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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“That night Serena dressed to meet Zahi. She used a metallic green eye shadow on the top lids and the outer half of the bottom lids so that her eyes looked like a jungle cat's. Two coats of black mascara completed them, and then she smudged a light gold gloss on her lips. She took a red skirt from the closet. The material was snakelike, shimmering black, then red. She slipped it on and tied the black strings of a matching bib halter around her neck and waist. She painted red-and-black glittering flames on her legs and rubbed glossy shine on her arms and chest. Finally, she took the necklace she had bought at the garage sale and fixed it in her hairline like the headache bands worn by flappers back in the 1920's. The jewels hung on her forehead, making her look like an exotic maharani. She sat at her dressing table and painted her toenails and fingernails gold, then looked in the mirror. A thrill jolted through her as it always did. No matter how many times she saw her reflection after the transformation, her image always astonished her. She looked supernatural, a spectral creature, green eyes large, skin glowing, eyelashes longer, thicker. Everything about her was more forceful and elegant- an enchantress goddess. She couldn't pull away from her reflection. It was as if the warrior in her had claimed the night.”

“That night she saw him for the first time spreading magic into the air through his melody. A very decent and smiling figure was fascinating to the audience. His tender, talented fingers were moving on the strings to fill the air with his profound presence. Completely unaware of her existence; he skilfully detached her from the outer world. His chords worked. She was getting lost. For her, only two souls existed in the auditorium. One was playing mesmerizing tunes and the other was relishing it to the fullest. She was breathing the air he was releasing through his raga. She left the hall late at night, feeling overwhelmed by his accomplishment. But something she left behind. Not her heart but a sign, a vibe that they may see each other again in the near future.”

“That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown’s behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful. Chelaol would call this count of the dead another ‘good start,’ Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives. Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents. She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don’t ever be like this,' she urged. 'don’t think that it doesn’t matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance.”

“That night the Salt Fish Girl came back looking exhausted and dishevelled. A Malaysian girl who worked at her factory had been stricken with hysteria, had gone to the toilet and begun screaming and tearing at her hair. She had been working at the factory for nearly three years and was half blind and bored out of her wits with the tedious repetitiveness of the work. Her hysteria had provoked others, until half the women in the factory were screaming and howling and throwing themselves against the walls in sheer frustration with the dreariness of their toil and the damage it was exacting from their once young bodies and once bright faces.”

“That night, there was a girl at the dance. I gave her a rose. She was so happy. I didn't understand why she cared so much about a rose, a stupid rose that was missing petals. I understand now. Now that all the beauty of my old life is gone, I crave it like food. A beautiful thing like this rose -- I almost want to eat it, to swallow it whole to replace the beauty I've lost. That's how that girl was too.”

“That night, was not an unusual night at all. Although it was quiet and still, Daniela sat, keeping vigil. A single star swam, brighter than the rest, in the cosmos. And then, it plummeted softly, like a bird settling on Earth. Daniela drew the curtain again, and crouched in the fetal position, slept as best she could. Even the air smelled foreign.”

“That night was not like the other night, if it had been I would have known. For when I try and think of that night, on the canal-bank, I find nothing, no night properly speaking, nothing but Molloy in the ditch and perfect silence, and behind my closed lids the little night and its little lights, faint at first, then flaming and extinguished, now ravening, now fed, as fire by filth and martyrs.”

“That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine. Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us. Or should I say ideal. Neither of us had ever seen Venice.”

“That night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said, "Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much." "Can I learn how, ma'am?" said Jim Bowie. "No, J.B. Boys don't bake pies," Mother said. "Why not?" he said. "They have wives who make pies for them." "But I don't have a wife." "Darling, I'm sure you will have a very nice one someday when you're older, and she'll make you many pies. Calpurnia, would you care to serve?" Was there any way I could have a wife, too? I wondered as I cut through the browned C and promptly shattered the entire crust.”

“That night, you turn in your bed to watch the moon rise, and once more see what a small coin it is against the darkness, and how everything else is a mystery, and you know nothing at all except the moonlight is beautiful – white rivers running together along the bare boughs of the trees – and somewhere, for someone, life is becoming moment by moment unbearable. (From Beaver Moon – The Suicide of a Friend, in Twelve Moons by Mary Oliver)”

“That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.”

“That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all.”

“That no free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles; and by the recognition by all citizens that they have duties as well as rights, and that such rights cannot be enjoyed save in a society where law is respected and due process is observed.”