Derrick > Derrick's Quotes

“First, her father had a minor stroke, giving Claire a glimpse of his mortality and, by extension, her own. And then she had a vision of herself thirty years in the future: a spinster librarian in an apartment full of cats named after New Wave directors. (Godard, leave Rivette’s chew toy alone—)”
― Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“How do you think it should end?” Young Pasquale considered the question. “Well, instead of going back to America during the war, he could go to Germany and try to kill Hitler.” “Ah,” Alvis Bender said. “Yes. That is exactly what happens, Pasquale. He gets drunk at a party and everyone warns him not to drive, but he makes a giant scene leaving the party and he jumps in his car and accidentally drives over Hitler.”
― Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“Dude, would you want to fight a drunk monkey? They’re fucking huge. Like Every Which Way But Loose, man. Imagine that bastard losing his shit on you.”
― Anonymous

“Never trust a man, Eleanor!’ they’d all shouted at her, at one point or another. ‘Especially if he hates to dance!”
― Anonymous

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The Burgess sisters arrive together. Tara and Lainie do a little bit of everything. Sometimes dancers, sometimes actresses. Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.”
― Anonymous

“And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.”
― Anonymous

“It is no great secret that cooking is, in essence, seduction. As with amour, pleasure does not bloom in the body so much as in the mind. One may be a “gymnast in the sheets,” as the coarse say, but without passion and internal fire, without longing and anticipation, one may as well be doing calisthenics. So food. The most rarefied tastes on the unprepared tongue may be ignored or, worse, misunderstood. How then is the mind prepared for delicacy? As with Don Juan, reputation stirs desire. But even the best chef must entice interest, use aroma to flirt, caress and kiss with silken soups, reassure and coddle with a dulcet pudding.”
― Anonymous

“Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin