Eric > Eric's Quotes

“A man’s got to carry something besides a corroded liver with him out of that dark backwood and abysm of time, and it might as well be the little black books.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men

“She cleared them out, and fast. The car went off down the gravel road with the springs flat on the rear axle and human flesh oozing out the windows, then the evening quiet descended upon us.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men

“Michelangelo had said that the successful completion of a great mosaic must rest upon the infinite design in the placement of a single tile.”
― Richard Condon, The Oldest Confession

“The point is, if you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“They went to lunch. Roseman tried to play footsie with her under the table. She was wearing boots, and couldn’t feel much of anything. So, insulated, she decided not to make any fuss.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“She poured herself half a tumbler of Jack Daniels (the Paranoids having left them a fresh bottle the evening before) and called the L.A. library.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon; no time for any campus Oedipa knew of to be jumping, yet this one was. She came downslope from Wheeler Hall, through Sather Gate into a plaza teeming with corduroy, denim, bare legs, blonde hair, hornrims, bicycle spokes in the sun, bookbags, swaying card tables, long paper petitions dangling to earth, posters for undecipherable FSM’s, YAF’s, VDC’s, suds in the fountain, students in nose-to-nose dialogue.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“Blobb inquired around about the Trystero organization, running into zipped mouths nearly every way he turned.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you, so expensive and elaborate, involving items like the forging of stamps and ancient books, constant surveillance of your movements, planting of post horn images all over San Francisco, bribing of librarians, hiring of professional actors and Pierce Inverarity only knows what-all besides, all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your nonlegal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“All the Tristero refugees from the 1849 reaction arrive in America,” it seemed to him, “full of high hopes. Only what do they find?” Not really asking; it was part of his game. “Trouble.” Around 1845 the U. S. government had carried out a great postal reform, cutting their rates, putting most independent mail routes out of business. By the ’70’s and ’80’s, any independent carrier that tried to compete with the government was immediately squashed. 1849–50 was no time for any immigrating Tristero to get ideas about picking up where they’d left off back in Europe.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“The toothaches got worse, she dreamed of disembodied voices from whose malignance there was no appeal, the soft dusk of mirrors out of which something was about to walk, and empty rooms that waited for her. Your gynecologist has no test for what she was pregnant with.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“I was in the little boys’ room,” he said. “The men’s room was full.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“Eno remains ‘a restless futurist’,”
― David Sheppard, On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno

“Ryan circled the pool, around the diving board, and moved down to the shallow end. That was enough bug-catching for one day.”
― Elmore Leonard, The Big Bounce

“I mean, well, really, it seems to me, when I think about it, sometimes, you were much happier, and so was I, when we had the roadhouse. Weren't we? For that matter, it was a lot more fun when you were a race-track detective. Heavens, even the all-night broadcasting job. It was crazy, but I liked it.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“Such was the headquarters of Janoth Enterprises. Bureaus in twenty-one large cities at home and twenty-five abroad fed this nerve-center daily and hourly. It was served by roving correspondents and by master scientists, scholars, technicians in every quarter of the world. It was an empire of intelligence.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“What we decided in this room, more than a million of our fellow-citizens would read three months from now, and what they read they would accept as final.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“I sipped my own, knowing again that everything in the world was ashes. Cold, and spent, and not quite worth the effort.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“He threw the shot of whisky into his mouth and I don't believe the glass even touched his lips.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“I called up Georgette, and made a date to meet her for dinner that evening at the Van Barth. She sounded extra gay, though I couldn't imagine why. I was the only member of the family who knew what it meant to go all the way through life and come out of it alive.”
― Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock

“To hell with it, he thought. Bad start is a good ending, boys.”
― Edward Anderson, Thieves Like Us

“You take that School Teacher feller yonder,” the Caretaker said, “he got him a hot plate from Sears, Roebuck and he's just batching fine.”
― Edward Anderson, Thieves Like Us

“The corruption investigation wasn’t derailed, merely reassigned. Nevertheless, Avila was convinced that the santería spell was a success.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Stormy Weather

“Jim Tile was questioning Augustine about the skulls on the wall. “Cuban voodoo?”
― Carl Hiaasen, Stormy Weather

“He got up from the table and went through to the study which adjoined the dining-room. It was a rather small, comfortably untidy room, and the greater part of its walls were lined with built-in bookshelves.”
― Leslie Charteris, Follow the Saint

“Verdean showed no improvement in the afternoon. Towards five o’clock the Saint had a flash of inspiration, and put in a long-distance call to a friend in Wolverhampton. “Dr. Turner won’t be back till tomorrow morning, and I’m afraid I don’t know how to reach him,” said the voice at the other end of the wire, and the flash flickered and died out at the sound. “But I can give you Dr. Young’s number—” “I am not having a baby,” said the Saint coldly, and hung up. He leaned back in his chair and said, quietly and intensely, “Goddamn”
― Leslie Charteris, Follow the Saint

“Aldous Huxley. ‘Being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune.’ You think about that.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Stormy Weather

“a saboteur of goodwill.”
― Leslie Charteris, Saint Errant

“In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting.’ (Peter Schimdt)”
― David Sheppard, On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno

“create parameters, set it off, see what happens’,”
― David Sheppard, On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno