Marvelous! Very exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and I can't wait to read more." (About the book Dominique Ick Lessont and the Dragon Knight)
I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs.
The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan.
People are often dismissive of librarians and libraries....But isn't that where the best stories are kept? Hidden away on the library bookshelves, lost and forgotten, waiting, waiting, until someone like me comes along, and wants to borrow them.
What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child?
The Devil went down to Georgia, he was lookin' for a soul to steal. He was in a bind, 'cos he was way behind; he was willing to make a deal.
He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.
Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.
You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.
I didn't find my story; it found me, as autobiography always does: finds you out in your deepest most private places.
The Christian experience is not primarily formed by our liturgy, doctrine, or ecclesiology, as important as those might be. We are formed by the dangerous stories of our great hero.
Episodes is about discovery of one's psyche and true personality while being completely absorbed in one's one Mind and thoughts. A story of coping and finding an unsure contentment. Finding the Rational Soul in all of us.
I wondered what it would be like to be just myself all the time, but my self seemed to be far away, and made up of all sorts of things that didn't really exist.
It is a great evil to look upon mankind with too clear vision. You seem to be living among wild beasts, and you become a wild beast yourself. ("“The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah”)
Mine was still the stronger side. I was beloved by the soldiery, who generally care very little what god they serve so long as they are caressed by their king. (“The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah”)
Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life.
Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.
I must have been chosen because I know it all from beginning to end. I am certainly not the story itself. I am only the grass that tattles on the wind.
Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people.
I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion. Like a flower blooming.
We want to hear the story first and let the meaning unfold, rather than to be present with expectations of a certain significance into which all behavior is then fitted.
