Liewen > Liewen's Quotes

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Mother says that people like me just become intellectual old maids,' I told him.
'I don't see why,' he protested.
'Oh, well, it's probably true!' I said, rather sharply, for misery had as usual made me irritable. 'After the War there'll be no one for me to marry.'
'Not even me?' he asked very softly.
'How do I know I shall want to marry you when that time comes?'
'You know you wouldn't be happy unless you married an odd sort of person.'
'That rather narrows the field of choice, doesn't it?'
'Well--do you need it to be so very wide?”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“If this word should turn out to be a 'Te moriturum saluto,' perhaps it will brighten the dark moments a little to think how you have meant to someone more than anything ever has or ever will. What you have striven for will not end in nothing, all that you have done and been will not be wasted, for it will be a part of me as long as I live, and I shall remember, always.”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy War, and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the War lasts and what it may mean, could see a case--to say nothing of 10 cases--of mustard gas in its early stages--could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes--sometimes temporally, sometimes permanently--all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”
― Vera Brittain

“You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.”
― Elizabeth Knox, The Vintner's Luck

“Learn something. Read a book. Explore someone. Anger is just a hole where your life could be.”
― Garrett Leigh, Misfits

“There really were no chains like the ones in your head.”
― K.J. Charles, A Seditious Affair

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton--go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday--I don't know why--and my father had no name at all--his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“When my namesake, the great Caesar, rode in triumph,” Julius said, “he was accompanied by a slave whose role was to whisper to him, You are but mortal. To remind him he was merely a man who would one day die like any other. If I could, I should have you at my side to remind me that I am alive, because I have not felt alive in so damned long, and with you, I do. No, I don’t want you to marry, any more than I want you to return to your dirty democrats. I want to show you the world, and see you smile, and keep you with me while my soul grows back.”
― K.J. Charles, A Fashionable Indulgence

“I like the way he says ‘furthermore’,” Merrick observed quietly. “Cos you can tell he means ‘wankers’.”
― K.J. Charles, Flight of Magpies

“Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”
― K.J. Charles, Flight of Magpies

“Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot

“My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“What's the biggest thing you've zapped with a fireball?' I asked.
'That would be a tiger,'said Nightingale.
'Well don't tell Greenpeace,' I said. 'They're an endagered species.'
'Not that sort of tiger,' said Nightingale. 'A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.'
I stared at him. 'You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?'
'Actually I knocked out two,' said Nightingale. 'I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver's eye slot and one down the commander's hatch - brewed up rather nicely.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“You shouldn’t make jokes about these things,” she said. “Science doesn’t have all the answers, you know.”
“It’s got all the best questions, though,”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculos if we were using the accusative.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, The Hanging Tree

“He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer

“Rule of policing number one – when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer

“Fuck me,' I said to Toby. 'We're living in Isengard.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“He was one of those people who constantly seems to be having a conversation with someone other than the person he’s actually talking to—presumably someone much more politically committed. And interested.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons,” Lesley had said when I explained my reasoning. I’d been tempted to tell her that I was thirteen at the time, and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve learned from bitter experience that such remarks generally only make things worse.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground

“L'éphémère est une divinité polymorphe ainsi que son nom. Sur ces trois pieds qui sonnent comme une légende peuplée d'yeux de farfadets, mon ami Robert Desnos, ce singulier sage moderne, qui a des navires étranges dans chaque pli de sa cervelle, s'est longuement penché, cherchant par l'échelle de soie philologique le sens de ce mot fertile mirages.”
― Louis Aragon

“Elle tourna vers moi les yeux à cet instant, mais je n'ose y croire, ce regard fut-il un aveu. Ne me dites pas qu'elle est belle, elle est émouvante. Sa vue imprime à mon coeur un mouvement plus rapide, son absence emplit mon esprit.”
― Robert Desnos, Liberty or Love! and Mourning for Mourning