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The buildings gradually grew sparser along the road, and Gordon shuddered. Leaving Pest [the part of Budapest east of the Danube], even if that only meant venturing to the city's outskirts, invariably gave him an unpleasant feeling. He couldn't say why. It was as if he had wound up in a foreign world whose rules he could only guess at.

See what mark the real [Emperor] Honorius made upon the men and things that surrounded him. None. It is impossible to imagine a character more utterly destitute of moral colour, of self-determining energy, than that of the younger son of [the Emperor] Theodosius.

Through the streets [of Rome] walked these great nobles, ruffling it in brilliant tunics adorned with the figures of animals, and over these a multitude of thin gauzy mantles to which they were forever calling attention by waving their left hands backwards and forwards and by all sorts of affected gestures.

An eminent advocate, named Africanus, desired to be removed from one province, the affairs of which he had administered, to another, and Theodosius, the master of the horse, had favored his suit. The petition happened to be presented to the emperor when he was in one of his surliest moods. 'Go,' said he, 'Count Theodosius, and change his stature by a head, who wants to change his province.'

To an accurate and impartial observer it must be clear that at any rate from the Gothic race no danger need be feared by the mighty Empire of Rome. But the iron nature of that race had not yet been passed through the fire.

I know that as soon as I open [Dante's Divine Comedy] tomorrow I will discover things I did not see before. I know that this book will go on, beyond my waking life, and beyond ours.

The closer evening came, the more frequently hese fits of shuddering passed through him. Footsteps, voices in the house, people talking in the courtyard, where a tarantass had already been harnessed for the trip to the station -- these sounds came o him the way they do when you are sick in bed and ordinary life continues all around you....

"This is when the night grows strict and cruel."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because this is a secret time, when only the rooster and the owl can keep awake. This is when the Lord himself listens to the earth, and the most important stars begin to play, and the ice holes freeze in the rivers and the oceans."

Then the days began to pass steadily and slowly, like the pilgrims who walked and walked on the highway past the farm and often carried long conversations with her as they rested. They taught her patience and reliance on God, whose name they pronounced with dull despondency. Above all else, they taught her one rule: don't think.

Hollis lay fully dressed on the embroidered velvet spread of the Piblokto Madness bed, watching the faint oscillation of huge curved shadows thrown by the halogens in the birdcage library, dialed down until they were almost off. In some sense, she decided, she literally no longer knew where she was.

["Mall Ninjas" are] young men who dress to feel they'll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren't, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next. Or the ones who're actually having to BE soldiers, of course. But many of the rest have gone gear-queer, to one extent or another.

It had been quite a while since he found anything to read for pleasure. There were a few expensively bound and weirdly neutered bookazines here, rearranged daily by the housekeepers, but he knew from glancing through them that these were bland advertisements for being wealthy, wealthy and deeply, witheringly unimaginative.

There are few creatures more stupid than the average singer. It would appear that the fractional adjustment of larynx, glottis and sinuses required in the production of beautiful sounds must almost invariably be accompanied -- so perverse are the habits of Providence -- by the witlessness of a barnyard fowl.

I don't write to communicate. I just write, the same way I take a crap or scratch myself. Because I have to. Then if somebody is willing to give me money for it, fine. But basically, I write to save myself. It's a very selfish business. Now the left comes along—they try to claim me. The punks come along—they try to claim me.... But I'm not there to be claimed. I'm just there to write the next page.

It's like children. You know they're very brilliant between the ages of three and four and one half. They can sit and tell you things. They're like ancient philosophers because they haven't been taught anything yet from the outside. They have this knowledge that's already there—they're born with it and it hasn't been tinkered with yet.

In Moscow Patriarch Pimen answered my question, reluctantly but nevertheless: Yes, God's children are not only the good ones but the bad ones too ....

I constantly say of myself, that I'm more of a recorder, more of a literary reporter—as well as a lover of mystification—and as for my palavering, that's my defence against politics....

I have the feeling I've forgotten something but, for the past fifteen minutes at least, I've been asking myself what.

A game-cock in the stableyard, deprived of every spark of his accustomed animation, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a corner; a donkey, moping with drooping head under the narrow roof of an outhouse, appeared from his meditative and miserable countenance to be contemplating suicide.

Lounging near the doors, and in remote corners, were various knots of silly young men, displaying various varieties of puppyism and stupidity; amusing all sensible people near them with their folly and conceit; and happily thinking themselves the objects of general admiration—a wise and merciful dispensation which no good man will quarrel with.

Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,
A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;
A stone at the head, a stone at the feet,
A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat;
Rank grass overhead, and damp clay around,
Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground!

Upon all little pints o’ breedin’, I know I may trust you as vell as if it was my own self. So I’ve only this here one little bit of adwice to give you. If ever you gets to up’ards o’ fifty, and feels disposed to go a-marryin’ anybody—no matter who—jist you shut yourself up in your own room, if you’ve got one, and pison yourself off hand. Hangin’s wulgar, so don’t you have nothin’ to say to that. Pison yourself....

‘I won’t be moved another step,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘unless Winkle carries that gun of his in a different manner.’
‘How am I to carry it?’ said the wretched Winkle.
‘Carry it with the muzzle to the ground,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘It’s so unsportsmanlike.’
‘I don’t care whether it’s unsportsmanlike or not,’ replied Mr. Pickwick; ‘I am not going to be shot in a wheel-barrow to please anybody.’

‘MR. BLOTTON had no hesitation in saying that he had not—he had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was bound to acknowledge that, personally, he entertained the highest regard and esteem for the honourable gentleman; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view. (Hear, hear.)

I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong.

It was plain to Dennis that Tony had not wanted to come out on a party, but it was also plain that he was always doing things he didn't want to because he was afraid some day something real might happen and he wouldn't be on hand to see it.

He wouldn't go out with the Nicolais to their lace-panty club. He'd go out alone. The lone wolf. There was a savage delight in being a lone wolf. He didn't have to account to anyone nor did he intend to.

I calmly go where there is screaming, where I am certain the devils are committing murder. I avoid danger while accusing myself of cowardice, loathing my own reactions. In the trunk there are a few poems, unpublished, as are all of my poems about devils and hell. Enough of them there to get me pumped full of lead without anyone hesitating.

I am writing you this note while sitting on the edge of my great grandmother's grave in the high mountains of Leogane. I feel this is the only place in the world where I truly belong. This is the place I had in mind when I had Tante Atie stand with you in the middle of the cemetery plot and pronounce, "Walk straigh, you are in the presence of family."

[Billie Holiday's] work took on, gradually, a destructive cast, as it so often does with the greatly gifted who are doomed to repeat endlessly their own heights of inspiration.