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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“Well, if you can accept that I’m a great big geeky fangirl, then I guess I can accept that you’re a skeptic and a realist.”

“Well, if you like honestly,” Ro said, following him over to Keefe, “it stinks here, too. Everything smells like...” “Fresh air?” Sophie guessed. “Awww, my girl keeps getting snarkier and snarkier,” Keefe said proudly. “I’m not your girl,” Sophie snapped back. “And don’t think I’m done being mad at you!”

“Well, if you must know,” he said, “I delivered an extremely well-considered speech, touching on the topics of the importance of family, the virtue of forgiveness, the need for all Shadowhunters to be allied in the fight against demons, the smallness of the sacrifice being asked of her, the pointlessness of revenge, and, of course, the giving nature of the season.” “Oh?” “Yes,” said Will eagerly. “And then, I counted banknotes totalling two hundred British pounds sterling directly into her hand.” “Will!” said Gideon, shocked. “I told you,” Will said airily. “Everyone likes money. Even mad revenge-seeking sisters, with the dried blood of their husbands on their frocks, like money.”

“Well, if you really want to know, I’m basically in love with a boy who is totally wrong for me in every way but I just can’t forget about him or give him up even though I should because he did something that really hurt me and he may have even lied to me but I don’t even seem to care that he did so and now he’s just made it harder for me to dislike him because he said a really nice apology and told me everything that I wanted to hear and so I forgave him even though I still deep down harbour some resentment towards him but I’m sure he saw it in my eyes and heard it in my words that I’m still completely pathetically madly head over heels for him and would still love him even if he did it all over again and broke my heart into a thousand pieces.”

“Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you’ve got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age tunes, nothing too druid-chanty, seep out of the hi-fi to gently massage your cerebral cortex. Feel good? Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That’s the gift of being alone. Then a bozo in a CAT Diesel Power cap barges in. What’s the chance that you are the best, most special person in the room now? Fifty-fifty. If you both were dealt two cards, those would be your odds of holding the winning hand. Now imagine ten people are in the room. It’s cramped. You’re elbow to elbow, aerosolized dandruff floats in the air, and the candle’s lavender scent is complicated by BO tones, with a tuna sandwich finish. What are the chances you’re the best, most special person in the room? If you were handed cards, you might expect to be crowned one time out of ten. People, as ever, are the problem. The more people there are, the tougher you have it. Just by sitting next to you, they fuck you up, as if life were nothing more than a bus ride to hell (which it is). But what if you moved to another seat? Changed position? Your seat is everything. It can give you room to relax, to contemplate your next move. Or it might instigate your unraveling.”

“Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.”

“Well, in my view what would ultimately be necessary would be a breakdown of the nation-state system―because I think that's not a viable system. It's not necessarily the natural form of human organization; in fact, it's a European invention pretty much. The modern nation-state system basically developed in Europe since the medieval period, and it was extremely difficult for it to develop: Europe has a very bloody history, an extremely savage and bloody history, with constant massive wars and so on, and that was all part of an effort to establish the nation-state system. It has virtually no relation to the way people live, or to their associations, or anything else particularly, so it had to be established by force. And it was established by centuries of bloody warfare. That warfare ended in 1945―and the only reason it ended is because the next war was going to destroy everything. So it ended in 1945―we hope; if it didn't, it will destroy everything.”

“Well in no particular order... I love you, I need you, I want you, I go to sleep thinking about you and wake up with your voice winding through my head, I look at you and I can't focus, the whole world shimmers, I'm ashamed, I'm angry, I'm in love, I'm mad, I'm happy, I'm dead, I'm alive, I'm stupid, I'm tongue-tied, I'm writing you letters, I'm tearing them up, I'm writing you letters again, I'm idealising you, I'm humiliating you, I'm undressing you, I'm looking into your eyes, I'm kissing your eyes, I'm pressing you against a wall, you're pushing back, your body wants mine, you kiss my mouth, you bite my lip, you draw blood, you're on fire, you're on fire, your eyes are flame, your hair is flame, the whole world shimmers and I burn and I burn with love -- the whole world shimmers - and the night - and the sky - and your voice shimmers - I've no wit, I've no mind, I've no brake, I've no self-control, I've no shame, I've no authority over myself, I can wait hours for just one glimpse of you then not speak to you at all, how can I speak, how can I speak to you, I can't speak, I can't stop speaking, I can't stop looking, I can't look, I make you an object, I desire you, I write to you, I write for you, I tear up everything I have ever written for you or about you, I burn myself alive for you, I worship you, I strip you, I clothe you, I do up the tiniest buttons at your sleeve, I embrace your wrist, I embrace your neck, I kiss the back of your neck, I embrace your wrist, I'm speechless, speechless, all I can say is I want - I want - I want - there is no poetry - there is no structure that can make any sense of this - only I want - I want - I want - I want you, Roxanne.”

“Well, in the meantime, Carter and I have been discussing the matter of Ryan." This time it wasn't the clang of a pan I heard, but instead a messy smack--the contact of Carter's backhand with Dean's head, I presumed. "Just hear me out. You have options. I have an Italian uncle. He'll make sure Ryan is sleeping with the fishes by next week." "Dean!" Unable to repress my amusement, my eyes flew wide and my grin grew. "Either that, or we can go all Sweeney Todd on him and--" "Oh, will you stop?" My laughter was crippling. "There will be no calls to your uncle and no trip to the barber shop--please, leave Sweeney Todd out of it.”

“Well in two months, it'd be sunbathing time. That made me smile. I enjoyed lying in the sun in a little bikini, timing myself carefully so I didn't burn. I loved the smell of coconut oil. And I don't want to hear any lectures about how bad tanning is for you. That's my vice. Everybody gets one.”

“Well?" inquired Jane. "What do think?" "I think," he said deliberately, "that if you have dragged me out to this inhospitable corner of the earth on nothing more than a bout of romantic whimsy, I shall be entirely unamused." "My dear lord Vaughn, I never matchmake." Jane smiled to herself as though at a private memory. "Well, very rarely." Vaughn arranged his eyebrows in their most forbidding position, the one that had sent a generation of valets scurrying for cover. "Don't think to number me among your exceptions." "I wouldn't dare." From the woman who had invaded Bonaparte's bedchamber to leave him a posy of pink carnations, that pledge was singularly unconvincing. "I believe there are very few things you wouldn't dare.”

“Well into his thirties he dreamed of having to go to school as a grown-up, opening his desk, and rummaging inside to hide his face, “suffering over again with increased intensity the shyness and sense of disgrace of my boyhood.” And yet Wallace came to be grateful for what he called his “constitutional shyness,” which he felt had given him long periods of solitary study and a hesitancy over words that led him to avoid the verbosity that marred so many scholarly works.”

“Well into my teaching career, I learned that good and bad play are usually a matter of having a script that works or one that needs to be rewritten. Once you begin to depend on storytelling and story acting, you start looking at your classrooms as theater. The children are constantly imagining characters and plots and, when they have a chance, with each other, acting out little stories. You can look at the children and yourself as actors. "Well, this hasn't worked. We'd better think of a better way to pretend this story." What seems to be a chaotic scene, one we might call bad play, is simply a scene that lacks closure for one or more characters. The teacher's role is to help the children make up a new scene. The children become used to the teachers - or even other children - saying, "This isn't working. We need to tell the story of what were doing with each other. What characters are we playing? And what needs to be played in a different way so that the play does not have to stop?" (via a Meghan Dombrick-Green interview with Vivian Paley 2001)”

“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

“Well, it had been a good many years since I had thought myself very lovable, and I escaped to some degree this trap of shattered ego. I was lucky; I had found a village of people so poor and simple, so engaging, that I had been more interested in my feelings for them than in what they thought of me. And frankly, after eighteen years of farming in the Sacramento Valley, that terrible life-consuming rat race, I was desperate enough to accept almost any human relationship on almost any terms. Love is love, I decided. Just take it and don't analyze it away. "You're my friend; you're good; you give me pennies," some nameless kid from down the beach told me. My God, what is love in this whorehouse world of poverty? And was I shocked because I could buy love or because I could buy it with pennies?”

“Well, it means that man is the crossroads of two abysses, equally bottomless and equally inaccessible: the outer and inner worlds. And just as the stars, planets, comets, nebula, and other heavenly bodies move according to laws that we understand but poorly, though they are strictly preordained -- are you listening to me, Benedikt? -- so it is that moral law, all our imperfections notwithstanding, is preordained, etched with a diamond blade on the tablets of the conscience! Inscribed in fiery letters in the Book of Being. And even if this book is hidden from our myopic eyes, even if it is hidden in the valley of mists, behind seven gates, even if its pages are mixed up, its alphabet barbaric and indecipherable, it still exists, young man! It shines even at night! Our life, young man, consists of the search for this book. It is a sleepless path through the dense forest, groping our way, an unexpected acquisition!”