Dora Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Dora. Here they are! All 100 of them:

And now Rocky is begging me to watch Dora the Explorer with him. I understand that millions of kids love Dora and have learned to read or whatever from her show. But I wouldn't mind if Dora fell off a cliff and took her little pals with her
Meg Cabot (Forever Princess (The Princess Diaries, #10))
My love is pizza shaped. Won’t you have a slice? It’s circular, so there’s enough to go around.

Dora J. Arod (Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.)
I’m a fake fact factory. The things I make are the things I make up. Also, as a side business, I make love. Actually, I just made that up.
Dora J. Arod (Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.)
cos' your hands were exploring more than Dora. I wouldn't have minded but Dora had a map and a compass so she knows where she was going. You on the other hand were like a tourist in the center of London. Lost as a fucking fiddle. -Mia Hastings
Makeandoffer (Illegal My Ass)
My love is meatloaf flavored. I just wish my meatloaf was also meatloaf flavored.
Dora J. Arod (Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.)
Dora can marry anyone she likes when she’s old enough, and I can say with absolute certainty that it won’t be anyone at this table.
MsKingBean89 (All the Young Dudes)
So does that mean you're going to fall in love with me again? What makes you think i ever stopped?
Nora Roberts (Hidden Riches)
Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had ever loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
Doras II was a somewhat absentminded king, It is said, when Death came to summon him, Doras granted Death the usual formal audience and then dismissed him from his presence. Death was too embarrassed to return until many years later- Ka'a Orto'o, Gnomic Utterances
Diana Wynne Jones (The Tough Guide to Fantasyland)
I jerk around and see Sister Dora, a portly woman who's the head cook in the kitchen, staring daggers at me. This is nothing new. She stares daggers at everyone who walks through the lunch line holding a tray, as though our needing sustenance is a personal affront.
Pittacus Lore (The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies, #2))
It may be true that you have only half a soul, Dora,” he whispered, with a surprising abundance of empathy in his voice. “But that does not make you half a person.
Olivia Atwater (Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1))
Cerise ran through the course in her mind. “Three miles, stream on the right, Mozer Lake, Tinybear, Bigbear, Miller’s Path.” She paused, not sure if she’d said it correctly. “Three miles, stream on the right, Mozer Lake, Tinybear, Bigbear, Miller’s Path.” “Thank you, Dora. Put the sword back into Backpack and we’ll go.” He nodded at the river. “Who is Dora?” “You are. Dora the Explorer. Vamanos. Put the sword away or I will take it from you.
Ilona Andrews (Bayou Moon (The Edge, #2))
(Just so you know, I practice Spanish watching Dora the Explorer and playing GTA, so I know how to say backpack, whore, and weed. I hope you’re impressed.)
Camilla Monk (Spotless (Spotless, #1))
I had a dream about you. You were an escalator, and I was a flight of stairs. You thought I was a Luddite, and I thought I was as ostrich, because I hadn’t figured out how to put the fly in flight. One day you broke down, and then you saw that you and I weren’t so different after all.
Dora J. Arod (I Had a Dream About You)
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed
Sigmund Freud (Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
There are some secrets darker than witchcraft." - Aunt Dora
April Aasheim (The Witches of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root, #1))
Dora sat on a corner of the spread rug, longing to be assigned some task so she could resent it.
Shirley Hazzard (The Transit of Venus)
I'm afraid of those cows,' protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape. 'The very idea of your being scared of those cows,' scoffed Davy. 'Why, they're both younger than you.
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, #3))
Dora found beauty in everything. She found nature’s magnificent work and incredible symmetry in a turtle’s carapace, or a stork’s egg, or an autumn reed from a swamp. How wonderful, she would often say. I understood the meaning of the word, but I could never feel the splendor it carried.
Sohn Won-Pyung (Almond)
Swoon, Dora. Every young woman deserves to swoon over the love of her life.
Nancy Moser (Masquerade)
In writing this book, I send out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness, alas, I have no faith. But I live in hope.
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
Nehêle kul û derd dora te bigire Xem û jan a pûç dema te bigire Ji xwendin û dîtin û gerê nemîne Berî ku ax, dev û çavên te bigire…
Omar Khayyám
I just want my stories to be mine.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
Sometimes saviors look different than you thought they would.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
I kiss her. I kiss her and kiss her. I try not to bite her lip. She tastes like vodkahoney.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
I find it all infinitely sad, but at the same time so entrancing, that I often feel as if it would be the part of wisdom to fly at once to the woods or mountains where one can always find peace. - Dora Root in a letter to Daniel Burnham
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
Seductive Lamia observed, “Under your direction, La Dorada the Queen of Evil has arisen.” “Dora and I are like this.” Nïx spread her arms wide. “Now, I’ll be the first to admit she’s not without faults. Very grumpy when she wakes up. And with Dora, it’s always me me me, ring ring ring.
Kresley Cole (Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark, #14))
If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
If laughter came in paste format you could squeeze out of a tube, I’ll bet nine out of ten dentists would recommend comedy before bed. The tenth doctor, having just read Tolstoy as deliberately mistranslated by Dora J. Arod, would probably recommend reading Russian literature before bed.

Jarod Kintz (At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.)
Dora was having trouble with her income tax, for she was entangled in that curious enigma which said the business was illegal and then taxed her for it.
John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
Trust me,” I say. “I’ve seen things that make your porn look like Dora the Explorer.
Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group)
We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.
Barbara Pym (Excellent Women)
All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
Dora appeared, placing Alex's coffee in front of him."Your girlfriend is a wonder, honey,"she siad to him, squeezing willows shoulder. Willow's smile turned strained at the word "girlfriend. He could see her wanting to correct the woman and then deciding to let it pass.
L.A. Weatherly
Lord Hollowvale stared up at her with trembling, blood-flecked lips. "I have... only ever... been charitable to you," he whispered. Dora blinked back hideous tears. "I am sure that every evil man believes himself to be charitable," she told him.
Olivia Atwater (Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1))
It's a movie about everything. This world we live in. The bodies we're stuck with. The lives we get whether we want them or not. How hard you have to work just to get through a fucking day without killing yourself.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will soon convince themselves that mortals cannot hide any secret.
Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria: Dora)
We do not apologize for the sins of men, Dora. Not today. Not ever.
Lauren J.A. Bear (Medusa's Sisters)
My OCD governs my actions like a governor, but I didn’t vote for it. No, I voted for Dora J. Arod.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to “being crazy” and having had abusive parents, clients will choose “crazy” most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy: I hate it when we talk about my family as “dysfunctional” or “abusive.” Think about what you are asking me to accept—that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil.
Lisa Ferentz (Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors: A Clinician's Guide)
Perhaps it was one of those mild, sunny winter days when you have a feeling of holiday and eternity-the illusory feeling that the course of time is suspended, and that you need only slip through this breach to escape the trap that is closing around you.
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
Dora Flores was one of the few people Tom confided in. She reported to him as Cyber Division’s Inner-Office Field Support. She still had a slight Mexican flavor in her pronunciations, and he liked it.
Michael Ben Zehabe
And Michael reached for Dora’s hand and they laughed and Ellis remembered how grateful he was that Michael’s care was instinctive and natural because he could never be that way with her. He was constantly on the lookout for the last good-bye.
Sarah Winman (Tin Man)
This book is full of empty love quotes. If you are looking for the meaning of life and love, then this book is for you. You won’t find the answers here, of course, but you’ll be more encouraged than ever to keep on looking. Or maybe you’ll be discouraged. Either way, I’ll have your money, and you’ll have no answers. Sounds like a fair deal to me. 

Dora J. Arod (Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.)
Caro was coming round to the fact of unhappiness: to a realization that Dora created unhappiness and the she was bound to Dora.
Shirley Hazzard (The Transit of Venus)
They lived under supervision, a life without men. Dora knew no men. You could scarcely see how she might meet one, let alone come to know.
Shirley Hazzard (The Transit of Venus)
Que importa tampouco que os astrônomos afirmem que foi um cometa que passou sobre a Bahia naquela noite? O que Pedro Bala viu foi Dora feita estrela, indo para o céu.
Jorge Amado (Capitães da Areia)
I drop to the curb like childhood leaving a body.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
So? There's two of us and one of you, and whenever we feel like it, we can be three. That's love too, you know.
S. Dora (Three)
To the daughters of Eve, that they may teach men that love is not lechery, nor the simony of voluptuousness, but a joy that dwells in the highest and holiest regions of the terrestrial paradise, that they may make it the highest prize of virtue, the most glorious conquest of genius, the first force of human progress.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
Ever since, the Paris wherein I have tried to retrace her steps has remained as silent and deserted as it was on that day. I walk through empty streets. For me, they are always empty, even at dusk, during the rush hour, when the crowds are hurrying towards the mouths of the métro. I think of her in spite of myself, sensing an echo of her presence in this neighborhood or that.
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
You don't respect me," said Dora, her voice trembling. "Of course I don't respect you," said Paul. "Have I any reason to? I'm in love with you, unfortunately, that's all." "Well, it's unfortunate for me too," said Dora, starting to cry.
Iris Murdoch (The Bell)
Dreaming, in short, is one of the devices we employ to circumvent repression, one of the main methods of what may be called indirect representation in the mind.
Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria: Dora)
there is no such thing as an unconscious no.
Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria: Dora)
The girl Dora might be water, but his Betty is oil. You can't take oil lightly. It seeps into your skin. It marks you.
Carrie Tiffany (Mateship With Birds)
Suddenly, the wind changed course. Dora’s hair slowly changed direction too, whipping over to the opposite side. The breeze carried her scent to my nose. It was a scent I hadn’t smelled before. It smelled like fallen leaves, or the first buds in spring. The kind of smell that evoked contrary images all at once. I
Sohn Won-Pyung (Almond)
Dim-witted people offend me even further.' 'Oh dear,' Dora said mildly. 'That must be very difficult indeed.' Already, the fair-haired man had begun to turn away from her - but he glanced back at that. 'Pardon?' he asked. 'What must be difficult, exactly?' Dora smiled at him politely. 'Being offended at yourself so very often,' she said. 'That seems a sad way to live, my lord.
Olivia Atwater (Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1))
He took her hand in his, caressed her palm with his finger.“Duin an doras,” he whispered hoarsely, feverishly.“Fuirichidh mise.” Close the door. I’ll stay. Ellie flushed dark, her lashes fluttered shut. “I…I don’t know what you say,” she murmured. Liam dropped her hand, gently laid his at the base of her bare neck. Her skin was soft and warm against his callused palm, and he whispered in her ear,“I know.” He moved his head; his lips whisked across hers, shimmering like a whisper of silk. He breathed her in once more, made himself remove his hand from her heated flesh.
Julia London (Highlander Unbound (Lockhart Family, #1))
Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding.
Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie)
Fashion is about mixing everything you love in one piece, putting all your flaws together, telling the world to accept you the way you are. If they don't get it, it's fine. As long as you feel comfortable in your skin, nobody has the right to tell you otherwise.
Dora Sky (The Game)
Il faut longtemps pour que resurgisse à la lumière ce qui a été effacé. Des traces subsistent dans des registres et l'on ignore où ils sont cachés et quels gardiens veillent sur eux et si ces gardiens consentiront à vous les montrer. Ou peut-être ont-ils oublié tout simplement que ces registres existaient
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
Swiper No Swiping!
Dora The Explorer
Everybody uses everybody until we're all just a bunch of used up shit sacks waiting to go to dirt.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
What we need, is a break out. Out of our lives, out of Seattle, out of the dumb script of girl.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
But I am a patient man. I can wait for hours in the rain.
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
Не, няма миг без чудеса! Живот би нямало без чудо!
Дора Габе
Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting through to the real part of your life—but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
I met death in Dickens. It made more of an impression on me than anything else in Dickens. There was the death of Little Nell, the death of Paul Dombey, the death of Barkis in David Copperfield, the death (above all) of Dora. I remember reading about that in the autumn of 1918. It was October; it was a rainy day; and it was late afternoon when I read that chapter. I read it by the light of the fire. I can still remember all that. I can still remember my grief, and I can still remember that it took me several months to overcome that grief about a fictive character in a book—not that I have ever really recovered. That experience at the age of eight prepared me to find value in the passing of loved ones. It helped me to endure and properly experience the real deaths that followed it . . . We need to prepare our children for death. It is one of the things that they need and have a right to learn, and it is from literature that they can best learn it.
Arm the Children
There is also the basic inequality of being born either with a natural talent or without one. Clever or stupid. No matter how much you try to argue against it, Dora, we are not born equal. All we can ever strive for is the equality of opportunity for those who have the ability to make the most of it.
Sally Wentworth (Summer Fire (Atlantic Large Print Series))
An inability to meet the real demands of love is one of the essential characteristics of neurosis; the patients are dominated by the opposition of reality and fantasy. They will flee from what they long for most intensely in their fantasies if they encounter it in real life, and they are most likely to abandon themselves to fantasies when they no longer need to fear their realization.
Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria: Dora)
There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
I had a dream about you. You were wearing Sylvester Stallone's sneer as pants, but his lips were saggy on your legs, so you had to wear a mustache as a belt.

Dora J. Arod (I Had a Dream About You)
We live through sound and light—through our technologies.
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
at least one of the meanings of a symptom corresponds to the presentation of a sexual fantasy, while there is no such limit to the content of its other meanings.
Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria: Dora)
Even Grace still imagined there might be words, the words that could reach Dora and that had so far, unaccountably, not been hit upon. Only Caro recognized that Dora's condition was exactly that: a condition, an irrational state requiring professional, or divine, intervention.
Shirley Hazzard (The Transit of Venus)
He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there. “‘How about my present?’ she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing. “Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah! “No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I’m afraid. “All right, Dora, don’t you worry. You’ll get your two quid all right. We aren’t paying by results. “He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.’ “Dora brought it. Ah, that’s better. That at least doesn’t fail.
George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying)
That is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time-everything that defiles and destroys you-have been able to take away from her.
Patrick Modiano (Dora Bruder)
Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped. 'Do you mean' she said, 'that they're completely imprisoned in there?' Mrs. Marks laughed. 'Not imprisoned, my dear,' she said. 'They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part.
Iris Murdoch
And if we were not all three in fairyland, certainly I was. I lived principally on Dora and coffee. To have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition. There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spoony; but there was a purity of heart in all this still that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I'm only Jo," returned the young lady. "I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie." "Laurie Laurence, what an odd name." "My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead." "I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?" "I thrashed 'em." "I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it." And Jo resigned herself with a sigh
Louisa May Alcott
Chi amo? Su, rifletti, forza. A me è proibito il sogno di un amore con questo naso al piede, che almen di un quarto d'ora ovunque mi precede. Allora per chi amo? Ma questo va da sé. Amo, ma è inevitabile, la più bella che c'è.
Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac)
The Dora bag has straps, it’s like Backpack but with Dora on it instead of Backpack’s face. It has a handle too, when I try it pulls up, I think I broke it, but then it rolls, it’s a wheelie bag and a backpack at the same time, that’s magic. “You like it?” It’s Deana talking to me. “Would you like to keep your things in it?” “Maybe one that’s not pink,” says Paul to her. “What about this one, Jack, pretty cool or what?” He’s holding up a bag of Spider-Man. I give Dora a big hug. I think she whispers, Hola, Jack. Deana tries to take the Dora bag but I won’t let her. “It’s OK, I just have to pay the lady, you’ll get it back in two seconds…” It’s not two seconds, it’s thirty-seven.
Emma Donoghue (Room)
It’s like Mark Twain once said to his wife, Olivia: “How many times do I have to say it—over the top!” He wasn’t talking about women being overly dramatic. He was in fact referring to the proper placement of toilet paper. And I agree to a certain extent. Women can be very dramatic at times. * Quote and anecdote taken from Dora J. Arod’s biography titled: “Mark Twain’s Mustache—the World’s Greatest Facial Hair. Or Certainly Top Three, and No Lower Than Number Four.
Jarod Kintz (At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.)
Love is watching two people fall in love and become one.
Dora Okeyo (I Love You This Much)
I had a dream about you. We were ice fishing in my freezer. I caught a few cold beers, and you wondered if we should drink them, or throw them back because they were babies.

Dora J. Arod (I Had a Dream About You)
You must let it glide on surfaces so you don't make a mess of things
Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase)
I had a dream about you. You were crying, and I couldn’t tell if it was because you were sad or because you’d been laughing too hard. So I decided to find out by telling you that I’d just heard from the cops, and your mother had been murdered. Before I got to the punch line you started sobbing in a different manner, so I realized you’d been laughing earlier. By that time the mood had changed, and I decided it best not to deliver the punch line after all. So I sat down next to you and put my arm around you and tried to console you for your perceived loss. 

Dora J. Arod (I Had a Dream About You)
As he walked out into the North Carolina sunshine, Lola's hand in his, a smile curved one corner of his lips. Not so long ago, he'd stood on the burned-out bridge of the Dora Mae, thinking himself cursed with a beautiful underwear model and her sissy little dog. He'd always believed Lola Carlyle would be the death of him. "We never did get around to watching Pride and Prejudice," she said, a teasing glint in her beautiful eyes. Yeah, she would most definitely be the death of him, but what a way to go.
Rachel Gibson (Lola Carlyle Reveals All)
Dark had meant Dora, had meant words and events sordid with self. Struggling to the light from Dora's darkness, Caro had acquired conscience and equilibrium like a profound, laborious education. Exercise of principle would always require more from her than from persons nurtured in it, for she had learned it by application of will. Caro would never do the right thing without knowing it, as some could.
Shirley Hazzard (The Transit of Venus)
This book (Jarod Kintz's book) is trash. I mean, I assume it is, because that's where I found it while scrounging for lunch. However, I must admit that I haven't read it. I would have, but I am homeless, mainly due to my illiteracy (though Big Government, Keynesian monetary policy, and my struggle with alcoholism certainly played a large role).
Dora J. Arod
We haven’t got to the Sunflowers yet, said Michael. No, we haven’t, she said. You’re right. OK, so Vincent hoped to set up an artists’ studio down there in the South because he was keen to have friends and like-minded people around him. I think he was probably lonely, said Michael. What with the ear thing and the darkness. I think he was, too, said Dora. 1888 was the year, and he was waiting for another artist to join him, a man called Paul Gauguin. People say that, in all probability, he painted the Sunflowers as decoration for Gaugain’S room. Did lots of versions of them too, not just this. It’s a lovely thought, though, isn’t it? Some people say it’s not true but I like to think it is. Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that, you two, she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen.
Sarah Winman (Tin Man)
I had a dream about you. You were you, but you were many—a multitude of mannequins, each named Manny. And I was me, but I was Dark Jar Tin Zoo, and as such I made love to you—all of you. Then I woke up alone, naked, cuddling a mannequin I named after you who smells like you, because I spray it with the same fragrance you used to wear. Is that crazy? No, I didn’t think so either. 

Dora J. Arod (I Had a Dream About You)
Pablo's many stories and reminiscences about Olga and Marie-Thérese and Dora Maar, as well as their continuing presence just offstage in our own life together, gradually made me realize that he had a kind of Bluebeard complex that made him want to cut off the heads of all women he had collected in his private museum. But he didn't cut the heads entirely off. He preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who had shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. From time to time they would provide a humorous or dramatic or sometimes tragic side to things, and that was all grist to his mill.
Françoise Gilot (Life With Picasso)
Ogni volta che Dusk ripensava al suo sorriso, che tanto amava, non poteva evitare che un’espressione adorante gli comparisse in viso e che il suo cuore battesse più forte per la gioia. Comunque, la vita in tournée non era solo divertimento, sesso e giochi, infatti, a un certo punto dovette uscire dalla loro camera per le prove. Anche quando Lolly non era con lui, la sua attenzione continuava a spostarsi dalla musica al ragazzo e a quanto fosse bello rimanere accoccolati a letto dopo aver scopato la mattina presto. Una brezza piacevole scombinò i capelli di Dusk mentre stava sperimentando con la chitarra i nuovi accordi per le loro canzoni. La sua voce diventava un tutt’uno con la musica quando cantava e lui si perdeva nel mondo creato dalle parole di suo fratello. Alcune canzoni che Dusk conosceva benissimo, e che cantava da sempre, lo colpirono come mai prima d’ora. Non solo le canzoni di Dawn vibrarono in maniera diversa, ma gli diedero anche nuove idee. Milioni di parole invasero la sua mente, spingendolo a desiderare un foglio per scriverle. Era raro che componesse e, sebbene per il momento aveva solo piccoli frammenti di testo, non poté fare a meno di pensare di avere qualcosa di speciale tra le mani.
K.A. Merikan (Manic Pixie Dream Boy (The Underdogs, #1))
I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
Standing on the top of this Monte d'Ora watching the sun come radiantly alive, Turi Guiliano was filled with youthful glee that he had escaped his enemies. He would never obey another human being again. He would choose who should live and who should die, and there was no doubt in his mind that all he would do would be for the glory and freedom of Sicily, for good and not for evil. That he would only strike for the cause of justice, to help the poor. that he would win every battle, that he would win the love of the oppressed. He was twenty years old.
Mario Puzo
The best description of this book is found within the title. The full title of this book is: "This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me and Dora J. Arod, who sometimes shares my pen, paper, thoughts, mind, body, and soul, because Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome that can be read forwards or backwards no matter if you are an upright man in the eyes of God or you are upside down in a tank of water wearing purple goggles and grape jelly discussing how best to spread your time between your work, your wife, and the toasted bread being eaten by the man you are talking to who goes by the name of Dendrite McDowell, who is only wearing a towel on his head and has an hourglass obscuring his “time machine”--or the thing that he says can keep him young forever by producing young versions of himself the way I avert disaster in that I ramble and bumble like a bee until I pollinate my way through flowery situations that might otherwise have ended up being more than less than, but not equal to two short parallel lines stacked on top of each other that mathematicians use to balance equations like a tightrope walker running on a wire stretched between two white stretched limos parked on a long cloud that looks like Salt Lake City minus the sodium and Mormons, but with a dash of pepper and Protestants, who may or may not be spiritual descendents of Mr. Maynot, who didn’t come over to America in the Mayflower, but only because he was “Too lazy to get off the sofa,” and therefore impacted this continent centuries before the first television was ever thrown out of a speeding vehicle at a man who looked exactly like my great-grandfather, who happens to look exactly like the clone science has yet to allow me to create
Jarod Kintz (This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me...)
Jenny, you are sitting in the back.” He whispers slowly. “Nope, it’s not going to happened.” He licks his lips and moves his head on the side looking into my eyes, daring me to disobey him. It’s on! “Don’t make me repeat myself Jenny.” “I am not getting on that thing, Ernest. It’s a death trap!” “Alright then, we’re going to do this the hard way.” He bends down and lifts me up in his arms. I gasp when he puts me upside down, from this angle I can see his sexy ass and from his angle he can see mine.
Dora Sky (Delicious (Delicious #1))
My Dear Mrs Winter. (I had half a mind when I dipped my pen in the ink, to address you by your old natural Christian name.) The snow lies so deep on the Northern Railway, and the Posts have been so interrupted in consequence, that your charming note arrived here only this morning... I get the heartache again when I read your commission, written in the hand which I find now to be not in the least changed, and yet it is a great pleasure to be entrusted with it, and to have that share in your gentler remembrances which I cannot find it still my privilege to have, without a stirring of the old fancies. ... I am very very sorry you mistrusted me in not writing before your little girl was born; but I hope now you know me better you will teach her, one day, to tell her children, in times to come when they have some interest in wondering about it, that I loved her mother with the most extraordinary earnestness when I was a boy. I have always believed since, and always shall to the last, that there never was such a faithful and devoted poor fellow as I was. Whatever of fancy, romance, energy, passion, aspiration and determination belong to me, I never have separated and never shall separate from the hard hearted little woman - you - whom it is nothing to say I would have died for, with the greatest alacrity! I never can think, and I never seem to observe, that other young people are in such desperate earnest, or set so much, so long, upon one absorbing hope. It is a matter of perfect certainty to me that I began to fight my way out of poverty and obscurity, with one perpetual idea of you. This is so fixed in my knowledge that to the hour when I opened your letter last Friday night, I have never heard anybody addressed by your name or spoken of by your name, without a start. The sound of it has always filled me with a kind of pity and respect for the deep truth that I had, in my silly hobbledehoyhood, to bestow upon one creature who represented the whole world to me. I have never been so good a man since, as I was when you made me wretchedly happy. I shall never be half so good a fellow any more. This is all so strange now, both to think of, and to say, after every change that has come about; but I think, when you ask me to write to you, you are not unprepared for what it is so natural to me to recall, and will not be displeased to read it. I fancy, - though you may not have thought in the old time how manfully I loved you - that you may have seen in one of my books a faithful reflection of the passion I had for you, and may have thought that it was something to have been loved so well, and may have seen in little bits of "Dora" touches of your old self sometimes, and a grace here and there that may be revived in your little girls, years hence, for the bewilderment of some other young lover - though he will never be as terribly in earnest as I and David Copperfield were. People used to say to me how pretty all that was, and how fanciful it was, and how elevated it was above the little foolish loves of very young men and women. But they little thought what reason I had to know it was true and nothing more nor less. These are things that I have locked up in my own breast, and that I never thought to bring out any more. But when I find myself writing to you again "all to your self", how can I forbear to let as much light in upon them as will shew you that they are there still! If the most innocent, the most ardent, and the most disinterested days of my life had you for their Sun - as indeed they had - and if I know that the Dream I lived in did me good, refined my heart, and made me patient and persevering, and if the Dream were all of you - as God knows it was - how can I receive a confidence from you, and return it, and make a feint of blotting all this out! ...
Charles Dickens
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.
John Steinbeck