We are each born into a situation—a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation—and born into the stories told of each of these.
And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into th...
Have you ever read Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Little Mermaid, Miranda? Have you ever wanted something so badly that you were willing to suffer the sensation of a thousand blades cutting into your feet?
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules God's everlasting fiery jails (Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools), With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door, Are senseless stories, idle tales, Dreams, whimseys, and no more.
No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No. It's never like what you expected. Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?
Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.
An old man with overalls walked by; I don't think old people should wear overalls; it makes them look like shrivelly toddlers.
I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too.
Enron was becoming a virtual cult of creativity, often placing swagger over substance. New ideas were celebrated for their newness, for their potential; tried and true businesses like the pipelines were almost derided.
Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that.
Hombro con hombro, una cadena de hermanos, una sangre no ya encerrada en la mezquina circulación del cuerpo, sino circulando con una dulzura y sin embargo regresando sin fin a través de China.
We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away another time.
My lady Silk, remember that a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman - including adultery...but in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished.
These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?
I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit grows on us again till the day You find us out.
The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.
How bad is it?” “The story is only just now being reported, but let's put it this way,” HARV said. “The bag is now clearly catless, and there’s a very foul odor coming from the fan.
Grover: It’s a very sweet love story. I get misty-eyed every time I play it. So does Percy, but I think that’s because he’s laughing at me.
A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone. See Spot. See Spot run. See Spot run from a gaping chest wound. Run Spot run. See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing.
This is an aspect of crime stories I never fully appreciated until I became one: it is so ruinously expensive to mount a defense that, innocent or guilty, the accusation is itself a devastating punishment. Every defendant pays a price.
Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.
