a beautiful sentence

"Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was..."

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:12:30 +1100

“Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened.”

- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

"A moment was not a single moment at all, but rather an infinite number of different moments,..."

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:18:18 +1100

“A moment was not a single moment at all, but rather an infinite number of different moments, depending on who was seeing things and how.”

- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards

"The government to you is what God is to agnostics—only to be invoked when your own well being..."

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:00:17 +1000

“The government to you is what God is to agnostics—only to be invoked when your own well being is at stake.”

- Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh

"It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it."

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:17:57 +1000

“It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.”

- Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

"There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and..."

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 09:33:04 +1000

“There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.”

- State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

"I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always..."

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:43:00 +1000

“I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”

- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

"The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which..."

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:03:38 +1000

“The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.”

- Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

"How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from..."

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:22:30 +1000

“How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?”

- The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh

"I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the..."

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:54:15 +1000

“I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.”

- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

"It is…difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated,..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:13:19 +1000

“It is…difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.”

- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

"Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there’. I..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:16:27 +1000

“Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there’. I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”

- Looking for Alaska, John Green

"Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:18:20 +1000

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”

- The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

"First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 03:37:46 +1000

“First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.”

- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

"For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 01:36:10 +1000

“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing-the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.”

- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

"You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:53:02 +1000

“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.”

- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:15:18 +1000

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It was the seahorses themselves that she wanted to see as soon as she took her eyes away, and that..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:19:13 +1000

“It was the seahorses themselves that she wanted to see as soon as she took her eyes away, and that she wanted to see even when she was looking at them.”

- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:30:36 +1000

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

- Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 14:36:00 +1000

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

- The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

"Lingering here, bored and comfortable, was a form of self-punishment tinged with pleasure, or the..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:54:07 +1000

“Lingering here, bored and comfortable, was a form of self-punishment tinged with pleasure, or the expectation of it: if she went away, something bad might happen or, worse, something good, something she could not afford to miss.”

- Atonement, Ian McEwan