“
For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
I have always been accused of taking the things I love - football, of course, but also books and records - much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
I don't know what happens to our consciousness when we're unwound," says Connor. "I don't even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this." He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. "We have a right to our lives!"
The kids go wild.
"We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!"
The cheers reach fever pitch.
"We deserve a world where both those things are possible— and it's our job to help make that world.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Unwind (Unwind, #1))
“
...So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
For the first time, but certainly not the last, I began to believe that Arsenal's moods and fortunes somehow reflected my own
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in a many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
My blood rose, mixing with my lingering fear of the unknown to drive her to a fever pitch. Her lips touched my lower neck and vertigo spun the room, burning tracings of desire to settle deep and low in me. I exhaled into the promise of more to come, calling it to me. I breathed it in like smoke, the rising passion starting a feeling of abandonment inside. I didn’t care anymore if it was right or wrong. It just was.
”
”
Kim Harrison
“
But what else can we do when we're so weak? We invest hours each day, months each year, years each lifetime in something over which we have no control; it is any wonder then, that we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre liturgies designed to give us the illusion that we are powerful after all, just as every other primitive community has done when faced with a deep and apparently impenetrable mystery?
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private - we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly convinced that none of the other fans understands quite why we have been harder hit than anyone else - we are forced to mourn in public, surrounded by people whose hurt is expressed in forms different from our own.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Like most depressions that plague people who have been more fortunate than most, I was ashamed of mine because there appeared to me no convincing cause for it; I just felt as though I had come off the rails somewhere.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
During times of physical separation, when touching and caressing is impossible, a deep, longing, almost a hunger, for the beloved can set in. We are used to thinking of this longing as only psychological, but it's actually physical. The brain is virtually in a drug-withdrawal state. During a separation, motivation for reunion can reach a fever pitch in the brain. Activities such as caressing, kissing, gazing, hugging, and orgasm can replenish the chemical bond of love and trust in the brain. The oxytocin-dopamine rush once again suppresses anxiety and skepticism and reinforces the love circuits in the brain. From an experiment we also know that oxytocin is naturally released in the brain after a twenty-second hug from a partner- sealing the bond between huggers and triggering the brain's trust circuits.
”
”
Louann Brizendine (The Female Brain)
“
I have measured out my life in Arsenal fixtures, and any event of any significance has a footballing shadow.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
One thing is sure: if we don’t teach our young people how to deal with sex when they are half out of their minds, we are not only fooling them; we’re fooling ourselves as well. Whatever lessons we teach them, we need to help them understand that they will react differently when they are calm and cool from when their hormones are raging at fever pitch (and of course the same also applies to our own behavior).
”
”
Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
“
Few of us have chosen our clubs, they have simply been presented to us; and so as they slip from Second Division to the Third, or sell their best players, or buy players who you know can't play, or bash the ball the seven hundreth time towards a nine foot centre-forward, we simply curse, go home, worry for a fortnight and then come back to suffer all over again.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
What I needed more than anything was a place where unfocused unhappiness could thrive, where I could be still and worry and mope; I had the blues, and when I watched my team I could unwrap them and let them breathe a little.
”
”
Nick Hornby
“
I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Absurdly, I haven't yet got around to saying that football is a wonderful sport, but of course it is. Goals have a rarity value that points and runs and sets do not, and so there will always be that thrill, the thrill of seeing someone do something that can only be done three or four times in a whole game if you are lucky, not at all if you are not. And I love the pace of it, its lack of formula; and I love the way that small men can destroy big men … in a way that they can’t in other contact sports, and the way that t he best team does not necessarily win. And there’s the athleticism …, and the way that strength and intelligence have to combine. It allows players to look beautiful and balletic in a way that some sports do not: a perfectly-timed diving header, or a perfectly-struck volley, allow the body to achieve a poise and grace that some sportsmen can never exhibit.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
..some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
These bullies must keep up the assault, the slander, the character assassinations, stirring up the emotions of the public to a fever pitch, acting like saviors when in actuality they are frauds, phony patriots and very evil men in disguise, wrapping themselves in the flag.
”
”
Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun)
“
I have always been accused of taking the things I love – football, of course, but also books and records – much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me. Perhaps it was these desperate, bitter men in the West Stand at Arsenal who taught me how to get angry in this way; and perhaps it is why I earn some of my living as a critic – maybe it’s those voices I can hear when I write. ‘You’re a WANKER, X.’ ‘The Booker Prize? THE BOOKER PRIZE? They should give that to me for having to read you.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
In essence, love raises the feeling of one being for another to such a pitch that the threatened loss of the beloved or the loss of his love is felt no less keenly than the threat of death. Hence love is based on a
desire to live in anguish in the presence of an object of such high worth that the heart cannot bear to contemplate losing it. The fever of the senses is not a desire to die. Nor is love the desire to lose but the desire to live in fear of possible loss, with the beloved holding the lover on the very threshold of a swoon. At that price alone can we feel the violence of rapture before the beloved.
”
”
Georges Bataille (Erotism: Death and Sensuality)
“
I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police.
”
”
David Bennun (Tick Bite Fever)
“
This, for the benefit of those with only a sketchy grasp of football tactics, was a
Dutch invention which necessitated flexibility from all the players on the pitch. Defenders were required to attack, attackers to play in mid-field; it was football’s version of post-modernism, and the intellectuals loved it.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
By the early seventies I had become an Englishman – that is to say, I hated England just as much as half of my compatriots seemed to do.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
High voter turnout, which some equate with a healthy democracy, has been in Nigeria (and in some other countries) an indication instead of a fever pitch of political polarization.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Conquests and Cultures: An International History)
“
A critical faculty is a terrible thing. When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films I didn't want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussels sprouts and cabbage, and there were no bad books - everything I read was great. Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassidy was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on EARTH would my English teacher think that 'The History of Mr Polly' was better than 'Ten Little Indians' by Agatha Christie? And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Ahh… So good, Tate,” Logan said as he jacked his hips forward, his dick sliding through Tate’s fist. “You’re so sexy,” Tate whispered. “The way you move. The way you sound. The way you say my name like it’s a prayer.” Logan growled, his arousal now at a fever pitch, judging by the flushed cheeks and tightly bunched jaw, and then Tate bit down on his lower lip and said, “Say it again like that as you come down my throat.
”
”
Ella Frank (Tease (Temptation, #4))
“
Attention to her words was at such a fever pitch that Theo was visited by a delegation of three diamond sellers who begged her aid. That very evening Lady Islay appeared at a ball wearing a necklace that featured no fewer than eight strands of diamonds, caught together by an extraordinary pear-shaped diamond pendant, and casually remarked that she thought a woman should rival the Milky Way at night: *We give babies milk, but ladies? Diamonds.*
”
”
Eloisa James (The Ugly Duchess (Fairy Tales, #4))
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)
“
We have a right to our lives!” The kids go wild. “We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!” The cheers reach fever pitch. “We deserve a world where both those things are possible—and it’s our job to help make that world.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Unwind (Unwind Dystology, #1))
“
What I feel is not like the ballads.'
'No an affliction, then?' Oak raises an eyebrow. 'No fever?'
Tiernan gives him an exasperated look- one with which the prince is very familiar. 'It is more feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and I am always looking for.'
'So he's liking a missing phone?'
'Someone ought to pitch you into the sea,' ...
”
”
Holly Black (The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2))
“
Everyone knows the song that Millwall fans sing, to the tune of „Sailing”: 'No one likes us/No one likes us/No one likes us/We don't care.' In fact I have always felt that the song is a little melodramatic, and that if anyone should sing it, it is Arsenal.
Every Arsenal fan, the youngest and the oldest, is aware that no one likes us, and every day we hear that dislike reiterated.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
My companions for the afternoon were affable, welcoming middle-aged men in their late thirties and early forties who simply had no conception of the import of the afternoon for the rest of us. To them it was an afternoon out, a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon; if I were to meet them again, they would, I think, be unable to recall the score that afternoon, or the scorer (at half-time they talked office politics), and in a way I envied them their indifference. Perhaps there is an argument that says Cup Final tickets are wasted on the fans, in the way that youth is wasted on the young; these men, who knew just enough about football to get them through the afternoon, actively enjoyed the occasion, its drama and its noise and its momentum, whereas I hated every minute of it, as I hated every Cup Final involving Arsenal.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with. Marriages are nowhere near as rigid - you won’t catch any Arsenal fans slipping off to Tottenham for a bit of extra-marital slap and tickle, and though divorce is a possibility (you can just stop going if things get too bad), getting hitched again is out of the question.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Any actual relating is impossible during such a state of pitched fever. Real, sane, mature love--the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school--is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect. And the word "respect," from Latin respicere ('to gaze at"), suggests that you can actually see the person who is standing next to you, something you absolutely cannot do from within the swirling mists of romantic delusion. Reality exits the state the moment that infatuation enters, and we might soon find ourselves doing all sorts of crazy things that we would never have considered doing in a sane state.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
“
Dialogue in the works of autobiography is quite naturally viewed with some suspicion. How on earth can the writer remember verbatim conversations that happened fifteen, twenty, fifty years ago? But 'Are you playing, Bob?' is one of only four sentences I have ever uttered to any Arsenal player (for the record the others are 'How's the leg, Bob?' to Bob Wilson, recovering from injury the following season; 'Can I have your autograph, please?' to Charlie George, Pat Rice, Alan Ball and Bertie Mee; and, well, 'How's the leg, Brian?' to Brian Marwood outside the Arsenal club shop when I was old enough to know better) and I can therefore vouch for its absolute authenticity.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
a futballszurkoló természetes állapota a keserű csalódottság, függetlenül az eredménytől.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
I’m so in love with him I can’t even ask him out. I want to lie at his feet, want to smooth out all the wrinkles in his life and make everything okay.
”
”
Heidi Cullinan (Fever Pitch (Love Lessons, #2))
“
When people matter to you, they deserve your time and attention. That’s how you keep from screwing things up.
”
”
Heidi Cullinan (Fever Pitch (Love Lessons, #2))
“
Life was about to begin, so Arsenal had to go.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
So . . . ,” she says, following him to the chalkboard. “You got a Visiting. An actual Visiting—Natasha Grimm-Pitch was here.”
Baz glances back over his shoulder. “You sound impressed, Bunce.”
“I am,” Penelope says. “Your mother was a hero. She developed a spell for gnomeatic fever. And she was the youngest headmaster in Watford history.”
Baz is looking at Penny like they’ve never met.
“And,” Penny goes on, “she defended your father in three duels before he accepted her proposal.”
“That sounds barbaric,” I say.
“It was traditional,” Baz says.
“It was brilliant,” Penny says. “I’ve read the minutes.”
“Where?” Baz asks her.
“We have them in our library at home,” she says. “My dad loves marriage rites. Any sort of family magic, actually. He and my mother are bound together in five dimensions.”
“That’s lovely,” Baz says, and I’m terrified because I think he means it.
“I’m going to make time stop when I propose to Micah,” she says.
“The little American? With the thick glasses?”
“Not so little anymore.”
“Interesting.” Baz rubs his chin. “My mother hung the moon.”
“She was a legend,” Penelope beams.
“I thought your parents hated the Pitches,” I say.
They both look at me like I’ve just stuck my hand in the soup bowl.
“That’s politics,” Penelope says. “We’re talking about magic.”
“Obviously,” I say. “What was I thinking.”
“Obviously,” Baz says. “You weren’t.”
“What’s happening right now?” I say. “What are we even doing?”
Penelope folds her arms and squints at the chalkboard. “We,” she declares, “are finding out who killed Natasha Grimm-Pitch.”
“The legend,” Baz says.
Penelope gives him a soft look, the kind she usually saves for me. “So she can rest in peace.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
“
I don't think I was very happy, and the problem with being a thirteen-year-old depressive is that when the rest of life is so uproarious, which it invariably is, there is no suitable context for the gloom.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
So, yes, of course I feel nostalgic, even if I am longing for a time which never really belonged to us: like I said, some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
In fact we are your second home, forever, full stop. You need milk money, somewhere to wash your clothes? You come to me. You need clothes? Me. A hug, a smile, a night at the movies--me." He crushed Aaron's face into his neck. "Sometimes we need a place to be completely safe, somewhere boring that isn't about sex or adventure or wild hairs. I am that place for you. As long as you want it, for ten minutes or ten hours or ten thousand years: I am your safe place. No matter what happens, no matter who leaves you or hurts you. I am your safe place.
”
”
Heidi Cullinan (Fever Pitch (Love Lessons, #2))
“
Chelsea fans may have been listening to the Beatles and the Stones, but at Highbury half-time entertainment was provided by the Metropolitan Police Band and their vocalist, Constable Alex Morgan. Morgan (whose rank never changed ...) ... sang highlights from light operettas.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
My friend Simon managed only sixteen of the seventeen League games - he smashed his head on a bookshelf in London a few hours before the Grimsby game on the 28th of Decemebr; his girlfriend had to take his car keys away from him because he kept making dazed attempts to drive from Fulham up to the Abbey.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
cable, and away to sea. But the wind was wanting; and to complete our helplessness, down came Hunter with the news that Jim Hawkins had slipped into a boat and was gone ashore with the rest. It never occurred to us to doubt Jim Hawkins, but we were alarmed for his safety. With the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage. The six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs in. One of them was whistling "Lillibullero." Waiting was a strain, and it was decided that Hunter and I should go ashore with the jolly-boat in quest of information. The gigs had leaned to their right, but Hunter and I pulled straight in, in the direction of the stockade upon the chart. The two who were left guarding their boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance; "Lillibullero" stopped off, and I could see the pair discussing what they ought to do. Had they gone and told Silver, all might have turned out differently;
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
It’s not going to work. I’m not the kind of guy they move mountains for. I got the message loud and clear.”
Giles stared at him, trying to figure out what to say, except he truly didn’t know how to counter that. He did get what Elijah was talking about. People liked to help pretty people, and Giles and Elijah weren’t pretty.
”
”
Heidi Cullinan (Fever Pitch (Love Lessons, #2))
“
It gives a thrill to life," he explained to me, "when life is carried in one's hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay. The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach's soul to fever-pitch? For that matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any man for'ard, though he does not know it. For he has what they have not - purpose, something to do and be done, an all-absorbing end to strive to attain, the desire to kill me, the hope that he may kill me. Really, Hump, he is living deep and high. I doubt that he has ever lived so swiftly and keenly before, and I honestly envy him, sometimes, when I see him raging at the summit of passion and sensibility.
”
”
Jack London
“
What impressed me most was just how much most of the men around me hated, really hated, being there. As far as I could tell, nobody seemed to enjoy, in the way that I understood the word, anything that happened during the entire afternoon. Within minutes of the kick-off there was real anger (‘You’re a DISGRACE, Gould. He’s a DISGRACE!’ ‘A hundred quid a week? A HUNDRED QUID A WEEK! They should give that to me for watching you.’); as the game went on, the anger turned into outrage, and then seemed to curdle into sullen, silent discontent. Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
No way!” She doubled over and clenched her stomach as she laughed. “She has totally turned you into pussies!” My eyes narrowed which she caught just as I lunged. I flipped her over and flattened her on the mattress before bringing my fingers to her ribs and tickling her. “Wait,” she gasped and screamed. “I couldn’t quite hear you before. I’m a what?” “A pussy,” she blurted and wiggled to get away. “I see you think you’re too tough. I’ll have to show no mercy.” “No mercy! No mercy!” she mocked and screeched. “As you wish.” Her t-shirt had risen to reveal her lace panties. My mouth salivated when I lowered my face and kissed her through the material. Her breath caught and back bowed as I kissed her again, using my lips and tongue to coax her arousal to a fever pitch. “Mercy, please! Mercy!” she begged
”
”
B.B. Reid (Fearless (Broken Love, #5))
“
Nen sajnáltam se a csapatot, se a többi szurkolót, csakis magamat sajnáltam, és most már tudom, hogy a futballbánat mindig ilyen. Amikor a csapatunk kikap a Wembleyben, a kollégáinkra vagy az osztálytársainkra gondolunk, akikkel hétfő reggel szembe kell néznünk, és az eufóriára, amelytől az élet megfosztott bennünket, és ilyenkor megfogadjuk, hogy soha az életben nem leszünk még egyszer ilyen sebezhetők.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1
”
”
Orlando Figes (The Crimean War: A Hisory)
“
Most of this fixation was easy to explain. Brady was a midfield player, a passer, and Arsenal haven’t really had one since he left. It might surprise those who have a rudimentary grasp of the rules of the game to learn that a First Division football team can try to play football without a player who can pass the ball, but it no longer surprises the rest of us: passing went out of fashion just after silk scarves and just before inflatable bananas. Managers, coaches and therefore players now favour alternative methods of moving the ball from one part of the field to another, the chief of which is a sort of wall of muscle strung across the half-way line in order to deflect the ball in the general direction of the forwards. Most, indeed all, football fans regret this. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we used to like passing, that we felt that on the whole it was a good thing. It was nice to watch, football’s prettiest accessory (a good player could pass to a team-mate we hadn’t seen, or find an angle we wouldn’t have thought of, so there was a pleasing geometry to it), but managers seemed to feel that it was a lot of trouble, and therefore stopped bothering to produce any players who could do it. There are still a couple of passers in England, but then, there are still a number of blacksmiths.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
The truth of the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth nd thereby bled it of it's strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth of the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of it's strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddied field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, [he said,] is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
My brothers woke me when the sun was beginning to set. “What’s the matter with you, Helen?” Castor cried, shaking me by the shoulder. “How can you sleep at a time like this?”
“Are you all right?” Polydeuces put in. “You’re not ill, are you?” He touched my forehead to check for fever.
I brushed his hand away gently. “I’m fine, ‘Ione’. You don’t need to fuss over me just because I’m smart enough to catch some sleep before the feast. I’ll still be awake when the two of you are snoring with your heads on the table.”
“Ha! If not for us, you’d’ve slept right through the feast,” Castor countered.
“I’ll build a temple in your honor to show my thanks,” I said, straight-faced. “Now if you really want to lend a hand, go find a servant to help me get ready. This is a special occasion and I want to look my best.”
“Ooooooh, our little sister wants to look nice, does she?” Polydeuces crooned. “I wonder why?” I saw him wink at Castor and knew I was doomed to be teased to death.
“Don’t you mean, ‘I wonder who?’” Castor replied. He tried to look sly and all-knowing, but his tendency to go cross-eyed ruined the effect. “Do you think it’s Meleager himself?”
“He’s the hero of the day, but I think she’d rather have a brawnier man,” Polydeuces said. “I’ll bet I can guess who. I saw how you looked at him the first night we were here.” He flung his arms around his twin, pitched his voice high, and cried, “Oh, Theseus, you’re sooooooo strong! Make me queen of Athens too!”
“Out!” I shouted, snatching up my nearly empty water jug. My brothers retreated at a run, laughing.
”
”
Esther M. Friesner (Nobody's Princess (Nobody's Princess, #1))
“
One more thing about the kind of audience that football has decided it wants: the clubs have got to make sure that they're good, that there aren't any lean years, because the new crowd won't tolerate failure. These are not the sort of people who will come to watch you play Wimbledon in March when you're eleventh in the First Division and out of all the Cup competitions. Why should they? They've got plenty of other things to do. So, Arsenal... no more seventeen-year losing streaks, like the one between 1953 and 1970, right? No flirting with relegation, like in 1975 and 1976, or the odd half-decade where you don't even get to a final, like we had between 1981 and 1987. We mug punters put up with that, and at least twenty thousand of us would turn up no matter how bad you were (and sometimes you were very, very bad indeed); but this new lot... I'm not so sure.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it
all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it
is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras
having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow
whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable
and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any
latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in
this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in
creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that
you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can
compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy
“
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others. Brown
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)
“
I’m fine! Not hurt at all!”
“Horseshit,” said the Angel. “You’re all over blood. There’s a first aid kit beneath your seat, Hot Sauce—”
“Really I’m not. It can’t be my blood. It must be someone else’s. Maybe it’s tomato sauce. Who knows? please don’t worry about it.”
Not, as Pyrrha would have said, her best effort. But maybe the rising pitch of hysteria in her voice convinced the Angel, because she only said, “I’ll check on you tomorrow. If you start to feel faint or get a fever, let someone know, all right?”
“I will. I will. I promise.”
The person in the driver’s seat muttered, “I can’t believe this.”
“Yes?” said the Angel. “We’re those your dulcet tones making commentary?”
“If people knew this was how you spent your time, Aim—”
“They should hope to God they spend their own time half so usefully,” said the Angel wrathfully.
“Pretending you can bandage bipeds? Teaching snot-nosed kids about particles?”
“None of us have snot,” said Nona, deeply offended. Then she thought about it and said more truthfully, “Anyway it’s not Kevin’s fault.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3))
“
What are you doing?” she asked, even as she parted her thighs.
“You’re a smart woman. You figure it out.”
He kissed his way up to her knee, then moved between her legs and nibbled higher. Up and up and up until he pressed an openmouthed kiss just at that hollow by her hip.
“That’s not right,” he teased, even as he licked her tummy. “I was looking for something else.”
Anticipation had reached such a fevered pitch that Phoebe wasn’t sure she could talk--even to give directions. She could only send loud telepathic messages instructing Zane on the right place to press that tongue of his. Fortunately, the man was pretty darned good at mind reading.
He slipped from her tummy to the promised land in three seconds flat. This time, she didn’t have warning, but that was okay. She didn’t mind the surprise of his gentle caress pleasuring the most intimate parts of her.
She parted her legs even more and raised her hips in a silent invitation. He moved slowly, discovering, tasting, whispering how good this all was for him.
She wanted to tell him he should try it from her perspective, but she couldn’t form words.
”
”
Susan Mallery (Kiss Me (Fool's Gold, #17))
“
I was too stunned to think or move. I knew he desired my blood. And yet I did not want to hinder him. With a flick of his fingers, he untied the ribbon at my collar and pulled open my nightdress at my neck, exposing my collar-bone and upper chest. His mouth instantly found the supersensitive skin at the side of my throat, and at first, butterfly touch, I quivered and moaned in ecstasy. Suddenly, I felt two sharp pricks against my flesh, and I gasped again. The pain was trivial, quickly replaced by a feeling of languid pleasure such as I had never before imagined. It was as if I could feel my blood seeping out of me, and at the same time, something new, magical, and effervescent seemed to be mingling with my own life essence. Soon, it felt as if the tingling, liquid glow that had been throbbing in my very centre was pulsating throughout all the veins in my body, as if every one of my senses was alive and heightened to a fever-pitch- and with it came a sense of impending danger. Deep down inside of me, I knew that this was bad for me- very bad- that if he took too much blood it would kill me- that I must put a stop to it before it was too late. But I had no will to stop it. I heard a strange vibration, like singing through deep water. My head fell back; I heard myself sigh with intense pleasure; my knees began to buckle beneath me. If nirvana existed, I thought, in the remote corner of my mind which could still think, this must be it. I never wanted it to end.
”
”
Syrie James (Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker)
“
In ballads, love is a disease, an affliction. You contract it as a mortal might contract one of their viruses. Perhaps a touch of hands or a brush of lips, and then it is as though your whole body is fevered and fighting it. But there’s no way to prevent it from running its course.”
“That’s a remarkably poetic and profoundly awful view of love,” Oak says.
Tiernan looks back at the sea. “I was never in love before, so all I had were ballads to go by.”
Oak is silent, thinking of all the times he thought himself to be in love. “Never?”
Tiernan gives a soft huff of breath. “I had lovers, but that’s not the same thing.”
Oak thinks about how to name what he feels about Wren. He does not wish to write her ridiculous poems as he did for so many of the people with whom he thought he was in love, except that he does wish to make her laugh. He does not want to give her enormous speeches or to make grand, empty gestures; he does not want to give her the pantomime of love. He is starting to suspect, however, that pantomime is all he knows.
“But…” Tiernan says, and hesitates again, running hand through his short blackberry hair. “What I feel is not like the ballads.”
“Not an affliction, then?” Oak raises an eyebrow. “No fever?”
Tiernan gives him an exasperated look—one with which the prince is very familiar. “It is more the feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and am always looking for.”
“So he’s like a missing phone?”
“Someone ought to pitch you into the sea,” Tiernan says, but he has a small smile in the corner of his mouth.
”
”
Holly Black (The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2))
“
Broadway lit up just as crazy as ever, and the crowd thick as molasses. Just fling yourself into it like an ant and let yourself get pushed along. Everybody doing it, some for a good reason, and some for no reason at all. All this push and movement
representing action, success, get ahead. Stop and look at shoes, or fancy shirts. The new fall overcoat, wedding rings at 98 cents a piece. Every other joint a food emporium. Everytime I hit that runway toward dinner hour, a fever of expectancy seized me. It's only a stretch of a few blocks from Time Square to 50th street, and when one says 'Broadway', that's all that's really meant. And it's really nothing, just a chicken run, and a lousy one at that. But at 7 in the evening, when everybody's rushing for a table, there is a sort of electrical crackle in the air. And your hair stands on end like antennae, and if you're receptive, you not only get every flash and flicker, but you get the statistical itch. The quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial, ectoplasmatic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars which compose the Milky Way. Only, this is the gay white way. The top of the world with no roof above and not even a crack or a hole under your feet to fall through and say it's a lie. The absolute impersonality of it brings you to a pitch of warm human delirium, which makes you run forward like a blind nag, and wag your delirious ears. Everyone is so utterly, confoundedly not himself, that you become automatically the personification of the whole human race. Shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling, cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so forth. You are all the men who ever lived up until Moses, and beyond that, you are a woman buying a bird cage, or just a mouse trap.
”
”
Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn (Tropic, #2))
“
At first he set the various items on the foot of the sleeping bag, but after a couple of seconds, he simply turned the container over and dumped out the contents.
“Be here, be here, be here,” he muttered as he pawed through everything. Then he grabbed a square packet in triumph. “Got one.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Only one?”
He grinned. “We’ll have to be creative after that.”
He handed her the condom, then clicked off the light. “Where was I?” he asked.
“You can pretty much be anywhere you want to be,” she told him.
“Good. Then I want to be here.”
He pulled off her panties in one smooth move. Then there was nothing. She tensed in anticipation. A whisper of breath was her only warning. One second he was beside her, the next, he kissed the inside of her ankle. She jumped in surprise.
“What are you doing?” she asked, even as she parted her thighs.
“You’re a smart woman. You figure it out.”
He kissed his way up to her knee, then moved between her legs and nibbled higher. Up and up and up until he pressed an openmouthed kiss just at that hollow by her hip.
“That’s not right,” he teased, even as he licked her tummy. “I was looking for something else.”
Anticipation had reached such a fevered pitch that Phoebe wasn’t sure she could talk--even to give directions. She could only send loud telepathic messages instructing Zane on the right place to press that tongue of his. Fortunately, the man was pretty darned good at mind reading.
He slipped from her tummy to the promised land in three seconds flat. This time, she didn’t have warning, but that was okay. She didn’t mind the surprise of his gentle caress pleasuring the most intimate parts of her.
She parted her legs even more and raised her hips in a silent invitation. He moved slowly, discovering, tasting, whispering how good this all was for him.
She wanted to tell him he should try it from her perspective, but she couldn’t form words. She couldn’t even think. All she could do was feel the liquid heat spiraling through her.
”
”
Susan Mallery (Kiss Me (Fool's Gold, #17))
“
Baby, honey, hold on. We're almost there."
Aaron blinked. "You're almost where?"
"To Saint Timothy. We're merging onto 94 now. Give us another ten minutes."
"You're coming here?"
"Of course I'm coming there. Kelly too. Where are you? Where should I go to find you?"
The whole world peeled away, strange and hot and off-key. "But you can't come here. You're busy."
"Nothing right now is more important than you.
”
”
Heidi Cullinan (Fever Pitch (Love Lessons, #2))
“
Did you really scream ‘Get fucked, momma’s boy’ and unload a clip into that dead piece of shit, Tobias?” Spence asked. “I mean, I don’t remember exactly what I said. I may ha...” “Answer the question, Agent. Did you or did you not scream those exact words and proceed to empty an entire clip of ammunition into that rotting undead mother fucker in there?” his voice reached a familiar fever pitch.
”
”
Dennis Freeman (The Terrorverse: Slasher Survival School)
“
The Sunday morning choir raised their voices to fever pitch with another gospel tune. Slurring voices filled with thick drawls of the local accent. The choir a mix of young girls her own age, alongside elderly women, with a few men thrown in for good measure. The old ladies wore tight gray buns and librarian glasses. Could they have ever been young? Could their husbands have?
”
”
Jaime Allison Parker (Justice of the Fox)
“
Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship. The way she put it was:
'When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?'
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
It is part of the essential Arsenal experience that they are loathed.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
D. C. Stephenson was the ideal missionary. He had magnetism, unbridled energy, and a talent for bundling a set of grievances against immigrants, Jews, Roman Catholics, and Blacks into a simple unified pitch that made sense of a fast-changing America still dazed by the Great War. Not long after Stephenson joined the hooded order in early 1921, he would eclipse the man who hired him. “All
”
”
Timothy Egan (A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them)
“
Their owners returned to Philadelphia each fall, leaving the resort a ghost town. Samuel Richards realized that mass-oriented facilities had to be developed before Atlantic City could become a major resort and a permanent community. From Richards’ perspective, more working-class visitors from Philadelphia were needed to spur growth. These visitors would only come if railroad fares cost less. For several years Samuel Richards tried, without success, to sell his ideas to the other shareholders of the Camden-Atlantic Railroad. He believed that greater profits could be made by reducing fares, which would increase the volume of patrons. A majority of the board of directors disagreed. Finally in 1875, Richards lost patience with his fellow directors. Together with three allies, Richards resigned from the board of directors of the Camden-Atlantic Railroad and formed a second railway company of his own. Richards’ railroad was to be an efficient and cheaper narrow gauge line. The roadbed for the narrow gauge was easier to build than that of the first railroad. It had a 3½-foot gauge instead of the standard 4 feet 8½ inches, so labor and material would cost less. The prospect of a second railroad into Atlantic City divided the town. Jonathan Pitney had died six years earlier, but his dream of an exclusive watering hole persisted. Many didn’t want to see the type of development that Samuel Richards was encouraging, nor did they want to rub elbows with the working class of Philadelphia. A heated debate raged for months. Most of the residents were content with their island remaining a sleepy little beach village and wanted nothing to do with Philadelphia’s blue-collar tourists. But their opinions were irrelevant to Samuel Richards. As he had done 24 years earlier, Richards went to the state legislature and obtained another railroad charter. The Philadelphia-Atlantic City Railway Company was chartered in March 1876. The directors of the Camden-Atlantic were bitter at the loss of their monopoly and put every possible obstacle in Richards’ path. When he began construction in April 1877—simultaneously from both ends—the Camden-Atlantic directors refused to allow the construction machinery to be transported over its tracks or its cars to be used for shipment of supplies. The Baldwin Locomotive Works was forced to send its construction engine by water, around Cape May and up the seacoast; railroad ties were brought in by ships from Baltimore. Richards permitted nothing to stand in his way. He was determined to have his train running that summer. Construction was at a fever pitch, with crews of laborers working double shifts seven days a week. Fifty-four miles of railroad were completed in just 90 days. With the exception of rail lines built during a war, there had never been a railroad constructed at such speed. The first train of the Philadelphia-Atlantic City Railway Company arrived in the resort on July 7, 1877. Prior to Richards’ railroad,
”
”
Nelson Johnson (Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City HBO Series Tie-In Edition)
“
By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do. I was alienated by the manager’s ignorance, prejudice and fear, positive that my own choices would destroy any team in the world, and I had a deep antipathy towards players from Tottenham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester United.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Even the Brazilian way of celebrating a goal - run four strides, jump, punch, run four strides, jump, punch - was alien and funny and enviable, all at the same time.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
(Maybe there is a point to this banality after all. If I travel to see my mother on the train now the fare is £2.70 for a day return, a tenfold increase on 1970 adult prices; but in the 91/92 season it now cost £8 to stand on the terraces at Arsenal, a thirty-two-fold increase.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
Him raging around today, snapping and snarling at everything that moved has awoken my libido, taking it to fever pitch. I want him to release all that anger on my body. I want him to punish me for upsetting him.
”
”
T.L. Swan (Mr. Garcia (Mr. Series, #3))
“
I am a part of the club, just as the club is a part of me; and I say this fully aware that the club exploits me, disregards my views, and treats me shoddily on occasions, so my feeling of organic connection is not built on a muddle-headed and sentimental misunderstanding of how professional football works.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
There are beatings, murders, summary executions, mutinies; only the progress of the pestilence prevents complete anarchy. Men become too ill to kill, then too ill to work. A helmsman with a neck bubo is strapped to the helm; a ship’s carpenter with a bloody cough, to his bench. A rigger shaking with fever is lashed to the mast. Gradually each escaping vessel becomes a menagerie of grotesques. Everywhere there are delirious men who talk to the wind and stain their pants with bloody anal leakages; and weeping men who cry out for absent mothers and wives and children; and cursing men who blaspheme God, wave their fists at an indifferent sky, and burble blood when they cough. There are men who ooze pus from facial and body sores and stink to high heaven; lethargic men who stare listlessly into the cruel, gray sea; mad men who laugh hysterically and dig filthy fingernails into purple, mottled flesh; and dead men, whose bloated bodies roll back and forth across pitching decks until they hit a rail or mast and burst open like piñatas.
”
”
John Kelly (The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time)
“
If you raise your voice when giving a command to your child, he will learn to associate your tone and sound level with your intention. If you have trained him to respond to a bellow, don’t blame him if he ignores your first thirteen calm “suggestions” while waiting for your fevered pitch to reach the point where he interprets it to be a real command.
”
”
Michael Pearl (To Train Up a Child: Turning the hearts of the fathers to the children)
“
Mint ahogy az az átlagnál szerencsésebb embereket sújtó depresszió esetében lenni szokott, én is szégyelltem a magamét, mivel nem láttam rá semmilyen meggyőző okot; egyszerűen csak úgy éreztem, mintha valahol kisiklottam volna a sínekről.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
“
The ocean was a molten gold. A drum roll sent the crowd into a frenzied cheering which reached a fevered pitch when the ocean swallowed the sun in a kinetic bolt of color representing the entire spectrum of light. Matt studied Shelly as she watched awed. The child-like delight on her face was captivating.
”
”
Meryl Sawyer (Half Moon Bay)
“
The problem here is that unless a team is playing well, winning things, filling their stadia, clubs simply cannot afford to alienate the very
”
”
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)