Cynthia Robinson > Cynthia's Quotes

“How explain to him that she, who had been lapped like a lily in folds of paduasoy, had hacked heads off, and lain with loose women among treasure sacks in the holds of pirate ships?...”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“It was ancient and had risen from the boiling earth. It had slept, falling dormant in the dust, rising in mist. Tuberculosis had flown in a dizzy rush to unite with warm life. It was in each new world, and every old world. First it loved animals, then it loved people too.”
― Louise Erdrich, LaRose

“You never believed in God, Doc, did you? You said if God created man in His image, why couldn't man invent a God that was more anthropomorphic, less gratuitously remote, who, like his enemy, Satan, resembled us?”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Angel of History

“...and Satan said, This is not possession, if it were, you would do what I tell you and not refuse my counsel, for I am no creature of mere light, I am of fire born, fire of fire, the blood in the veins of the world is lit up by my flame, I am life's primal force, you are the child at the end of the diving board afraid to jump into the pool...”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Angel of History

“In the summer of 1982, while Israeli armored tanks and gunships imposed a siege of another age on rampartless Beirut, cutting off the water supply and food shipments, the modern catapults, the air force, leveled residential buildings, destroyed all infrastructure, and, amazingly, bombed the synagogue of Beirut's Jewish neighborhood. There is no contradiction.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“I'm not stupid, romantic, or a busy Russian novelist.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices into its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“From here he could see the farmer's daughter in the yard, feeding the geese. Wasn't there a nursery rhyme in there somewhere? No, he was thinking of the farmer's wife, wasn't he?--cutting off tails with a carving knife. A horrid image. Poor mice, he had thought when he was a boy. Still thought the same now that he was a man. Nursery rhymes were brutal affairs.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“...for a moment he seemed to see himself as if in a dreamlike film, surrounded by kindred spirits at the warm center of some bustling enterprise in which food, wine, starlight, warm breezes and the sounds of human conviviality combined like the elements of some ancient ceremony to plunge the parched spirit back into the flow of life's inexhaustible abundance.”
― James Lasdun, The Fall Guy

“She's no dream woman I keep telling you, princess. Everyone here knew her a month ago and had a good word for her. What can it be makes everyone, yourself included, forget she ever lived?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant

“Early on July 2, 1911, my father left with Lambert Charibon for Anticosti Island. Shortly after supper on the same day, my mother took up with Botho August.”
― Howard Norman, The Bird Artist

“Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think about myself.”
― Howard Norman, The Bird Artist

“You have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“It had excited him enormously to be on fire.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“Little man, little man,"--Orlando could hear her say--"is 'must' a word to be addressed to princes?" And down came the flagon on the table: there was the mark of it still.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Virginia and Vanessa were often thought scruffy. Vanessa rapidly decided that untidiness and dirt were infinitely preferable to being 'a Town Lady'; the writer Rebecca West thought Virginia always looked as if she had been pulled through a hedge backwards.”
― Alison Light, Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury

“It was not Orlando who spoke, but the spirit of the age. But whichever it was, nobody answered it.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I bet he's hightailed it into Canada. Somewhere into Canada." "Let me put it this way. Basically, there's Canada and there's the United States of America, and Orkney, since he was a boy, never had one spark of interest in going to the latter.”
― Howard Norman, The Bird Artist

“We stayed away from the fact of Lark's existence, or anything to do with our actual thoughts.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“Not a movie to take your children to, nothing to show your ma: the little gougings, the wreck of the way they lived.”
― Noy Holland, Bird

“I went into the kitchen. My mother joined us there, Margaret threw back three shots in a row. "Oh yes, to be sure, Margaret Handle," my mother said. "That's your way in times of trouble, isn't it?" "Not just at those times," Margaret said, pouring another shot. My mother began to cook furiously.”
― Howard Norman, The Bird Artist

“Even the most traditional Indians, the ones who'd kept the old ceremonies alive in secret, either had Catholicism beaten into them in boarding school...or they had decided to hedge their bets by adding the saints to their love of the sacred pipe.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“I'm sorry, is what she means to say. Sorry, sweetheart, about the elephants. About the sea turtles with their heads lopped off, and the friendly, machine-gunned whales. About the owls, my love, and the antelope. About the drowning bears...”
― Noy Holland, Bird

“If this is love," said Orlando to herself, looking at the Archduke on the other side of the fender, and now from the woman's point of view, "there is something highly ridiculous about it.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Wanting so mostly rarely withstands the presence of the thing we want.
Say why.”
― Noy Holland, Bird

“You know why?" Suzie says. "Because it's autumn. The leaves are falling. The woods open up. Anytime things are moving out, you're in love with moving in.”
― Noy Holland, Bird

“Her breath smelled terrible and I told myself to commit that fact to memory, to remember it the next time I was intimidated by her unwavering grace.”
― Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station

“Boatman," she says. "There's a tale I once heard, perhaps as a small child. Of an island full of gentle woods and streams, yet also a place of strange qualities. Many cross to it, yet for each who dwells there, it's as if he walks the island alone...”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant