off and carried down the line to be dropped onto the rolling belts. I was there when the first workmen dropped their faceplates and turned on their welding torches. I was there when they began welding the foul things into their armor, when they began soldering the antennae, bolting on the wheels, pouring in the eye-socket jelly. I was there when they turned the juice on them and I was there when the things began to twitch.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The hound and hare were both so wearied that the peasant got them all.”
― Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms

“If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That's where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen.”
― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon’s Gate

“My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“The future belongs to crowds.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”
― Ecclesiastes 1:18

“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”
― Baudelaire Charles 1821-1867 Charles

“ ... as long as American life was something to be escaped from, the cartel would always be assured a bottomless pool of new customers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice