Stacia > Stacia's Quotes

“You've picked up a rummy habit," James Banister said cordially as they approached one another. "Sort of a crouch. You look a bit... well, I'm sorry, but you look a bit Victor Hugo, if you catch my drift. Would you like to adjourn to a cathedral or something?”
― Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“Reality is not always probable, or likely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The four cardinal points are three: South and North.”
― Vicente Huidobro, Altazor

“Other nights, Ayrs likes me to read him poetry, especially his beloved Keats. He whispers the verses as I recite, as if his voice is leaning on mine.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Crivens!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.”
― Markus Herz

“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape.”
― Richard Scarry

“I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire," said Miss Tick. "There may be no survivors.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?'

'REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.”
― Bill Watterson

“If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.”
― Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books

“never trust a Troglotroll”
― Walter Moers

“It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness.”
― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world.”
― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

“I'm not so weird to me.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imaginary.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’

Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five