Nelia Racine > Nelia's Quotes

“She’d worn anxiety like a thick robe for so long that it was hard for her to take it off.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“Love is a necessity, just as lust is. Two instincts we modern humans have turned into our strongest emotions. Love gives us the desire to bond with a partner long enough to care for our children to an age when they can fend for themselves. Lust gives us the will to want to reproduce in the first place. These instincts are so deeply ingrained in our psyche that even with our advanced brains, they still govern us. We are now, for the most part, intelligent enough to decide who we want to love or have sex with. We can even control whether or not that sex results in offspring, but we can’t just ignore those instincts. From the simplest person to the most powerful kings, queens and presidents, our our lives are still governed by those two emotions.”
― D.S. Smith, Unparalleled

“The moonlight drifts in silently from the dark sky and onto the light wooden blinds that hang at each of the three windows in the narrow room. Outside, the streets are tranquil, radiating the heat of the August day that ended a few hours before.”
― M.F. Kelleher, Olivia Streete and the Parisian Contract

“Those that believe millennials are not loyal and will jump job to job has not shown them what a career is.”
― Mark Villareal, The Millennial Factor: 10-Steps to Managing Millennials to Success

“Mrs. May looked back at her. "Kate," she said after a moment, "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.”
― Mary Norton

“The soup-kitchen was behind the cathedral; it remained only to determine which, of the many and beautiful churches of Cracow, was the cathedral. Whom could one ask, and how? A priest walked by; I would ask the priest. Now the priest, young and of benign appearance, understood neither French nor German; as a result, for the first and only time in my post-scholastic career, I reaped the fruits of years of classical studies, carrying on the most extravagant and chaotic of conversations in Latin. After the initial request for information (Pater optime, ubi est menas pauperorum?), we began to speak confusedly of everything, of my being a Jew, of the Lager (castra? better: Lager, only too likely to be understood by everybody), of Italy, of the danger of speaking German in public (which I was to understand soon after, by direct experience), and of innumerable other things, to which the unusual dress of the language gave a curious air of the remotest past.”
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce

“But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising.”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“This beautiful thought, of 'dying close by that which one loves', expressed in a hundred different ways, was followed by a sonnet in which it was found that the soul, separated, after atrocious torments, from the frail body in which it dwelt for twenty-three years, and impelled by that instinct for happiness natural to all that has once existed, would not reascend to heaven to mingle with angelic choirs as soon as it was set free, and in the event of the awful judgment according it forgiveness for its sins, but, happier after death than it had been in life, it would go a few steps from the prison where it had lamented for so long, to be reunited with all that it had loved in the world. And thus, the sonnet's last line went. I shall have found my paradise on earth.”
― Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma

“she is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. she sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her?”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“By disconnecting from the ever-whirling devices, we reconnect with ourselves. I don’t mean in some heavy, existential, angsty kind of way. I mean reconnecting with ourselves to reconnect with our delights, our memories, our dreams and plans, and our very experience of the present moment in a natural and satisfying way. It provides a refreshing and destressing dip into the fresh lake of life. It also means reconnecting with the people around us, our loved ones, family, and friends.”
― Art Rios

“Happiness develops when you are working on something bigger than yourself. It is attained slowly, little by little, as you build yourself up. It develops as you develop your altruism. You find happiness by committing to other people and positivity, by working to better yourself and find real meaning in your life.”
― Robert Gill Jr., Happiness Power: How to Unleash Your Power and Live a More Joyful Life

“What is it about being ill and wanting to go home? This time there was no Katy to boat sit, so I left Emma out on the deck where she had access to her Emma cage. I closed up as best I could and decided to do a ‘hold mail’ as I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone.”
― Behcet Kaya, Treacherous Estate

“Our DNA is coded to harmonise the frequency of the atoms we use to build ourselves. The frequencies of the subatomic particles making up the atoms are changed subtly enough to do this but not enough to change their structure. You could say throughout our development, from birth to death, our genes are composing a harmonic symphony that makes us what we are. It's what makes us individual; it's our life force, our soul.”
― D.S. Smith, Unparalleled

“Glorious Leader, we are approaching the galaxy known as the Milky Way,” reported the navigator.
“The one named after a candy bar. How silly those Earthlings are.”
― Steve Bates, Back To You

“Emotional detachment from the plight of others — easily achieved by simply looking the other way — always favoured the perpetrators rather than the victims who were reduced to being inconsequential nonentities; were persecuted and denied legal and human rights; were starving, sick, and dying; were victims of Apartheid policies with racial segregations inclusive of political and economic discrimination; were harassed, internally displaced, or forcibly deported; were imprisoned, tortured, or simply “disappeared”; were enslaved, exploited, or trafficked; and were ultimately the victims of mindless massacres that defied the comprehension of anyone even remotely humane.”
― William Hanna, THE GRIM REAPER

“I could leave it no longer. No-one had taken steps to ensure that he would reach Herron. I had to do it myself. I felt cold at the idea that I had almost decided that it was pointless seeking truths in Rael’s past. I had almost not been here and then he would never have lived in Herron. My life had almost not happened – everyone who had ever lived in Herron had almost not lived - more lost possibilities in the endless possibilities floating in the universe. It was terrifying to me, although I suspected the universe was resigned.”
― Aaron D. Key, Damon Ich

“Monique bit at the side of lip. “He’s pretty active, I don’t want to impose…”
Tony stood and scooped up the puppy. “No, seriously, I’d love a little company.”
― Kirsten Fullmer, Problems at the Pub

“Most of us knew in our bones that things with the world weren’t right, long before it became a crisis.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“The music grew louder, faster, as we saw an empty couch on the balcony and ran to get it, pushed aside another couple darting for the same thing, but it was ours, and we smiled wide, laughing at our fortune, our couch.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“Unconditional Love conquers all!”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer God is the Cure

“Where is the sense of outrage for our Muslim neighbors, Dearborn citizens all? Should we not feel the same sense of violation and shock even though these worshipers pray to a different version of God than we do?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Justice

“The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.

All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.

If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.

They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.

I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.

I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.

You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.

Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.

After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.

It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.

He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.

The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.

You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]

Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.

You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.

In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.

There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.

Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.

The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.

The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.

I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.

Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.

Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.

Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.

Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.

A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.

Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.

It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.

Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?

She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.”
― John Richard Spencer

“He was staring hard, not at his wife and me but at his daughter watching us. In his cold pupil, in the firm twist of his lips, was reflected Madame Miyagi's orgasm reflected in her daughter's gaze.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“I am me, a unique individual who aspires to be happier than she already is.”
― L.C. Conn

“Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.”
― E. M. Forster, The Longest Journey

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.”
― Judith Viorst, Love and Guilt and the Meaning of Life, Etc.

“When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value.”
― James Frey, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

“It was a three-dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings.”
― Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia