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A Quotes

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All A Quotes

“A monster stands on the far shore of a glowing lake, waiting for the barge bearing his bride to return. He had stood in this very spot before, when he was a man and a king, when he played on his violin the image of a young woman through her music—her thoughts, her passions, her dreams. He had stood in this spot several times before that, greeting each bride as she made that last journey from life to death, but he never played his violin for them.”

“A Montana statue holds that a river has a right to overwhelm its banks and inundate its floodplain. Well, that's interesting, because it's not a right that we assign to the river. The river has earned it through centuries of deluging and shaping the floodplain, and the floodplain has a right to its rampaging river. They've earned their rights through a kind of reciprocal action.”

“A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it.”

“A month ago it would have been my dream just to be in his bedroom watching a movie, but now it’s torture because I want so much more. It’s like my entire conscious state has been reduced to this toxic blend of hope and uncertainty. I hate that I have to act cool and almost pretend I don’t like him when in fact I do, because, God forbid, I come across as desperate for attention or a little clingy, which everyone should know are perfectly natural human behaviors, after all. Ugh!”

“A month has passed since I’ve written, but it has seemed to pass much more slowly. Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part. I simply drift along like the messages I write you. I do not know where I am going or when I will get there. Even work does not take the pain away. I may be diving for my own pleasure or showing others how to do so, but when I return to the shop, it seems empty without you. I stock and order as I always did, but even now, I sometimes glance over my shoulder without thinking and call for you. As I write this note to you, I wonder when, or if, things like that will ever stop. Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face—I know it is an impossibility, but I cannot help myself. My search for you is a never-ending quest that is doomed to fail. You and I had talked about what would happen if we were forced apart by circumstance, but I cannot keep the promise I made to you that night. I am sorry, my darling, but there will never be another to replace you. The words I whispered to you were folly, and I should have realized it then. You—and you alone—have always been the only thing I wanted, and now that you are gone, I have no desire to find another. Till death do us part, we whispered, and I’ve come to believe that the words will ring true until the day finally comes when I, too, am taken from this world.”

“A monumental decision such as starting a family requires persuasive dissertations, licences, spreadsheets and field research. That's what I assumed until one night when we were lying in bed and, if I recall correctly, I asked Tracy if we were ready to have a family now, and she said sure. That was it.”

“A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.”

“A moose can and will murder the unwary in ways obvious to improbable. They can trample you, the pressure of tons of muscle and bone turning your own into jelly. Their antlers pose an understandable risk not merely of goring at thirty-five miles an hour but picking up your limp body and tossing it over a cliff. As though this was an insufficient threat, their nostrils may house bumblebee-like Cephenemyia ulrichii, flies unable to distinguish between moose nasal cavities and human eye sockets when spraying their larvae. You wouldn’t die, but you would need immediate medical attention to prevent significant injury and certain embarrassment when your friends found out.”

“A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.”

“A moral do êxtase é contrária à do processo; debaixo da sua protecção toda a gente faz o que quer; já cada qual pode chuchar no dedo à vontade, desde a mais tenra infância até ao fim do liceu, e trata-se de uma liberdade a que ninguém estará disposto a renunciar; olhemos à nossa volta no metro; cada um entre todos, sentado, tem o dedo num dos orifícios do rosto; no ouvido, na boca, no nariz; nenhum se sente visto pelos outros e cada um pensa em escrever um livro em que possa dizer o seu inimitável e único eu que escarafuncha o nariz; ninguém ouve ninguém, toda a gente escreve e todos e cada um escrevem como se dança o rock: sozinho, para si mesmo, concentrado em si, e contudo fazendo os mesmos movimentos que os outros todos fazem.”

“A moral economy is either a moral enterprise that is guided by a genuine spiritual desire to create one, even at the expense of strictly economic considerations, or it will degenerate into another profit-oriented and exploitative use of resources. Citizens who are not prepared to pay higher prices to support such an economy and volunteer their own efforts on its behalf are not likely to be prepared for self-governance in any form. Hence the need for a new municipal politics to become an intensely educational and participatory experience at every level of civic life.”