Range Quotes - Page 18

• Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship. I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies. You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.

  Pat Conroy

  Ocean, Mountain Ranges, Sight

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• I don't know what it is, but I ache for it each day. It's as though I have eyes, but there are colors I cannot see. As though I have ears, but there's a range of notes I cannot hear.

  Franny Billingsley

  Eye, Color, Each Day

  Franny Billingsley (2001). “The Folk Keeper”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.

  C. S. Lewis

  Elephants, Track, Missing

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “The World's Last Night: And Other Essays”, p.72, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Clearly, I see it. I was just about to leave when I found her kneeling there. A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clucthing at a book.

  Markus Zusak

  Book, Mountain Ranges, Kneeling

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.13, RH Childrens Books

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• Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Appreciation, Wine, Civilization

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2197, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.

  David Sheff

  Mean, Difficult Times, Problem

  David Sheff (2009). “Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.

  John Wyndham

  Book, Men, Thinking

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• As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.

  James Gleick

  Book, Gun, Technology

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• I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.

  Markus Zusak

  Color, Soon Enough, Over You

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.4, RH Childrens Books

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• We are Bay Aryans from Berkeley: prepare to be reengineered in an attractive range of color schemes for your safety and comfort!

  Charles Stross

  Color, Safety, Comfort

  Lucius Shepard, Charles Stross (2004). “Two Trains Running”

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• she acquired the certainty of the expansion of time by depth of emotion, range and infinite multiplicity of experience.

  Anais Nin

  Expansion, Depth, Emotion

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• The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Reflection, People

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• and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

  George Eliot

  Discovery, Agony, Soul

  George Eliot (2016). “Adam Bede: Top Novelist Focus”, p.83, 谷月社

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• Cats have a sort of game they play when they meet. A player alternates between watching the strange cat and ignoring her, grooming or examining everything around herself - a dead leaf, a cloud - with complete absorption. It is almost accidental how the two cats approach, a sidelong step and then the sitting again. This often ends in a flurry of spitting and slashing claws, too fast to see clearly, and then one or the other (or both) of the cats leap out of range. The game can have one exchange or many - and is not so different from the first meetings of women.

  Kij Johnson

  Cat, Player, Clouds

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• If I've learned anything in twenty-nine years, it's that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift - bad choice of words - is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

  Douglas Coupland

  Jobs, Children, Night

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• What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

  Douglas Coupland

  Humanity, Plight, Moral

  "Hey Nostradamus!". Book by Douglas Coupland, 2003.

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• The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair.

  Connie Willis

  Revenge, Pride, Wrath

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• All life is rife with possibilities. Seeds have possibilities, but all their tomorrows are caught by the patterning of their life cycle. Animals have possibilities that are greater than that of a fir tree or a blade of grass. Still, though, for most animals, the pattern of instinct, the patterns of their lives, are very strong. Humanity has a far greater range of possibilities, especially the very young. Who will children grow up to be? Who will they marry, what will they believe, what will they create? Creation is a very powerful seed of possibility.

  Patricia Briggs

  Strong, Children, Growing Up

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• Finally the world would see my full range of comedy characters - from grouchy librarian to Russian librarian.

  Tina Fey

  Character, World, Comedy

  Tina Fey (2011). “Bossypants”, p.108, Hachette UK

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• Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.

  Tana French

  Worry, Anxiety, Mazes

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• There was no warning before the outbreaks began. One day, things were normal; the next, people who were supposedly dead were getting up and attacking anything that came into range. This was upsetting for everyone involved, except for the infected, who were past being upset about that sort of thing.

  Mira Grant

  Past, People, Upset

  Mira Grant (2012). “Countdown: A Newsflesh Novella”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• At such close range, even she could hit a vampire full force in the shoulder, surprising him considerably. He paused in his attack. “Well, my word! You can’t threaten me, you’re pregnant!

  Gail Carriger

  Vampire, Force, Shoulders

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• That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he’s lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.

  Walter Mosley

  Memories, Thinking, Doors

  "Mosley's 'Last Days' Restores Memory, But At A Cost". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 6, 2010.

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• The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

  Noam Chomsky

  Smart, Thinking, Views

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “How the World Works”, p.234, Soft Skull Press

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• That should have been my strategy! By the time I’ve worked through the emotions of surprise, admiration, anger, jealousy, and frustration, I’m watching that reddish mane of hair disappear into the trees well out of shooting range.

  Suzanne Collins

  Frustration, Hair, Should Have

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.278, Scholastic Inc.

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