Michael > Michael's Quotes

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.--Your friend, Dracula.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“an adolescent’s knowledge of death and evil ‘should be limited to what one discovers in literature’.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“chairman of the Washington Post Company, in a one-word e-mail I received the morning after the story appeared. A German filmmaker, who happened to be visiting Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum on the day the story was published, decided to make a documentary about Shin’s life.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“His teachers, as a result, could shape the minds and values of their students without contradiction from children who might know something of what existed beyond the fence.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Trust among friends was poisoned by constant competition for food and the pressure to snitch. Trying to”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“It is difficult to overstate the importance of rice in North Korean culture. It signifies wealth, evokes the closeness of family and sanctifies a proper meal.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Any witness to an attempted escape who fails to report it will be shot immediately.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Establishing juche means, in a nutshell, being the master of revolution and reconstruction in one’s own country. This means holding fast to an independent position, rejecting dependence on others, using one’s own brains, believing in one’s own strength, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving one’s own problems for oneself on one’s own responsibility under all circumstances.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Once the imperialist ideological and cultural poisoning is tolerated, even the faith unshakable before the threat of a bayonet will be bound to give in like a wet mud-wall.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Kim Jong Il grumbled publicly, saying, ‘Frankly the state has no money, but individuals have two years’ budget worth.’2”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Kwon Tae-jin, a specialist on North Korean agriculture at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, which is funded by the South Korean government, told me in Seoul. In the far north, where food supplies are historically lean and farmers are regarded as politically hostile, the military takes a quarter of total grain production, Kwon”
― Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“Coowie it's the happiest way of saying hello”
― Michael John Burgess

“Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

“The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“The day I lost Aiden was the day I realised what it meant to lose control.”
― Sarah A. Denzil, Silent Child

“life. I lost control of my life. Everything around me fell apart while I remained the impotent bystander. I’ve”
― Sarah A. Denzil, Silent Child

“It’s bold.” “I know, right? It says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen and also people who do not identify as ladies or gentlemen, Daisy Ramirez won’t break her promises, but she will break your heart.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I don’t like to throw the L-word
around; it’s too good and rare a feeling to cheapen with overuse.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“We are about to live the American Dream, which is, of course, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“It’ll feel better if you reapply the hand sanitizer. Just a couple more times.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers!”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Also, I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can’t improve on duct tape.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian