Valissa > Valissa's Quotes

“Colon has always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.”
― Terry Pratchett

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
― Neal Stephenson

“One doesn’t become a witch to run around being helpful either…. It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes

“You lethargic, waiting upon me,
waiting for the fire and I
attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty

Shaken by your beauty
Shaken.”
― William Carlos Williams, Paterson

“Rules for Living by Olivia Joules
1. Never panic. Stop, breathe, think.
2. No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
3. Never change haircut or color before an important event.
4. Nothing is either as bad or good as it seems.
5. Do as you would be done by, e.g. thou shalt not kill.
6. It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap ones that you only quite like.
7. Hardly anything matters: if you get upset, ask yourself, "Does it really matter?"
8. The key to success lies in how you pick yourself up from failure.
9. Be honest and kind.
10. Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance.
11. Trust your instincts, not your overactive imagination.
12. When overwhelmed by disaster, check if it's really a disaster by doing the following: (a) think, "Oh, fuck it," (b) look on the bright side, and if that doesn't work, look on the funny side. If neither of the above works then maybe it is a disaster so turn to items 1 and 4.
13. Don't expect the world to be safe or life to be fair.”
― Helen Fielding, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.”
― Rebecca West, The Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are these gaps in speech where you just have to put a "fuck." I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, "And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers." How could you not, if you're a human being? Maybe they're not so admirable. Maybe they're robot zombies.”
― Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

“What's important about morality in politics is us. We own the chicken farm. We must give our bird-brained, feather-headed politicians morals. Politicians love to think of themselves as "free-range" but they do not have the capacity to hunt or gather morals in the wild. If we fail to supply them with morality, politicians begin to act very scary in the barnyard. These are enormous headless chickens and they have nukes.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Don't Vote, it Just Encourages the Bastards

“It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.”
― Colson Whitehead, Zone One

“That's quite a performance you gave earlier [...] I'm sure the theater lost a fine actor when you chose to devote yourself to murder and cannibalism.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“I slammed out of the [house] and started walking, heading nowhere in particular. Sometimes you just need to go through a door.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“Oggie sat facing us in a threadbare blazer and pajama bottoms, as if he'd been expecting company--just not pants-worthy company-- . . .”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“You’ve always got me”
“Always?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
“Yes”
“Am I liar? “
“No.” I lied.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“Quitoon knew the world well. It wasn't jut Humankind and its works he knew, but all manner of things without any clear connection between them. He knew about spices, parliaments, salamanders, lullabies, curses, forms of discourse and disease; of riddles, chains, and sanities; ways to make sweetmeats, love and widows; tales to tell children, tales to tell their parents, tales to tell yourself on days when everything you know means nothing.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“Anyway, it's gone. And there's nothing left in my pocket to charm you. So from now on it's going to have to be tears or nothing I'm afraid.
That's all I've got left to tell you see: tears, tears, tears.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.”
― P.B. Kerr, The Akhenaten Adventure

“A second or two later, the reptile had been quite absorbed by a handsome, arrogant-looking Englishman smelling strongly of snobbery and snake.”
― P.B. Kerr, The Akhenaten Adventure

“In the winter you could see them sitting on the benches by the war memorial. The cold couldn't touch them in those days. They drank mulled wine from thermos flasks and smoked their cigarettes hastily, as if they might warm them up. Tamara doesn't know when the cold took hold of them. They feel it much more quickly now, the whine more, and if anyone asks them why, they reply that the world is getting colder and colder. They could also answer that they'd got older, but that would be too honest, you don't say that until you're forty and you can look back. In your late twenties you go through your very private climate disaster and hope for better times.”
― Zoran Drvenkar, Sorry

“However, I will always remember those few hours, and the days of worry leading up to those few hours, and the years and years leading up to those days when I didn't know what it was like to have my soul wrapped inside the palm of a baby”
― heather b armstrong

“one motion of individual want sends trembles around a circle of dependents, until the whole helpless ring knocks and shakes like a tray of wineglasses in an unsteady waiter's hands. Any music they make is random, involuntary and brief; one can't be still unless they all are, and they never are.”
― Jim Lewis, Sister

“Death will be like that. We will be forever recognizing people we have never met.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“This should be a pleasant little interview. All I have to do is put on my scary face."
"You have a scary face?" Ingrid sounded skeptical.
"Yes," said Myfanwy indignantly. "I have a very scary face."
Ingrid surveyed her for a moment. "You may wish to take off the cardigan then, Rook Thomas," she advised tactfully. "The flowers on the pocket detract somewhat from your menace.”
― Daniel O'Malley, The Rook

“But define 'completely ridiculous shit,'" Duvall said. "Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don't understand that crap at all. As far as I'm concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark. It represents the nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the most zealous believer: behind all of your pretty songs and stained glass, this is what you really are. Shambling meat. Our true fear of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them. Our fear is that we are already zombies.”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“Fred said, “Man, I think he’s gonna make a fuckin’ suit of human skin, using the best parts from each of us.”
“Holy crap,” said John. “He’ll be gorgeous.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“My shame circuits burned out from overuse years ago.”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“The helpful thought for which you look
Is written somewhere in a book.”
― Edward Gorey

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country