Jonas Kozakiewicz > Jonas's Quotes

“Where’s my uncle?” she asked.
“I don’t know who your uncle is, but if it as the guy who owned this place before I bought it, then he’s pushing up daisies.”
“But it can’t be, he’s still young.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“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

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Why do you want to be on The Real World?
-Because I want everyone to witness my youth

Why?
-Isn't it gorgeous?”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them, that’s how they really are.”
― Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree

“But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolls and rolls and calls to me. Come in, it says, come in.”
― Sharon Creech, The Wanderer

“Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.”
― Charles Bukowski

“he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Even the sparrows on the house-tops are objects of suspicion.”
― Emmuska Orczy, I Will Repay

“She let her mind wander back over her stay at Grand Isle; and she tried to discover wherein this summer had been different from any and every other summer of her life. She could only realize that she herself--her present self--was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Mendel had a remarkable nature as a boy. I’m not talking about miracles. Miracles are a burden for a tzaddik, not the proof of one. Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir. There was something in Mendele. There was a fire.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep

“The owner of the Post Office was called Maurice. A sixtyish-year-old with a large red nose that was pebble-dashed with broken capillaries, and a smooth bald head with a fuzz of grey hair around the side like the tide mark on a dirty bath. He had a gruff manner, distrusting eyes and a cough like kicked gravel.”
― R.D. Ronald

“It was then, that the most ridiculous idea in the entire history of the universe entered his cranium. He had absolutely no idea where it came from. He blinked several times, at the magnitude of its absurdity.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Inara

“The steps leading to the porch looked worn, cracked, and unpainted, ready for a nice hot fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“And she was right. No matter how they tried, the two humans, with the cat but without the microchip, couldn’t connect to headquarters. Raya heard a loud popping sound in her mind, like a huge rubber band being snapped, like a glider plane released from a Piper Cub.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“It’s exceedingly difficult for employees to have the company’s back when they can’t trust the company to have theirs. Actually, it’s impossible.”
― Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction

“ma gia volgena il mio disio e'l velle
si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa,
l'amor che move: i sole e l'altre stelle
...as a wheel turns smoothtly, free from jars, my will and my desire were turned by love, The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
― Dante, Paradiso

“or 3 sprigs fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried thyme 1 bay leaf Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the eggplant and zucchini and cook until everything is tender, about 20 minutes more. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Stir in: ¼ cup chopped basil (Chopped pitted Niçoise or Kalamata olives to taste)”
― Irma S. Rombauer, Joy of Cooking

“Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours, if you care enough about me to take it.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc. ”
― Katherine Dunn

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
― C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The bang of the modernist metal doorknocker exploded in the room. Jolting upright on the edge of the couch, Isa froze, her heart beating a discordance of dread. Her mind went blank as she stared
at the door. No.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“He shoved her aside and forced his sword, to the hilt, straight through James’s torso.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“The subject of quantum physics is identifying the smallest parts of an entity and understanding its nature and its part in the whole of existence. In every case we come to the understanding that there is no objective world that we perceive, except for the conceptions inside of our minds. We are all collectively dreaming together the empirical realm. We collectively hold the fundamental energies in the frequencies of the electromagnetic wave patterns that we perceive. The quality of our experience is created in our consciousness.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness

“Look at that! The entire Australian kit dates from the 1940s and the uniforms are falling apart at the seams, the fucking boots you have issued to us are the same and everything is rotten. As for bloody weapons, we are issued with the Owen sub-machine gun. While the gun is still a very good weapon, the 9mm ammunition it uses is old WW2 stock and its propellants have deteriorated to the point where I doubt if the round will penetrate the back-pack of a fleeing Noggie!”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone- a roofleaf or Christ- but we don't. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple