Rowizyx > Rowizyx's Quotes

“Se amava quel viso non indulgente, era perché era netto, espressivo e risoluto.
Vedeva, o gli sembrava di vedere, come tali qualità fossero state mascherate o soffocate da atteggiamenti più convenzionali: una modestia simulata, un'appropriata pazienza, un disprezzo che si spacciava per calma. Al suo peggio - oh, lui la vedeva chiaramente, malgrado la possessione che esercitava su di lui - al suo peggio guardava in basso e di traverso e sorrideva timidamente, e questo sorriso era quasi una smorfia meccanica, perché era una bugia, una convenzione, un breve forzato riconoscimento delle aspettative del mondo. Lu aveva visto subito, così gli pareva, ciò che lei era in essenza, seduta alla tavola di Crabb Robinson ad ascoltare dispute maschili, credendosi osservatrice inosservata. Se, rifletté, la maggior parte degli uomini avesse visto la durezza e la fierezza e la tirannia, sì, la tirannia di quel volto, se ne sarebbe ritratta. Il suo destino sarebbe stato di essere amata solo da timidi inetti, segretamente desiderosi che lei li punisse o li comandasse, o da anime candide, convinte che la fredda aria di delicato riserbo esprimesse una sorta di purezza femminile che tutti a quei tempi facevano mostra di desiderare. Ma lui aveva capito immediatamente che lei era per lui, che lei aveva qualcosa in comune con lui, lei com'era veramente o avrebbe potuto essere, se fosse stata libera.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto di essere innamorata, ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere da questo amore non esisteva, ed ella pensava ormai di essersi sbagliata. Cercava ora di capire cosa volessero dire realmente le parole felicità, passione, ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate così belle nei libri.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Mi piaceva, Colodino... Non l'ho preso perché era affittato come noi. Uccidere un coronel va bene, ma uno che lavora non lo ammazzo. Non sono un traditore..."
Solo parecchio tempo dopo ho saputo che il gesto di Honório non si chiamava generosità. Aveva un nome più bello: Coscienza di classe.”
― Jorge Amado, Cacao

“Guardai senza rimpianti la casa-grande. L'amore per la mia classe, per i braccianti e gli operai, amore umano e grande, avrebbe ucciso l'amore meschino per la figlia del padrone. La pensavo così, e avevo ragione.
Alla curva della strada mi voltai. Honório mi salutava con le sue mani enormi. Sulla veranda della casa-grande il vento scompigliava i capelli di Mária. Io partivo per la lotta col cuore pulito e felice.”
― Jorge Amado, Cacao

“No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Fishing and ear scratching. The two reasons men were given hands.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.”
― Robin Hobb

“I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me.

I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

“When you see me loyal to my family, then you see the wolf.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I squeezed her hand and said nothing. I knew little about Keats or his poetry, but I thought it possible that in his hopeless situation he would not have wanted to write precisely because he loved her so much. Lately I'd had the idea that Clarissa's interest in these hypothetical letters had something to do with our own situation, and with her conviction that love that did not find its expression in a letter was not perfect. In the months after we'd met, and before we'd bought the apartment, she had written me some beauties, passionately abstract in the ways our love was different from and superior to any that had ever existed. Perhaps that's the essence of a love letter, to celebrate the unique. I had tried to match her, but all that sincerity would permit me were the facts, and they seemed miraculous enough to me: a beautiful woman loved and wanted to be loved by a large, clumsy, balding fellow who could hardly believe his luck.”
― Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

“I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white.”
― Sandy Welch

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Realism can break a writer's heart.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shame

“Non mi piacciono i matrimoni combinati. Ci sono sbagli dei quali non bisognerebbe mai poter incolpare i propri poveri genitori.”
― Salman Rushdie

“For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree?”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!"
"Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“What the world calls failure, I call learning.”
― Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany