Disaster Quotes - Page 37

• We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

  Franz Kafka

  Suicide, Book, Grieving

  Franz Kafka (1979). “The Basic Kafka”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

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• For the first time, I was the center of attention. Everyone watched me as if I were a bomb. Would I explode and cause a disaster or would I pop and cause a miracle?

  Maria V. Snyder

  Miracle, Attention, Bombs

  Maria V. Snyder (2010). “Inside Out”, p.158, Harlequin

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• It was nice standing out in the darkness, in the damp grass, with spring coming on and a feeling in my heart of imminent disaster.

  Michael Chabon

  Spring, Nice, Heart

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Wonder Boys”, p.58, Open Road Media

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• Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race.

  Gore Vidal

  Race, Humans, Monotheism

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• Poor Earthworm,' the Ladybird said, whispering in James's ear. 'He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy.

  Roald Dahl

  Hate, Ears, Whispering

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• Where did you learn to ride anyway? Disasters-R-Us? (Tory)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2008). “Acheron: A Dark-Hunter Novel”, p.620, Macmillan

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• It is the way, isn't it? With humans and free thought. They only learn through terrible mistakes. Free thought does not make wisdom. Instead it creates enough space for men to commit terrible folly, from which the survivors learn through disaster.

  Joel Shepherd

  Mistake, Men, Space

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• You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.

  Kim Edwards

  Missing, Trying, Rest Of Your Life

  Kim Edwards (2006). “The Memory Keeper's Daughter: A Novel”, p.84, Penguin

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• And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?

  Amy Tan

  Betrayal, Years, Piano

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• ....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.

  Jane Goodall

  Children, Good Life, Selfish

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• The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.

  Gregory Maguire

  Real, Dragons, Evil

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• For him , life was a coin that had disaster on one side and waiting for disaster on the other

  J.R. Ward

  Waiting, Coins, Sides

  J.R. Ward (2008). “Lover Enshrined: A Novel of The Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.72, Penguin

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• My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the planet—that’s not a problem. The problem is that I just can’t live anywhere on the planet.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Travel, Patient, Problem

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage”, p.112, A&C Black

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• No, Simi. No food. (Astrid) ‘No, Simi. No food.’ You sound like akri. ‘Don’t eat that, Simi, you’ll cause an ecological disaster.’ What is an ecological disaster, that’s what I want to know? Akri says it’s me on hunger binge, but I don’t think that’s quite right, but that’s all he’ll say about it. (Simi)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Thinking, Sound, Want

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• In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  World, Sometimes, Disorder

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.112, A&C Black

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• So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Religious, Art, Giving

  "Truth and Method". Book by Hans-Georg Gadamer (p. 76), 1960.

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• All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

  Erica Jong

  Believe, Comforting, Might

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.281, Open Road Media

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• I won’t lie to you—it was hilarious. Yes, we were in trouble, yes, this was a disaster, and so one and so forth, but I have to say, seeing those upturned faces, the looks, was bout the best thing that happened to us since we’d come to New York.

  James Patterson

  New York, Lying, Looks

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride Boxed Set #1”, p.202, Hachette UK

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• Are you sure you want me to go after Christina? Lately I've kind of thought I might just give up on that. Plus, didn't you and I need to gaze into each other's eyes first? How will I know how to gaze at Christina? And my pebble kicking? Disaster.

  Jaclyn Moriarty

  Giving Up, Eye, Needs

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• Emma, I'm sorry, I can't help you. This is a disaster. You're completely vulnerable. It's like going into battle in a nightie.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Sorry, Battle, Helping

  Sophie Kinsella (2004). “Can You Keep a Secret?”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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• And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty.

  Anita Shreve

  Air, Blood, Body

  Anita Shreve (1998). “The Pilot's Wife”, Little, Brown

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• -"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?" -"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus.

  Iain Banks

  Hands, Voice, Trying

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• Even in an apocalypse like this, surely running out of Coke qualified as a disaster.

  Rachel Caine

  Running, Coke, Apocalypse

  Rachel Caine (2010). “Ghost Town: The Morganville Vampires”, p.225, Penguin

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• In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Cheer, Flower, Home

  Charlotte Bronte (2010). “Shirley and The Professor”, p.666, Everyman's Library

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