Shawnta Solari > Shawnta's Quotes

“You shall address me as ‘My Dearest’,’ he repeated in a mocking voice, trying to copy her tone. ‘You will forget all about this conversation when you leave this room.’ It was interesting that tone; it had a sort of hypnotising ring to it.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“It's easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt's got shite fir blood.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“I can't see that Danish episode as an adventure, or a crisis survived, or a serious quest for anything definable. It was just another happening like today's luncheon, something I got into and got out of. And it reminds me too much of how little life changes: how, without dramatic events or high resolves, without tragedy, without even pathos, a reasonably endowed, reasonably well-intentioned man can walk through the world's great kitchen from end to end and arrive at the back door hungry.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

“Si los oías sólo dos veces, los recuerdos de Lou podían parecer monótonos. Si los oías muchas, se convertían en viejos amigos. Eran reconfortantes.”
― Tracy Kidder, Old Friends

“So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself.

That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything – from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Mind my words, Cheshire, I will have you banished from this kingdom if you tempt me."
"An empty threat from an empty girl."
She rounded on him, teeth flashing. "I am not empty. I am full to the brim with murder and revenge. I am overflowing and I do not think you wish for me to overflow on to you."
"There was a time" – Cheshire yawned – "when you overflowed with whimsy and icing sugar. I liked that Catherine better.”
― Marissa Meyer, Heartless

“I knew I rode a rugged crest of turmoil that might crash on the rocky shore of irrational behavior.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Every night I dream a lot. Every day I live a little.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“If I read this right, Gunther had not come to offer me congratulations. I will not give him the satisfaction of thinking me scared or insecure. I will fake calm, confident, and regal.” 
”
― Tricia Copeland, To Be a Fae Queen

“The thin line between love and hate is self-deception.”
― J.K. Franko, Killing Johnny Miracle

“Crete, May 1941. It was nearly five o’clock when the three soldiers reached the end of the olive grove. The dust-filled air shimmered in the late-afternoon heat. Their bodies ached, their uniforms were caked with dirt and sweat and they were hungry, thirsty and exhausted. The sensible thing now would be to lay up where they were for a few hours’ rest, then finish the journey under cover of darkness. But there was a tight deadline to meet. The evacuation vessel was scheduled to leave at midnight and they had been warned the captain wouldn’t wait for stragglers.”
― Mark Ellis, The French Spy

“Rudy? You can’t take the stairs. We’re having dinner on the 71st floor.”
“It’s okay, Boss. I can walk up.”
― Behcet Kaya, Murder in Buckhead

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“The ability to reason is what gives us our capacity to have empathy for others, to value life itself. Our ability to judge right from wrong, to value all life, is only possible through our ability to reason. Reason is what powers morality.”
― Terry Goodkind, The Third Kingdom

“I did my best to fight and claw my way back to the life I once knew, but panic had taken over and colors were swirling and fading all around me. It was all turning into a great cloud of blackness, just like the one I had seen in my dream. The looming cloud of nothingness I had feared for so long was finally grabbing me, wiping my world dark and blank. The darkness was thick and intense, an inky void that stretched to eternity in every direction. Eventually my panic burnt itself out and I simply stayed there in the dark, feeling as if someone had drained my adrenal glands. I was no longer responding to the dark with fear, but acceptance. In fact, curiosity was beginning to take over.
The longer I let myself stare into it, the less dark it appeared. After some time, I realized that it was all different shades of murky black and foggy gray overlapping and undulating, just out of focus. I blinked mentally and suddenly she was there, standing above me with concern etched in sooty-colored lines on her monochromatic face.”
― Misty Mount, The Shadow Girl

“There are many different ways to revise a cookbook. Faced with the task of updating Joy in the mid-1990s, my father, Ethan,”
― Irma S. Rombauer, Joy of Cooking

“Kur dievas, tas prakeiktas kvailys? Negi jis neskiria, kas teisinga, o kas ne? Nesupranta paprasčiausio balanso? Seniai būtų išmestas iš darbo, jei vadovautų korporacijai, turint omeny, kokiems dalykams leido atsitikti...”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance