Emily Yoshikawa > Emily's Quotes

“Words are not enough. Not mine, cut off at the throat before they breathe. Never forming, broken and swallowed, tossed into the void before they are heard. It would be easy to follow, fall to my knees, prostrate before the deli counter. Sweep the shelves clear, scatter the tins, pound the cakes to powder. Supermarket isles stretching out in macabre displays. Christmas madness, sad songs and mistletoe, packed car parks, rotten leaves banked up in corners. Forgotten reminders of summer before the storm. Never trust a promise, they take prisoners and wishes never come true. Fairy stories can have grim endings and I don’t know how I will face the world without you.”
― Peter B. Forster, More Than Love, A Husband's Tale

“She gripped the wheel and squared her shoulders. She didn’t have to do any of this alone. All she had to do was notify the society and put out an All Points Bulletin on Adam and she’d know everything there was to know about the man within 24 hours.”
― Kirsten Fullmer

“Everything is so fast and awful, isn't it, Noah?"

"The world has become like that.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“I was alone. I had no one. No mother, no father, no brothers, no sisters, no grandmas, no grandpas, no uncles, no aunties, no cousins, and no tribe. I’d seen the children at the orphanage laugh or cry when they received news about a family member. I would never receive such news and no family would laugh or cry for me. That day I understood with sharp clarity that I didn’t have a mother who wanted me.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“But without a family, a man is nothing.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“The eyes those silent tongues of love.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”
― Aldo Leopold

“The most part of all be unlearned, and a great number hath learning in contempt.”
― Thomas More, Utopia

“He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“If I was the only one I wouldn't be littler or bigger, would I? I'd be just me, wouldn't I?”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Just handle the books gently and you’ll get along fine.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“In the 1960s it was in Maniema that thirteen Italian airmen of the United Nations were killed and eaten, their body parts smoked and made available at local markets for weeks after the slaughter.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

“Please do not bring female visitors of the opposite sex into rooms.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.”
― Voltaire

“A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though, I keep a journal, a record book, and most everything begins in the form of notes scribbled down on the pages of that journal.”
― Edward Abbey

“Why don’t you put up a stand by the road.” I blurted out.”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“As we raise our vibrations through awareness of our true being, our energy field expands in radiance and beauty. Our awareness also expands with our energy field, and we become more intuitive and telepathic. We become more heart-centered in our personal relationships and with ourselves.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness

“She stood panting as adrenalin fired up her muscles. Flipping open the safety catches on both of her laser pistols, she set them for maximum delivery. Anything or anyone on the receiving end of these weapons would never survive, even as atoms.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“Lord James did not know whether to feel proud of his daughter or
throttle her. He had managed to collar her quietly among the guests at the
Shinar manor, and they were alone together in the Lord Steward’s library.
He ordered her to a sofa in front of a ceiling-high bookcase.
Helen heard the same hard quality in his voice that she had perceived the first time they spoke together. She swallowed hard. He was not in a mood to be trifled with or flouted.
“You dress and behave modestly enough, Lieutenant,” he said. “But
your language earlier today was utterly appalling. You sounded like
a Lesser Shore whore, not a proper young woman, or a professional
healer. I simply won’t have it.”
“Two out of three is a start, Lord —”
He brought the back of his hand down across her face. She leapt
to her feet, not wounded so much as angry. “Is force your answer for
everything, Lord Protector?”
“Are sarcasm and insubordination yours, Lieutenant?”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“Maybe we can politely ignore each other forever? I think that's the mature thing to do.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo: 'Intense, also BRILLIANT, funny and forensically astute.' Marian Keyes

“There will be a time when I will answer everything, Avelyn. But it is far in the future for you.”
― Jack Borden, The Lost City: An Epic YA Fantasy Novel

“It was hard to overestimate the desire of a man living in isolation to talk.”
― Mark Bowden, The Last Stone

“Melancholy, amorous and barbaric,” these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites the dishonor it is supposed to avert. Courtly love was a greater tangle of irreconcilables even than usury. It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy (like modern pornography) more for purposes of discussion than for everyday practice.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“When there is pleasure, there is often abandon, and mistakes are made.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“In old times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face.”
― Jacob Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales

“When I was a kid," Orr replied, "I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek."

... A minute passed. "Why?" [Yossarian] found himself forced to ask finally.

Orr tittered triumphantly. "Because they're better than horse chestnuts... When I couldn't get crab apples," Orr continued, "I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn't matter a bit."

"Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?" Yossarian asked again. "That's what I asked."

"Because they've got a better shape than horse chestnuts," Orr answered. "I just told you that."

"Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanically aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?"

"I didn't," Orr said, "walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab applies in my cheeks. When I couldn't get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“In the First Incursion, many millions of imperial citizens perished because we weren’t prepared. The Globur took advantage of that weakness. We must not visit this conflict on our children as we have recently done, for they may not survive.”
― D Rebbitt, Revelation: The Globur Incursion Book 10

“The early women rise before I do. Their lamps splinter the gloom of the kitchens. They chatter in whispers as they brew tea for the cooks. Windows are open to counter the heat of the ovens. Outside, the sky is as black as my soul.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master