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Literary Quotes

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Literary Quotes

“On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped.”

“Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.”

“Unfurl my body, wind, lift me up into the branches of a majestic beauty that guides a people through life. I would sway with you, branches, taking that journey across the ages. Tossing my own mane of leaves through the quiet, awaiting air. Silently, I choose to engage with your wisdom.”

“By the time he was by her shores, it was the twilight hour And he stood witness to their blending in celestial communion His tired eyes beheld the amber of her blushes drip into her tresses And ripple in a gentle zephyr of his caresses In her ankles he saw the white frills of a long turquoise robe, Replete with the tinkling of her anklets Like the many dead whose ashes are dissolved in her waters, He emptied in her the remnants of his memories, so there remained no trace of his old self, Like a monk who does self-oblation, shunning all bondages of an insignificant past He wished to be reborn in the same life, a different man with a different name – A man with no yesterdays and no tomorrows”

“We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.”

“This strong and rough man, whose feathers were constantly being ruffled, had suddenly softened and brightened. Something unusual and entirely unexpected had begun to stir in his soul. Three years of separation, three years of a broken marriage had dislodged nothing from his heart. And perhaps every day of those three years he had dreamed of her, of the beloved being who had once said 'I love you' to him. Knowing Shatov, I can say for certain that he would never have allowed himself even to dream that any woman could say 'I love you' to him. He was fiercely chaste and modest, regarded himself as a dreadful freak, hated his own face and character, compared himself to some monster who was fit only to be taken around and exhibited at fairs. As a consequence of all this, he valued honesty above all things and dedicated himself to his convictions to the point of fanaticism; he was sullen, proud, quick to anger and sparing with words.”

“This strong and rough man, whose feathers were constantly being ruffled, had suddenly softened and brightened. Something unusual and entirely unexpected had begun to stir in his soul. Three years of separation, three years of a broken marriage had dislodged nothing from his heart. And perhaps every day of those three years he had dreamed of her, of the beloved being who had once said 'I love you' to him. Knowing Shatov, I can say for certain that he would never have allowed himself even to dream that any woman could say 'I love you' to him. He was fiercely chaste and modest, regarded himself as a dreadful freak, hated his own face and character, compared himself to some monster who was fit only to be taken around and exhibited at fairs. As a consequence of all this, he valued honesty above all things and dedicated himself to his convictions to the point of fanaticism; he was sullen, proud, quick to anger and sparing with words. But now this single being who had loved him for two weeks (he had always, always believed that!), this being whom he had always regarded as immeasurably superior to himself despite his utterly sober understanding of her faults; this being whom he could forgive everything, everything (of which there really true, so that in his eyes he himself was guilty of everything could be absolutely no before her), this woman, this Marya Shatova, was suddenly question, for just the opposite was actual again in his house, before him again... this was almost impossible to understand!”

“Old, yet beloved to my family, the cart is marked with the prints and sweat of our ancestors, who began our journeys in trade. I carry our world in this cart, wares we have taken ages to create. Foraging through earth and trees to source our natural ingredients. Wares I push with deep pride, along the sloping, uneven terrain. I can travel further with the cart and expand my avenues for trade.”

“When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.”

“Phaedra keeps saying she's being selfish. That she hates herself for it, but she does it anyway. She can't deny herself what she wants, even if it brings about her downfall and his." "And have you learned anything from our literary parallel?" "Not really, I keep thinking that she would do it all over again if there were a chance...a chance that it could go right. Even if 99 times out of a 100 the story ends badly, it's worth it if only once she gets a happy ending.”

“Miss Foxe's other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn't wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn't fail.”