Joel Verkler > Joel's Quotes

“Where’s everybody? I thought you had started production.”
“They’ve got a day off, but don’t worry you’ll see the machinery is here.”
But Brown was worried. As they entered the canteen, the lights came on
automatically. There was nobody there.
“What’s going…...” but he never finished the sentence. Brown felt a sharp pain on the
side of his head and everything went black.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“Legends were mostly bullshit, even his own, but they sometimes could be useful.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“The water far below was black in the shadow of the ship. A plank creaked. She froze. No noisy jump. It would have to be a dive. Head down into darkness. She’d never dived at night.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.”
― Todor Bombov, Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel

“The fire on the mountain.” That was Anna. “Alchemy,” she said. “I feel it singing in my bones.”
“Singing?” Mary would never understand Anna. The young woman turned away.
Wiseman’s reply was tinged with respect.
“That great pair of alchemists, Francis Ransome and Roberta Le More, believed the work they did affected the world’s spirit, the anima mundi. The Native Americans they met believed they too could and should interact with the Great Spirit. They lived with reverence for the land and all its peoples, the ancestors, the animals, the rocks, the trees, mountains.” 
Mary’s jaw dropped; Caroline glowed; Anna pretended not to listen. Wiseman nodded, then continued.
“You mean…?” began Mary.
“Yes, it could have been so different, a meeting of like-minded earth-based spiritualities. Just imagine, what could have been?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“As Miss Golightly was saying, before she was so rudely interrupted...”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

“If there’s a single trait common to all Savannahians, it’s their love of money and their unwillingness to spend it.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“The man who has never desired or experienced anything base and bad is not a man of restraint, because he has never had to master anything to compose himself.”
― Robin Waterfield, The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists

“fast. Get those months, days, hours, minutes out of the way, it can’t be quick enough.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People