World Quotes - Page 37

• It always happened like this: he would look and look for the keys to Satan’s Hearse and then finally he’d just give up and say, “Fine. I’ll take the fugging bus,” and on his way out the door, he’d see the keys. Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus; Katherines appear when you start to disbelieve the world contains another Katherine; and, sure enough, the Eureka moment arrived just as he began to accept it would never come.

  John Green

  Giving Up, Real, Keys

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.251, Penguin

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• They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.

  Lauren Oliver

  Country, Dust, Flames

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• Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.

  Don DeLillo

  Running, Strong, Fall

  Don DeLillo (2011). “The Body Artist”, p.3, Pan Macmillan

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• The life I walk binds my hands it makes me take things that I don’t understand I walk this dark world unknowing of what they hold true, forgetting the me I once knew, until you. The life I walk eternally was all I knew nothing more held me here to this earth until you. I feel the pain of every heart I take I feel the desire to replace all that I have grown to hate Darkness holds me close but the light still draws my empty soul The emptiness where I used pain to fill the hole no longer controls me, no longer calls me because of you.

  Abbi Glines

  Pain, Hate, Heart

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• If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.

  Gregg Olsen

  Wall, Liars, Lying

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• …life isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s an adventure to be savored. Let every challenge be a new mountain to climb, not an obstacle to get in your way and stop you. Yeah, it’ll be hard, but once you reach the summit of it, you’ll be able to see the world for what it really is. And at the top, it never seems to have been as difficult a feat to climb there as you first made it out to be. Most of all, you’ll know that you beat that mountain, and that you rule it. It does not rule you.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Adventure, Challenges, Mountain

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• There are special, strange gifted people in the world and they have to be treated with understanding

  John Knowles

  Acceptance, People, Understanding

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• It was a white-collar crime.” Illium gave her an odd look. “In the human world, such crimes are lightly punished, though they harm hundreds, leading some to choose death out of despair, while the man who beats a single person is considered the worse criminal.

  Nalini Singh

  Men, White, Despair

  Nalini Singh (2011). “Archangel's Consort”, p.123, Hachette UK

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• The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.

  Ann Voskamp

  Beautiful, Girl, Dog

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• A light was on in the kitchen. His mother sat at the kitchen table, as still as a statue. Her hands were clasped together, and she stared fixatedly at a small stain on the tablecloth. Gregor remembered seeing her that way so many nights after his dad had disappeared. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to scare her or shock her or ever give her any more pain. So, he stepped into the light of the kitchen and said the one thing he knew she wanted to hear most in the world. "Hey, Mom. We're home.

  Suzanne Collins

  Mom, Mother, Pain

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• In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

  Richard Yates

  Goal, Fields, Avoiding

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• Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Children, Identity

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• When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death-- not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing.

  Dan Wells

  Distance, Fall, Moon

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• Hazel had read enough books to know that a line like this one is the line down which your life breaks in two. And you have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it’s very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone. But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. And so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.

  Anne Ursu

  Book, Thinking, Two

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• Jack believed in something—he believed in white witches and sleighs pulled by wolves, and in the world the trees obscured. He believed that there were better things in the woods. He believed in palaces of ice and hearts to match. Hazel had, too. Hazel had believed in woodsmen and magic shoes and swanskins and the easy magic of a compass. She had believed that because someone needing saving they were savable. She had believed in these things, but not anymore. And this is why she had to rescue Jack, even though he might not hear what she had to tell him.

  Anne Ursu

  Heart, Ice, Shoes

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• Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.

  Steven Pinker

  Book, Opportunity, Games

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.211, Penguin

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• Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

  Aberjhani

  Voice, Identity, Poet

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• Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.

  Wallace Stevens

  Clouds, Understanding, Three

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.57, Vintage

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• ...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world.

  M.M. Kaye

  Life, Beautiful, Quality

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• Don't think about making women fit the world -- think about making the world fit women." 

  Gloria Steinem

  Thinking, Fit

  "Time to Raise the Profile of Women and Minorities in Science" by Brian Welle, Megan Smith, www.scientificamerican.com. October 1, 2014.

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• What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with, as poet Russell Edson once wonderfully phrased it, "teetering bulbs of dread and dream" - that is, only in association with certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard protective shells mounted atop mobile pedestals that roam the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts?

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Dream, Pedestal, Shells

  "Godel, Escher, Bach". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, observer.com. 1979.

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• This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Book, Doors, Cells

  FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Sep 17, 2014

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• There's nothing more aggravating in the world than the midnight sniffling of the person you've decided to hate.

  Shannon Hale

  Hate, Midnight, Persons

  Shannon Hale (2010). “Book of a Thousand Days”, p.109, A&C Black

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• There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives." "And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?" "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Son, Two, People

  Brandon Sanderson (2010). “The Way of Kings”, p.155, Macmillan

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• True New Yorkers do not really seek information about the outside world. They feel that if anything is not in New York it is not likely to be interesting.

  Jimmy Breslin

  New York, Interesting, Information

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