Melinda Blaloch > Melinda's Quotes

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
― Graham Greene, Ways of Escape

“Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“a...look that seemed to know what there was on the other side of things.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“That woman of unbreakable nerves who at no moment in her life had been heard to sing.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Jose Arcadio Buendia took his wife's words literally. He looked out the window and saw the barefoot children in the sunny garden and he had the impression that only at that instant had they begun to exist, conceived by Ursula's spell.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“That was the way he always was, alien to the existence of his sons, partly because he considered childhood as a period of mental insufficiency, and partly because he was always too absorbed in his fantastic speculations.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?”
― Robert A. Heinlein , The Number of the Beast

“From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, 'Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.' He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe

“People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy

“I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured.
But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the Door into Summer.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

“There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else. Jill Boardman encountered her personal challenge - and accepted it - at 3:47.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

“Sit back down—and for God’s sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don’t have my years of practice.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Home is the place in deepest space
Where star etched memories burn,
Home is that sigh for a color of sky
and a will to return.”
― Robert Heinlein in Green Hills of Earth

“What is ‘truth’?” Mike asked. (“What is Truth?” asked a Roman judge, and washed his hands of a troublesome question. Jubal wished that he could do likewise.)”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don’t know about you, tovarishch, but I am.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“Once in a great while lips meet and two spirits merge for a time and the universe is right and complete and the planets wheel in their proper places. Once in a while the lonely, broken spirit of man is healed and made whole. For a while his quest is over and his questions are answered.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs

“It was all very puzzling—both that Jill could smell still more like Jill… and that Dorcas should wish to smell like Jill when she already smelled like herself… and that Jubal would say that Dorcas smelled like a cat when she did not. There was a cat who lived on the place (not as a pet, but as co-owner); on rare occasions it came to the house and deigned to accept a handout. The cat and Mike had grokked each other at once, and Mike had found its carniverous thoughts most pleasing and quite Martian. He had discovered, too, that the cat's name (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) was not the cat's name at all, but he had not told anyone this because he could not pronounce the cat's real name; he could only hear it in its head.
The cat did not smell like Dorcas.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“a friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“A trail made of pine needles and thistles leads you into the green darkness. The canopy casts shadows on old oaks and dogwoods, and you think you can smell the sour breath of a witch behind you. The wind sighs like a sleeping girl, carrying her bittersweet dreams along the paths to attract any man willing to look for thorn-covered castles. A wolf darts between fallen, rotted wood; maybe he’s the one who can tell you where your heart is, how you’re still breathing.”
― Kimberly Karalius, Pocket Forest

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady.”
― Thomas Malory