Instant Quotes - Page 32

• Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really love someone you don't know. But, I'm not so sure. Love doesn't seem to follow a plan; it's not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature--an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild relentless energy that is beyond your simple attempts at control.

  Deb Caletti

  Simple, Love Is, Sure Love

  Deb Caletti (2007). “The Nature of Jade”, p.225, Simon and Schuster

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• A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.

  James Joyce

  Angel, Errors, Way

  James Joyce (1992). “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, p.132, Wordsworth Editions

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• I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations. And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

  Stephen King

  Dream, Memories, Children

  Stephen King (2008). “Duma Key: A Novel”, p.478, Simon and Schuster

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• Are you badly hurt?" "Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Hurt, Kings, May

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• "Connected" is the triumphal cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty, and presumptuous... I don't doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.

  Paul Theroux

  Confused, Communication, Ideas

  "Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings". Book by Paul Theroux, 2000.

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• And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Together Again, Back Together, Dear

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• All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Change, Nature, Business

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.250, Yale University Press

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• He, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.

  Ayn Rand

  Years, Looks, Moments

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.106, Penguin

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• Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.

  Margaret Atwood

  Betrayal, Silence, Darkness

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• We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for a while. Maybe even forever. That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.

  Sarah Dessen

  Life, Running, Years

  "The Truth About Forever". Book by Sarah Dessen, 2004.

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• An eternity of wishing to speak directly to my Creator - I thought in despair - and this is how He finally contacts me? Through AOL Instant Messenger?

  A.M. Jenkins

  Wish, Despair, Messengers

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• Anyone who can read history with both hemispheres of the brain knows that a world comes to an end every instant--the waves of time leave washed up behind themselves only dry memories of a closed & petrified past--imperfect memory, itself already dying & autumnal. And every instant also gives birth to a world--despite the cavillings of philosophers & scientists whose bodies have grown numb--a present in which all impossibilities are renewed, where regret & premonition fade to nothing in one presential hologrammatical psychomantric gesture.

  Hakim Bey

  Memories, Regret, Past

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.34, Autonomedia

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• It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she's going to fall in love with him.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Falling In Love, Heart, Men

  Orhan Pamuk (2006). “Snow”, p.222, Vintage

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• We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

  Charles Frazier

  Strong, Pain, Grief

  Charles Frazier (2006). “Thirteen Moons: A Novel”, p.393, Random House

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• There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.

  Frank Herbert

  Father, Men, Flesh

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.96, Penguin

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• And then I feel as if I'm witnessing a miracle, as ever so slowly she raises her face towards the moon. I watch her drink in the sight, sensing the flood of memories she's unleashed and wanting nothing more than to let her know I'm here. But instead I stay where I am and stare up at the moon as well. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Memories, Moon, Sight

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• Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Government, Curiosity, Desire

  "Mason & Dixon". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1997.

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• She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending... . And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind.

  Ian Mcewan

  Moving, Waves Breaking, Secret

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• Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort. The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature's cry to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: "Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster.

  Loren Eiseley

  Dog, Men, Cities

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• A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup.

  J. G. Ballard

  Soup, Kind, Fame

  J. G. Ballard (2009). “The Atrocity Exhibition”, p.25, HarperCollins UK

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• She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. (last lines)

  Kate Chopin

  Dog, Father, Distance

  Kate Chopin (2015). “The Awakening & Other Short Stories”, p.166, Booklassic

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• Shigure: JUST LISTEN TO ME FOR A SECOND, KYO! Kyo: SHUT UP! I HATE THIS! DO YOU REALLY GET THAT MUCH ENJOYMENT FROM PLAYING WITH PEOPLES' LIVES?! Shigure: Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do--BUT THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! Kyo: Man, your persuasion skills SUCK! Tohru: Um, welcome home. Dinner's- Kyo: NOT HUNGRY! Shigure: KYO! DON'T TAKE THIS OUT ON TOHRU! And come back to the entrance hall this instant and take those shoes off! Yuki: He's right, Shigure. You really do suck at persuasion.

  Natsuki Takaya

  Hate, Home, Men

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• At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

  Leo Tolstoy

  Believe, Dust, Hands

  Leo Tolstoy (2015). “Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Collections”, p.761, 谷月社

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• It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

  Voltaire

  Mother, Men, Maturity

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.108, Penguin

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• 2. The instant the doors open, you want to push forward as hard as possible, in an effort to get onto the train without letting anybody off. This is very important. If anybody does get off, it is legal to tackle him and drag him back on.

  Dave Barry

  Doors, Effort, Important

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Greatest Hits”, p.67, Ballantine Books

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