Block Quotes - Page 34

• They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!

  Tennessee Williams

  Desire, Fields, Six

  A Streetcar Named Desire sc. 1 (1947)

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• I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Jobs, Memories, Twilight

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “Twilight: Twilight”, p.8, Hachette UK

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• You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

  William Shakespeare

  Sassy, Stones, Insult

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 1, l. [39]

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• As we're standing there I realize we're almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light side of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.

  Lauren Oliver

  Dark, Thinking, Light

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• ...Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases. Until her discovery of Something Fresh on the top shelf of Ruth's bookshelf one bored summer morning, Frankie's leisure reading had consister primarily of paperback mysteries she found on the spinning racks at the public library down the block from her house, and the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn.

  E. Lockhart

  Summer, Morning, Reading

  E. Lockhart (2014). “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks”, p.72, Hot Key Books

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• It seems like suffering's the only time we can see what's essential. If peace ever comes back I'm making a vow: I'll design myself special glasses. They'll block out whether people are fat or thin or beautiful or weird-looking, whether they have pimples or birthmarks or different coloured skin. They'll do everything suffering's done for us, but without the pain. I'm going to wear those glasses for the rest of my life.

  John Marsden

  Beautiful, Pain, Glasses

  John Marsden (2013). “The Night is for Hunting”, p.150, Hachette UK

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• Hey." Her grin grew as she glanced from me to Nash, then back. "You're blocking the fridge." "There's a cooler in the other room." Nash nodded toward the main part of the house. Emma shrugged. "Yeah, but no one's making out in front of it.

  Rachel Vincent

  House, Hey, Rooms

  Rachel Vincent (2010). “My Soul to Keep”, p.11, Harlequin

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• when you want something so desperately, you shake with the need for it. you tell yourself that you don't need more than one sip, because it's just the taste you crave, and once it's on your tongue you will be able to make it last alifetime. you dream of it at night. you see a thousand mile-high obstacles between where you stand and what you want, and you convince yourself you have the power to hurdle them. you tell yourself this even when, leaping the first block, you wind up bruised and bloodied and flattened.

  Jodi Picoult

  Dream, Night, Wind

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• Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible... It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Integrity, Eye, Men

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• Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

  Annie Dillard

  Silence, World, Chips

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.65, Canongate Books

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• My daughter squealed again and both Bubba and I winced. It’s not an attractive sound, that. It’s high-pitched and it enters your ear canals like hot glass. No matter how much I love my daughter, I will never love her squealing. Or maybe I will. Maybe I do. Driving down 93, I realized once and for all, that I love the things that chafe. The things that fill me with stress so total I can’t remember when a block of it didn’t rest on top of my heart. I love what, if broken, can’t be repaired. What, if lost can’t be replaced. I love my burdens.

  Dennis Lehane

  Daughter, Stress, Heart

  "Moonlight Mile". Book by Dennis Lehane, 2011.

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• ... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

  Alan Garner

  Thinking, Waiting, Arthur

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• When stars collide, like you and I, no shadow blocks the sun" - The One

  Elton John

  Stars, Shadow, Sun

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• And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

  Tennessee Williams

  Writing, Artist, Together

  Tennessee Williams (1994). “Collected Stories”, p.274, New Directions Publishing

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• We stood back-to-back, blocking and striking in harmony; sometimes it felt like his arms and legs were an extension of me. I could count on him to keep them off me from behind.

  Ann Aguirre

  Legs, Arms, Sometimes

  Ann Aguirre (2011). “Enclave”, p.194, Macmillan

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• Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help. Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you? Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing. Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.

  Cornelia Funke

  Lonely, Friendly, Alive

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• Did I hear it's going to be someone's birthday?" a familiar male's voice said from behind me. I didnt even bother turning around and continued walking, but that didn't stop my nemesis from disturbing me. He jumped in front of me, blocking my way. "It's been a whole year, has it?" he asked in a syrupy tone. "Maybe this birthday I'll finally give you what you've always wanted.

  Ellen Schreiber

  Years, Voice, Giving

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• There's a gang of boys on bikes blocking the road ahead. They've got their hoods up, cigarettes shielded. The sky's a really strange colour and there's hardly anyone else about. I slow right down. "What shall I do?" "Reverse," Zoey says. "They're not going to move." I wind down the window. "Oi!" I yell "Move your arses!" They turn languid, shift lazily to the edge of the road and grin as I blow kisses at them. Zoey looks stunned, "What's got into you?" "Nothing- I just haven't learned reversing yet.

  Jenny Downham

  Moving, Kissing, Blow

  Jenny Downham (2007). “Before I Die”, David Fickling Books

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• Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Strong, Writing, Heart

  "Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

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• Why do you lie" I ask her. "To block the truth." Fair enough. Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.

  Rachel Cohn

  Nice, Lying, Needs

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• The secretary moved in to block Simon as I followed Thierry into the office. As the door closed, I heard her whisper, "I think it's very sweet, you sticking up for your brother like that." "I'm not trying to be sweet," Simon said, raising his voice so Thierry could hear. "I'm trying to be fair. But apparently no one's interested in that.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Sweet, Brother, Thinking

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• The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.

  Penelope Lively

  Grief, Eye, Hands

  Penelope Lively (2007). “Moon Tiger”, p.58, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable... Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying...We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Animal, Meat Industry, Sick

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• We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got that moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered , whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the biulding block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.

  Libba Bray

  Baby, Stars, Memories

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• Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth...all those glorious words.

  Cornelia Funke

  Loneliness, Voice, Magic

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