ericka > ericka's Quotes

“He couldn't tell the difference between one politician and another. They were all formlessly enthusiastic chimpanzees to him.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“She was a defective child-bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can."

I looked around and said, okay. Okay, I say, but outside in the parking lot.

So we went outside, and I asked if Tyler wanted it in the face or in the stomach.

Tyler said, "Surprise me."

I said I had never hit anybody.

Tyle said, "So go crazy, man."

I said, close your eye.

Tyler said, "No."

Like every guy on his first night at fight club, I breathed in and swung my fist in a roundhouse at Tyler's jaw like in every cowboy movie we'd ever seen, and me, my fist connected with the side of Tyler's neck.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five

“She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Women's rights, that antediluvian topic.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“No decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English!”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“We cannibals must help these Christians.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. ”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth
mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life.”
― D H Lawrence

“She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the
effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing
him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there
fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of
him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her
eyes.”
― D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

“Are you out of your princely wits?"

What's he? Let me have his beard sawed off and his eyebrows filed more civil!”
― John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

“All right. All right.' He thought: am I taking to drink too? It seemed to him that he had no shape left, nothing you could touch and say: this is Scobie.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“What I've done is far worse than murder - that's an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it's over and done, but I'm carrying my corruption around with me. It's the coating of my stomach.' He threw her wrists aside like seeds towards the stony floor. 'Never pretend I haven't shown my love.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.'

Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter