Quotes by Writers - Page 37

Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London, as I regularly do, is like travelling from a monochrome antique shop to a technicolor bazaar.
Kenneth Tynan
To Europe she was America. To America she was the gateway to the earth. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a social history of the world.
H.G.Wells
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks glasses! of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster— tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone?
Herman Melville
And it was to this city, whenever I went home, that I always knew I must return, for it was mistress of one's wildest hopes, protector of one's deepest privacies. It was half insane with its noise, violence, and decay, but it gave one the tender security of fulfillment. On winter afternoons, from my office, there were sunsets across Manhattan when the smog itself shimmered and glowed… Despite its difficulties, which become more obvious all the time, one was constantly put to the test by this city, which finally came down to its people; no other place in America had quite such people and they would not allow you to go stale; in the end they were its triumph and its reward.
Willie Morris
It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
o.henry
I knew I couldn't live in America and I wasn't ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City .
Spalding Gray
There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.
Elbert Hubbard
Skyscraper National Park
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.
o.henry
Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark.
o.henry
So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I do love the beginning of the summer hols,' said Julian. They always seem to stretch out ahead for ages and ages.''They go so nice and slowly at first,' said Anne, his little sister. 'Then they start to gallop.
Enid Blyton
It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.
Eva Ibbotson
Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve.
Lidia Yuknavitch
What we need, is a break out. Out of our lives, out of Seattle, out of the dumb script of girl.
Lidia Yuknavitch
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
… MOM!” Martha finally screamed. “Mom, you’ve got to see these!”“Is it about Hermione?” She exclaimed, rushing into the middle of the room. Her mouth dropped open in horror when she noticed Hermione’s walls.“I can’t find any… polite… photos of her, mom.”“Why are there ones of her eating out of dumpsters and giving seniors the finger?”“No idea,” Martha replied.“Oh god… I’ll get one out of my wallet,” Her mom decided, hurrying out of the room frantically. ...It’s funny how when one thing happens, it can make you forget about something else.
Rebecca McNutt
You only reveal your game plan when you know you're winning, or losing.
Ahmed Mostafa
What greater evil could you wish a miser than long life?
Syrus Publilius
He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words.
Aldous Huxley
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations of misery.
Aldous Huxley
Alecto… what do you think would happen if people found out about you? Your abilities, your life, Mearth’s super 8 films, those powers of yours… how would they react?”“I don’t know,” said Alecto, “but ordinary people like a show, especially when it’s a disturbing one. They enjoy seeing misery… probably because it allows them to pretend that they themselves are not so miserable, too. Also, they would probably find out about you, how you know about Personifications, how you saw the films… they would put us in cages and throw peanuts at us, I guess.”“All joking aside, Alecto.…”“Who is joking, Mandy Valems?
Rebecca McNutt
Man cannot cherish his existence any longer than life holds out charms to him: when he is wrought upon by painful sensations, or drawn by contrary impulsions, his natural tendency is deranged; he is under the necessity to follow a new route; this conducts him to his end, which it even displays to him as the most desirable good.
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
Put your hand inside the hat, search with your fingers. He is the light wrapped inside the darkness. That’s the wonder of Rabbit. We think he’s not in the hat. But he is.
Mark Andrew Poe
Outside the seasons passed: sun, snow, spring green, October storms . . . was this a vision of my future? When would the shunning hero come, to set the clock if my life in motion again? Would he come some morning, or in the night? In April or December? This year? Next year? I shuddered. No, I wouldn't just sit and wait. I wanted to go out. Maybe there were new men out there, better men, men who'd just been waiting for me. Somewhere someone is always waiting for someone.
Eva Heller
For whom am I waiting? I don't know, at this point in my life there doesn't seem to be anybody that I am really waiting for, hoping for.
Cezmi Ersöz
You put cow dung on my face?’ ‘Every day religiously until you were three. Why else do you think your skin is so clear?
Renita D'Silva
What better hiding place than an old, woodlice-ridden album of photographs!
Renita D'Silva
But he’s an untouchable, Shirin.’ ‘He’s my Untouchable Prince Charming, then. Only I am allowed to touch him.
Renita D'Silva
There’s a great drought in my village. People are dying. The price of rice and pulses has rocketed. There is no water anywhere. And here, people are complaining about the rain...
Renita D'Silva
What am I doing here, Reena? Why am I dancing to the tunes of that old hag?’‘You are saving your family.
Renita D'Silva
Have you been reading those books that clueless illiterate Duja in charge of the lending library lets you borrow?’ ‘No, Ma.’ ‘Then what put you in mind of devils possessing nuns to take over the church?
Renita D'Silva
You are a girl, Shirin. Girls don’t run around naked.’‘Why?’‘They just don’t.
Renita D'Silva
Sometimes, it is easier to leave things as they are, rather than to fight, go against the flow.
Renita D'Silva
You don’t live in luxury! You are relegated to sleep in the little store room behind the kitchen with the cockroaches and rats and are at the mercy of Mrs. Gupta,’ Reena was indignant. ‘It’s five-star accommodation compared to a mud hut.
Renita D'Silva
What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?
Renita D'Silva
I watched the rows and rows of chappals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?
Renita D'Silva
Every family has secrets, Reena, and they’re there for a reason.
Renita D'Silva
I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.
Renita D'Silva
Where are the coconut trees bowing allegiance to the wind, the wide open spaces, the verdant green fields?
Renita D'Silva
a good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving" Taoist dictum quoted by Sam Miller
Sam Miller
That's the secret - to distract the senses. Have I told you my theory about them? I think that our sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing are all calibrated for the enjoyment of a perfect world. But since the world is imperfect, we must put blinders on the senses.
Rohinton Mistry
We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own continent: Asia. It is a place onto which foreigners have projected their own exotic fantasies and fears, their explanatory and simplifying schemata. And they never seem quite to make up their minds–as they swing from one extreme to the other–whether this country is of great wealth or of appalling poverty, of spiritual renunciation or of unabashed materialism, of fasting or of gluttony, of erotic sophistication or of sexual puritanism, of corruption or of moral superiority. They probably fail to admit that it might be all these things, and even more so, everything in between.
Sam Miller
India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them. Over the centuries, many powers have defeated Indian armies; but none has ever proved immune to this capacity of the subcontinent to somehow reverse the current of colonisation, and to mould those who attempt to subjugate her. So vast is India, and so uniquely resilient and deeply rooted are her intertwined social and religious institutions, that all foreign intruders are sooner or later either shaken off or absorbed.
William Dalrymple
She liked the way a ray of mild autumn sun infiltrating the thick cluster of trees caught a reddish orange leaf swirling in the wind and transformed it golden yellow. She liked that it wasn’t a leaf she recognised, that she could name or associate with her past.
Renita D'Silva
... Physicians tell us of hectic fever, that in its beginning it is easy to cure, but hard to recognize; whereas, after a time, not having been detected and treated at the first, it becomes easy to recognize but impossible to cure. And so it is with State affairs.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?""What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said."Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.
Libba Bray
To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while.
Fernando Pessoa
Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.
Spike Milligan
When I walked into the house, I went in search of one of my dad's bottles. Not that they were that hard to find. He hid bottles all over the house. I knew where they all were. That was one of my hobbies, finding where my dad hid his bottles. It was my version of looking for Easter eggs. In my house, Easter lasted forever.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Life is better when you're drunk. I ought to become an alcoholic.
Ahmed Mostafa
I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry.
Libba Bray
Ego-less, in time, you will no longer be God-less.
Fakeer Ishavardas
The Only God 'up there' is Unity of Everything, in Quintessence. Other fancies, gods and fairies are the nansy-pansies of simpletons, or is just plain-simple nonsense.
Fakeer Ishavardas
Just 'get' the 'One' in All. Then live accordingly. That's all.
Fakeer Ishavardas
Just get the 'One' in All. Then live accordingly. That's all.
Fakeer Ishavardas
The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.
Roger Zelazny
I held her like tomorrow would not come. It stitched me, if only for a second...
Ahmed Mostafa
I can almost see the processes whirrling clunkily in his singularix, as his excited nervous system battled with his logic circuits.
Georgia Clark