Flights Novel Quotes

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

There is no hospitality like understanding.
Vanna Bonta (Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel)
     Illicit flight Alfa Bravo Charlie quickly reached a predetermined altitude and stopped dead. The passengers on board screamed the way people do on fairground rides. The shuttle hesitated momentarily and then shot forward accelerating rapidly to reach a blistering 145,222 miles per hour. They were in a Mach 22 situation. The cries from on-board could not be heard from the ground. Neither did anyone in the great metropolis of Llar witness the bright blue vapour trail the craft left behind in its wake. It was after all overcast and raining heavily.
A.R. Merrydew (Our Blue Orange)
The illusion is we are only physical.
Vanna Bonta (Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel)
Which came first — the observer or the particle?
Vanna Bonta (Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel)
This isn't your world. It's your parents. Your world is still out there, waiting to be discovered. Always remember that.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
The people knew what had made them human. It was not their shortcomings, but their hearts.
Vanna Bonta (Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel)
Jack, this is Vance McGruder. I couldn’t find your cell number so I’m taking a chance on reaching you at the cottage. It’s Monday afternoon and I need you here as soon as possible. I’ve arranged for a one-way, first-class ticket on Delta Air Lines on their 3:15pm flight tomorrow afternoon to Atlanta and connecting on to LAX. I’ll have a car and driver at LAX to pick you up. Call me as soon as you get this message.
Behcet Kaya (Body In The Woods (Jack Ludefance, #2))
Leaders in all realms and activities of life knew that the power they had come to hold existed because they were responsible to serve the many, thus power was position of service.
Vanna Bonta (Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel)
Mary approaches her before she is able to reach her station. "Hello Lily. Get anything special for Christmas?" "Just the usual." She answers. "Shattered dreams.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business. If these people didn't live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn't ride them too hard—well, they wouldn't be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid or project them across the footlights.
Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5))
Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels. Every so often someone stops and bends down and glances in through the window, and then you get a glimpse of a human face, maybe even exchange a few words. But ultimately the mind is so occupied with its own act, a play staged by the self ofr the self in a hasty, makeshift cabinet of curiosities peopled by author and character, narrator and reader, the person describing and the person described, that feet, shoes, heels, and faces become, sooner or later, mere components of that act.
Olga Tokarczuk (Flights)
Lily looks back down at the necklace in her hand that Kavita had given her. "It must have cost a fortune." "It did." He confirms. "Though not nearly as much as you're worth." Lily looks up at him. "Don't say that. You hurt me everytime you speak.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong.
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
I was an ordinary person A simple soul – a grain of sand And then you looked my way And then you held my hand And then – I was everything
Michael R. Jennings (Flight Surgeon)
When we're young we think we'll just choose the lives we'll have, the people we're becoming, but so much of it just happens. You can live a whole life without choosing anything at all.
Lynn Steger Strong (Flight)
I don't know who he was," Kavita flat-out states, "but whoever he was he sure did a number on you, didn't he?" Mary leans forward to ensure he would see her deviant stare. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I did a number on him?" Kavita leans in closer as well, and with that same deviant expression, "Yes. I have.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
The hour of spring was dark at last, sensuous memories of sunlight past, I stood alone in garden bowers and asked the value of my hours. Time was spent or time was tossed, Life was loved and life was lost. I kissed the flesh of tender girls, I heard the songs of vernal birds. I gazed upon the blushing light, aware of day before the night. So let me ask and hear a thought: Did I live the spring I’d sought? It's true in joy, I walked along, took part in dance, and sang the song. and never tried to bind an hour to my borrowed garden bower; nor did I once entreat a day to slumber at my feet. Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song, like morning birds they pass along, o'er crests of trees, to none belong; o'er crests of trees of drying dew, their larking flight, my hands, eschew Thus I’ll say it once and true... From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent, It only can be squandered.
Roman Payne (Rooftop Soliloquy)
When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief
Max Hawthorne (Kronos Rising (Kronos Rising #1))
The anti-aging spell he used every month kept him alive for the most part. Facially, he looked like a forty-five year old; physically, he was a wreck because the spell was defective. All his teeth had fallen out years ago and he now used a set of ill-fitting wooden dentures. He was bald and wore a cheap reddish-blonde wig that often slipped if he turned his head suddenly. It also had a tendency to take flight in a breeze. His knees were creaky and often ached, and his eyesight had deteriorated.
Hank Quense (The King Who Disappeared)
The white lily stands for purity. Artists for centuries have pictured the angel Gabriel coming to the virgin Mary with a spray of lillies in his hand, to announce that she is to be the mother of the Turks.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
This guy," Mitch said. "This guy Sheldon you are talking about is a no-goodnik. I'm guessing you already know that, but take it from me. Take it from Mitch. It's not so much what you done as what this schlemiel thinks you shoulda done.
Trevor Holliday (Trinity Takes Flight: A Frank Trinity Crime Novel (Frank Trinity Novels Book 6))
There must have been some mistake. It took me a while to get a flight here, so I can see why you would have appointed a community lawyer to fill in.” “Community lawyer!” Damon’s face grew red with indignation. “I’m one of the most renowned lawyers among American Moroi.” “Renowned, community.” Abe shrugged and leaned back on his heals. “I don’t judge. No pun intended.” Mead, Richelle (2010-05-18). Spirit Bound: A Vampire Academy Novel (p. 475). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
Not to waste the spring I threw down everything, And ran into the open world To sing what I could sing... To dance what I could dance! And join with everyone! I wandered with a reckless heart beneath the newborn sun. First stepping through the blushing dawn, I crossed beneath a garden bower, counting every hermit thrush, counting every hour. When morning's light was ripe at last, I stumbled on with reckless feet; and found two nymphs engaged in play, approaching them stirred no retreat. With naked skin, their weaving hands, in form akin to Calliope's maids, shook winter currents from their hair to weave within them vernal braids. I grabbed the first, who seemed the stronger by her soft and dewy leg, and swore blind eyes, Lest I find I, before Diana, a hunted stag. But the nymphs they laughed, and shook their heads. and begged I drop beseeching hands. For one was no goddess, the other no huntress, merely two girls at play in the early day. "Please come to us, with unblinded eyes, and raise your ready lips. We will wash your mouth with watery sighs, weave you springtime with our fingertips." So the nymphs they spoke, we kissed and laid, by noontime's hour, our love was made, Like braided chains of crocus stems, We lay entwined, I laid with them, Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea, Our bodies draping wearily. We slept, I slept so lucidly, with hopes to stay this memory. I woke in dusty afternoon, Alone, the nymphs had left too soon, I searched where perched upon my knees Heard only larks' songs in the trees. "Be you, the larks, my far-flung maids? With lilac feet and branchlike braids... Who sing sweet odes to my elation, in your larking exaltation!" With these, my clumsy, carefree words, The birds they stirred and flew away, "Be I, poor Actaeon," I cried, "Be dead… Before they, like Hippodamia, be gone astray!" Yet these words, too late, remained unheard, By lark, that parting, morning bird. I looked upon its parting flight, and smelled the coming of the night; desirous, I gazed upon its jaunt, as Leander gazes Hellespont. Now the hour was ripe and dark, sensuous memories of sunlight past, I stood alone in garden bowers and asked the value of my hours. Time was spent or time was tossed, Life was loved and life was lost. I kissed the flesh of tender girls, I heard the songs of vernal birds. I gazed upon the blushing light, aware of day before the night. So let me ask and hear a thought: Did I live the spring I’d sought? It's true in joy, I walked along, took part in dance, and sang the song. and never tried to bind an hour to my borrowed garden bower; nor did I once entreat a day to slumber at my feet. Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song, like morning birds they pass along, o'er crests of trees, to none belong; o'er crests of trees of drying dew, their larking flight, my hands, eschew Thus I'll say it once and true… From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent, It only can be squandered.
Roman Payne (Rooftop Soliloquy)
Travel agents and restaurant chefs do not sell us flight tickets, hotels or fancy dinners – they sell us novel experiences.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: ‘An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
I think where you came from - sky diamond strawberries - is the best place you can imagine: I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ve google mapped directions. I’ve even looked up the flight and hire car.
Sally Thorne, The Hating Game
Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It’s a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work, completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher’s apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand.
Olga Tokarczuk (Flights)
You know," Kavita begins, "I think I can pick out my own furniture. I am an artist after all. I do have some taste." "No you don't." Nick plainly states. "No man has taste. Besides, I didn't pick it out, she did. Wives are good for things like that.
Carroll Bryant (Last Flight Out)
Come on, guys,” Mal said, dropping the wrapper on the floor. “Let’s go find our dorms.” She started up a flight of stairs. Carlos, Jay, and Evie followed her. “Oh! Uh, yeah, your dorms are that way, guys,” said Doug, pointing in the opposite direction.
Walt Disney Company (Descendants Junior Novel)
For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
There are no parks in the ghetto; barely any trees. She misses the smell of the refreshed earth, the flickering green light beneath overhanging foliage, the flight of birds over water. She misses the distinctive individual timbre of each of Warsaw’s church bells. She misses walking home at night through the fragrance of tree pollen and the laughter of lovers. Only books now enable her to experience many of the blessings of the natural world she loves but has never until now fully appreciated. She lives wholeheartedly inside every novel she reads.
Glenn Haybittle (In the Warsaw Ghetto)
The following tale is a fantasy, pure and simple. It is a flight of sheer imagination. It contains no hidden meanings, and none should be read into it; none of the sociological, economic, political, religious, or racial “messages” with which far too many modern novels abound are herein contained. The Coming of the Horseclans is, rather, intended for the enjoyment of any man or woman who has ever felt a twinge of that atavistic urge to draw a yard of sharp, flashing steel and with a wild war cry recklessly spur a vicious stallion against impossible odds.
Robert Adams
Howie brought her hand to his lips. “You stepped in front of me,” he said in wonder. “I didn’t need you to. I can handle Prudence Morgan.” “But you didn’t.” She tapped his chest. “You stayed quiet for the longest time before responding.” “Quiet is how I handle difficult people….” “You don’t handle me that way.” Her voice came out sounding breathless. Howie slipped his arms around her. “If it were up to me, this is how I’d handle you.” Butterflies danced in her stomach. Not a fearful battering of wings, but a sparkling mating flight, making her heart soar into her throat. “Why isn’t it up to you?
Debra Holland (Mail-Order Brides of the West: Bertha: A Montana Sky Series Novel (Mail-Order Brides of the West Series Book 5))
David listened to the swishing sound his yellow slippers made as he walked up the last flight of steps to the door that led from the terrace into the drawing room. Yvette had not yet opened the curtains, which saved him the trouble of closing them again. He liked the drawing room to look dim and valuable.
Edward St. Aubyn (The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels)
The age of clear answers was over. So was the age of characters and plots. Despite her journal sketches, she no longer really believed in characters. They were quiant devices that belonged to the nineteenth century. The very concept of character was founded on errors that modern psychology had exposed. Plots too were like rusted machinery whose wheels would no longer turn. A modern novelist could no more write characters and plots than a modern composer could a Mozart symphony. It was thought, perception, sensations that interested her, the conscious mind as a river through time, and how to represent its onward roll, as well as the tributaries that would swell it, and the obstacles that would divert it. If only she could reproduce the clear light of a summer's morning, the sensations of a child standing at a window, the curve and dip of a swallow's flight over a pool of water. The novel of the future would be unlike anything in the past.
Ian McEwan
Furthermore, Professor Uzzi-Tuzii had begun his oral translation as if he were not quite sure he could make the words hang together, going back over every sentence to iron out the syntactical creases, manipulating the phrases until they were not completely rumpled, smoothing them, clipping them, stopping at every word to illustrate its idiomatic uses and its commutations, accompanying himself with inclusive gestures as if inviting you to be content with approximate equivalents, breaking off to state grammatical rules, etymological derivations, quoting the classics. but just when you are convinced that for the professor philology and erudition mean more than what the story is telling, you realize the opposite is true: that academic envelope serves only to protect everything the story says and does not say, an inner afflatus always on the verge of being dispersed at contact with the air, the echo of a vanished knowledge revealed in the penumbra and in tacit allusions. Torn between the necessity to interject glosses on multiple meanings of the text and the awareness that all interpretation is a use of violence and caprice against a text, the professor, when faced by the most complicated passages, could find no better way of aiding comprehension than to read them in the original, The pronunciation of that unknown language, deduced from theoretical rules, not transmitted by the hearing of voices with their individual accents, not marked by the traces of use that shapes and transforms, acquired the absoluteness of sounds that expect no reply, like the song of the last bird of an extinct species or the strident roar of a just-invented jet plane that shatters the sky on its first test flight. Then, little by little, something started moving and flowing between the sentences of this distraught recitation,. The prose of the novel had got the better of the uncertainties of the voice; it had become fluent, transparent, continuous; Uzzi-Tuzii swam in it like a fish, accompanying himself with gestures (he held his hands open like flippers), with the movement of his lips (which allowed the words to emerge like little air bubbles), with his gaze (his eyes scoured the page like a fish's eyes scouring the seabed, but also like the eyes of an aquarium visitor as he follows a fish's movement's in an illuminated tank).
Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
Whatever junk novels were, however they worked, they were close to therapy, and airports were close to therapy. They both belonged to the culture of the waiting room. Piped music, the language of calming suasion. Come this way--yes, the flight attendant will see you now. Airports, junk novels: they were taking your mind off mortal fear.
Martin Amis (The Information)
What I speak of is the real decision as we experience it; and here the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to creep under the net.4
A.S. Byatt (Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch)
I mean, take for instance all this civil liberties crap. You know what I’d do if I were in power again? I’d say, okay then, we’ll have two queues at the airports. On the left, we’ll have queues to flights on which we’ve done no background checks on the passengers, no profiling, no biometric data, nothing that infringed anyone’s precious civil liberties, used no intelligence obtained under torture—nothing. On the right, we’ll have queues to the flights where we’ve done everything possible to make them safe for passengers. Then people can make their own minds up which plane they want to catch. Wouldn’t that be great? To sit back and watch which queue the Rycarts of this world would really choose to put their kids on, if the chips were down?
Robert Harris (The Ghost Writer: A Novel)
It is not,’ said the schoolmaster, as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears free vent, ‘it is not on earth that Heaven’s justice ends. Think what earth is, compared with the World to which her young spirit has winged its early flight; and say, if one deliberate wish expressed in solemn terms above this bed could call her back to life, which of us would utter it!
Charles Dickens (Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels (The Greatest Writers of All Time Book 1))
We have, what, 66,000-odd guests here today? And not one of them retains even an infant’s sense of self-preservation. They checked their fight-or-flight instincts at the door. That’s what they’re paying for. They see a fire, hear an explosion, feel their roller coaster begin to shear off its track—what are they gonna do? Laugh all the harder. Because they think it’s part of the act. That makes every last one of them a sitting duck.
Lincoln Child (Lethal Velocity (Previously published as Utopia): A Novel)
However, although The Da Vinci Code did a whole heap of things defectively, it did one thing stupefyingly well - the plot. It was as though Brown had jettisoned all traces of style and credibility from his novel because he had realised, in a flash of Leonardo-like scientific insight, that style and credibility were the very properties preventing his theoretical story-balloon from taking flight. So they had been tossed over the side, along with beauty, truth and five hundred years of literary progress.
Andy Miller (The Year of Reading Dangerously)
Would you like to know what it’s like to have your wings again? Imagine falling, except instead of hitting the ground, you soar. Imagine beginning to believe that love is never a lie, even if there are liars. Imagine recalling that cracked bone grows back stronger. That scars are beautiful. You might not be quite who you were when you lost the power of flight. But it is only in having your wings resting heavy on your back again that you realize you always and forever belonged to the sky. You were always strong and fierce and full of magic. Even when you were stranded on the ground.
Holly Black (Heart of the Moors: An Original Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Novel)
When the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in an enchanted way and look wonderful in spite of its sooty trees and railings, Sara knew something was going on in the sky; and when it was at all possible to leave the kitchen without being missed or called back, she invariably stole away and crept up the flights of stairs, and, climbing on the old table, got her head and body as far out of the window as possible. When she had accomplished this, she always drew a long breath and looked all round her. It used to seem as if she had all the sky and the world to herself. No one else ever looked out of the other attics. Generally the skylights were closed; but even if they were propped open to admit air, no one seemed to come near them.
Frances Hodgson Burnett (Complete Novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Socrates is flying. No, he is soaring. The wings behind him beat in a calming rhythm while the cool air rushes past. His wings are all that matter, snapping at the rushing wind like the sails of some great sea vessel, the feathery appendages all he is and all he will ever want to be. His back muscles flex with the effort that takes him high above the ground. He feels the effort, of course, but sweeping into the sky does not require much of one. The sensation is pleasurable, even exhilarating. With flight there is freedom beyond description, an ecstasy bordering on sexual. He has only one destination, and that is to soar higher, to no longer be a prisoner of the earth. Here destinations seem irrelevant, the world below small. Flying exceeds every pleasure he knows. In the immense forever of blue sky, all that matters is flight and his ability to climb higher. Up and up and up...
Kenneth C. Goldman (Of A Feather)
Balzac once terminated a long conversation about politics and the fate of the world by saying: "And now let us get back to serious matters," meaning that he wanted to talk about his novels. The incontestable importance of the world of the novel, our insistence, in fact, on taking seriously the innumerable myths with which we have been provided for the last two centuries by the genius of writers, is not fully explained by the desire to escape. Romantic activities undoubtedly imply a rejection of reality. But this rejection is not a mere escapist flight, and might be interpreted as the retreat of the soul which, according to Hegel, creates for itself, in its disappointment, a fictitious world in which ethics reigns alone. The edifying novel, however, is far from being great literature; and the best of all romantic novels, Paul et Virginie, a really heartbreaking book, makes no concessions to consolation.
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
The book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in its as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see. And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into lace with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing-all the color, the light and movement-is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.
Ann Patchett
right now my mind is full of images, an overwhelming flood of memories and ideas—you have any idea how many memories are buried in the mind? Fishing for bluegill on Lake Argyle with my father, the hook caught in his thumb, forcing it through the other side and cutting it off with wirecutters, the severed barb flying dangerously into the air spinning its cut facet gleaming in the sun and I jerking back for fear it would plunge into my eye, squinting protectively, opening my eyes again it is mud, all mud, a universe of mud and the mortar shell has just taken flight, my fingers jammed into my ears, the smell of the explosion penetrating my sinuses making them clench up and bleed, the shell exploding in the trees, a puff of white smoke but the trees are still there and the gunfire still raining down like hailstones on the cellar door on the day that the tornado wrecked our farmhouse and we packed into my aunt’s fruit cellar and I looked up at the stacked mason jars of rhubarb and tomatoes and wondered what would happen to us when the glass shattered and flew through the air like the horizontal sleet of Soldier Field on the day that I caught five for eighty-seven yards and put such a hit on Cornelius Hayes that he took five minutes to get up. God, I can see my entire life!
Neal Stephenson (Interface: A Novel)
During the months (or years) it takes me to put my ideas together, I don’t take notes or make outlines; I’m figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversized butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame. This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see. And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing—all the color, the light and movement—is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.
Ann Patchett (This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage)
It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
For Aristotle the literary plot was analogous to the plot of the world in that both were eductions from the potency of matter. Sartre denies this for the world, and specifically denies, in the passage just referred to, that without potentiality there is no change. He reverts to the Megaric view of the matter, which Aristotle took such trouble to correct. But this is not our affair. The fact is that even if you believe in a Megaric world there is no such thing as a Megaric novel; not even Paterson. Change without potentiality in a novel is impossible, quite simply; though it is the hopeless aim of the cut-out writers, and the card-shuffle writers. A novel which really implemented this policy would properly be a chaos. No novel can avoid being in some sense what Aristotle calls 'a completed action.' This being so, all novels imitate a world of potentiality, even if this implies a philosophy disclaimed by their authors. They have a fixation on the eidetic imagery of beginning, middle, and end, potency and cause. Novels, then, have beginnings, ends, and potentiality, even if the world has not. In the same way it can be said that whereas there may be, in the world, no such thing as character, since a man is what he does and chooses freely what he does--and in so far as he claims that his acts are determined by psychological or other predisposition he is a fraud, lâche, or salaud--in the novel there can be no just representation of this, for if the man were entirely free he might simply walk out of the story, and if he had no character we should not recognize him. This is true in spite of the claims of the doctrinaire nouveau roman school to have abolished character. And Sartre himself has a powerful commitment to it, though he could not accept the Aristotelian position that it is through character that plot is actualized. In short, novels have characters, even if the world has not. What about time? It is, effectively, a human creation, according to Sartre, and he likes novels because they concern themselves only with human time, a faring forward irreversibly into a virgin future from ecstasy to ecstasy, in his word, from kairos to kairos in mine. The future is a fluid medium in which I try to actualize my potency, though the end is unattainable; the present is simply the pour-soi., 'human consciousness in its flight out of the past into the future.' The past is bundled into the en-soi, and has no relevance. 'What I was is not the foundation of what I am, any more than what I am is the foundation of what I shall be.' Now this is not novel-time. The faring forward is all right, and fits the old desire to know what happens next; but the denial of all causal relation between disparate kairoi, which is after all basic to Sartre's treatment of time, makes form impossible, and it would never occur to us that a book written to such a recipe, a set of discontinuous epiphanies, should be called a novel. Perhaps we could not even read it thus: the making of a novel is partly the achievement of readers as well as writers, and readers would constantly attempt to supply the very connections that the writer's programme suppresses. In all these ways, then, the novel falsifies the philosophy.
Frank Kermode (The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction)
Filming was done outside San Antonio, Texas. The scale of the production was vast and complex. Whole battlefields were scrupulously re-created on the plains of Texas. Wellman deployed as many as five thousand extras and sixty airplanes in some scenes—an enormous logistical exercise. The army sent its best aviators from Selfridge Field in Michigan—the very men with whom Lindbergh had just flown to Ottawa—and stunt fliers were used for the more dangerous scenes. Wellman asked a lot of his airmen. One pilot was killed, another broke his neck, and several more sustained other serious injuries. Wellman did some of the more dangerous stunt flying himself. All this gave the movie’s aerial scenes a realism and immediacy that many found almost literally breathtaking. Wellman captured features of flight that had never been caught on film before—the shadows of planes moving across the earth, the sensation of flying through drifting smoke, the stately fall of bombs, and the destructive puffs of impact that follow. Even the land-bound scenes were filmed with a thoughtfulness and originality that set Wings apart. To bring the viewer into a Parisian nightclub, Wellman used a boom shot in which the camera traveled through the room just above table height, skimming over drinks and between revelers, before arriving at the table of Arlen and Rogers. It is an entrancing shot even now, but it was rivetingly novel in 1927. “Wings,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt simply in The New Yorker in 1971, “is truly beautiful.” Wings was selected as best picture at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Wellman, however, wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
So, about your classes,” said Doug. “I put in the requirements already. History of Woodsmen and Pirates, Safety Rules for the Internet, and”—he cleared his throat—“Remedial Goodness 101.” “Let me guess...” said Mal. She popped a piece of candy into her mouth. “New class?” Doug nodded sheepishly. “Come on, guys,” Mal said, dropping the wrapper on the floor. “Let’s go find our dorms.” She started up a flight of stairs. Carlos, Jay, and Evie followed her. “Oh! Uh, yeah, your dorms are that way, guys,” said Doug, pointing in the opposite direction. As Mal and her friends came back down the stairs and headed in the direction he indicated, Doug hung back, counting through the dwarves again. “Dopey, Doc, Bashful, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, and...” “Sneezy,” said Carlos, passing him and ascending the opposite staircase. Doug sighed and looked at the ceiling. Upstairs, Mal and Evie opened the door to their dorm room. It was light and airy and dappled in sunlight. The white canopy beds were covered with pink pillows, and flowery curtains fluttered gently in the fresh breeze from the open windows. Evie’s eyes widened with delight as Mal’s narrowed in horror. “Wow,” said Evie. “This place is so amazing—” “Gross,” said Mal. “I know, right?” said Evie, changing her tune. “Amazingly gross. Ew!” When Mal wasn’t looking, Evie couldn’t help giving a silent gasp of joy at her new crib. “I am going to need some serious sunscreen,” said Mal, arms crossed. “Yeah,” said Evie. “E,” said Mal, pointing to the windows. She closed the curtains as Evie moved to other windows in the room and did the same, plunging the dorm into darkness. “Whoa!” said Mal. “That is much better.
Walt Disney Company (Descendants Junior Novel)
Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
The rain continued through Monday morning and slowed Bosch’s drive into Brentwood to a frustrating crawl. It wasn’t heavy rain, but in Los Angeles any rain at all can paralyze the city. It was one of the mysteries Bosch could never fathom. A city largely defined by the automobile yet full of drivers unable to cope with even a mild inclemency.
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
I see trees of green Red roses, too I see them bloom For me and you And I think to myself What a wonderful world
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
first outbreak in the States, the human race could have easily faced extinction. In 1918 the feat of traveling from Kansas to Moscow in less than one week was impossible. Yet, today a man can wake up in Chicago and before his day is over he can be in London. And should that same man, asymptomatic in the quiet incubation stage, harbor a deadly airborne virus while on his transcontinental flight, he just started the next pandemic. Needless to say, put all fear
Jacqueline Druga (The Flu (A Novel of the Outbreak))
Louie killed time by sleeping on Mitchell’s navigator table and taking flying lessons from Phil. On some flights, he sprawled behind the cockpit, reading Ellery Queen novels and taxing the nerves of Douglas, who eventually got so annoyed at having to step over Louie’s long legs that he attacked him with a fire extinguisher.
Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption)
When David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls he said, “Sights such as these must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight,”’ Hector told her softly.
Wilbur Smith (Those In Peril (The Hector Cross Novels))
Lucas had guessed correctly that there was no danger of anyone hijacking a flight from Oakland to Tucson International, anyway. That would take a real nut.
Chet Williamson (A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult)
Surprised at Kaye’s belated display of maternal instincts, Sean relented, promising he’d get in touch with Lily. Besides, he knew his own mother would never forgive him if he refused such a simple request. As he made his way down the narrow streets to the pensione opposite the Pantheon, where Lily and her roommate were staying, Sean steadfastly refused to acknowledge any other reason for agreeing to take Lily out. It had been three years since they’d left for college, not once had she come home to visit. But Sean still couldn’t look at a blonde without comparing her to Lily. He’d mounted the four flights of narrow, winding stairs, the sound of his steps muffled by red, threadbare carpet. At number seventeen, he’d stopped and stood, giving his racing heart a chance to quiet before he knocked. Calm down, he’d instructed himself. It’s only Lily. His knock echoed loudly in the empty hall. Through the door he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Then it opened and there she was. She stood with her mouth agape. Her eyes, like beacons of light in the obscurity of the drab hallway, blinked at him with astonishment. “What are you doing here?” The question ended on a squeak. As if annoyed with the sound, she shut her mouth with an audible snap. Was it possible Kaye hadn’t bothered to tell Lily he’d be coming? “I heard you were spending a few days in Rome.” Sean realized he was staring like a dolt, but couldn’t help himself. It rattled him, seeing Lily again. A barrage of emotions and impressions mixed and churned inside him: how good she looked, different somehow, more self-confident than in high school, how maybe this time they might get along for more than 3.5 seconds. He became aware of a happy buzz of anticipation zinging through him. He was already picturing the two of them at a really nice trattoria. They’d be sitting at an intimate corner table. A waiter would come and take their order and Sean would impress her with his flawless Italian, his casual sophistication, his sprezzatura. By the time the waiter had served them their dessert and espresso, she’d be smiling at him across the soft candlelight. He’d reach out and take her hand. . . . Then Lily spoke again and Sean’s neat fantasy evaporated like a puff of smoke. “But how did you know I was here?” she’d asked, with what he’d conceitedly assumed was genuine confusion—that is, until a guy their age appeared. Standing just behind Lily, he had stared back at Sean through the aperture of the open door with a knowing smirk upon his face. And suddenly Sean understood. Lily wasn’t frowning from confusion. She was annoyed. Annoyed because he’d barged in on her and Lover Boy. Lily didn’t give a damn about him. At the realization, his jumbled thoughts at seeing her again, all those newborn hopes inside him, faded to black. His brain must have shorted after that. Suave, sophisticated guy that he was, Sean had blurted out, “Hey, this wasn’t my idea. I only came because Kaye begged me to—” Stupendously dumb. He knew better, had known since he was eight years old. If you wanted to push Lily Banyon into the red zone, all it took was a whispered, “Kaye.” The door to her hotel room had come at his face faster than a bullet train. He guessed he should be grateful she hadn’t been using a more lethal weapon, like the volleyball she’d smashed in his face during gym class back in eleventh grade. Even so, he’d been forced to jump back or have the number seventeen imprinted on his forehead. Their last skirmish, the one back in Rome, he’d definitely lost. He’d stood outside her room like a fool, Lover Boy’s laughter his only reply. Finally, the pensione’s night clerk had appeared, insisting he leave la bella americana in peace. He’d gone away, humiliated and oddly deflated.
Laura Moore (Night Swimming: A Novel)
Little pieces of grace were everywhere if you looked.
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
When you take hope away it leaves a void. Some people fill that up with anger and with violence. To simply blame it on the media is wrong. It’s much deeper than that.
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
He knew that you didn’t win justice by carrying a sign or a cardboard coffin. You earned it by being on the side of the righteous, by being unswayed from that
Michael Connelly (The Harry Bosch Novels, Volume 2: The Last Coyote / Trunk Music / Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #4-6))
My most important advice to writers is "butt in chair"!
Gray Basnight (Flight of the Fox)
It was in moments like seeing him catch his breath after running a distance or watching him doze off in the flight that I realized that I wanted to spend all my life with him.
Namrata Gupta (Together We Were (W)hole)
What does it mean to enter the mind of the beloved? The I lost in the you without hesitation: the ultimate goal of every kindred soul to transcend the aching, the screaming, loneliness of the Divide, so that the atoms of one dissolve into the atoms of the other (two as one . . .), making such intimate love that orgasm is the sharing of electrons in flight. And what does it mean to enter the mind of the beloved when you believe the beloved no longer loves you?
Jeff VanderMeer (Veniss Underground: A Novel)
Body is the first novel to explore the journey to healthy body image and intuitive eating in a story readers can model.
Sean Coons (Body: or, How Hope Confronts Her Shadow and Calls the Flutter Girl to Flight)
Dark Times is an award-winning thriller by Michael Gerhartz. I really enjoyed how the author skillfully incorporated different speech for his characters based on their upbringing and nationality, and loved the use of appropriate colloquialisms, and the dialogue was written in such a way you could easily hear the speaker’s voice. Whilst the book has many characters, it focuses mainly on the journeys and exploits of a few, using supporting characters to expertly build scenes, create tension, and reveal the depths alternative, related events. There is so much to this book, the in-depth and detailed plot will keep readers entertained beginning to end, building a clear picture of the characters, their evolving relationships, and the difficulties they face. This is certainly a well-constructed novel with a brilliantly executed plot. I honestly didn’t want to put it down, so the fact I was on a long-haul flight had its benefits, because I didn’t have to. If you enjoy watching plots and schemes unravel in a character and event-driven plot filled with dark happenings, mystery, and danger, then you will love this.
K.J. Simmill
mumbling
Natalia Richards (The Falcon's Flight: A novel of Anne Boleyn (The Falcon's Rise Book 2))
The STAR WARS Novels Timeline OLD REPUBLIC 5000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope Lost Tribe of the Sith* Precipice Skyborn Paragon Savior Purgatory Sentinel 3650 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope The Old Republic: Deceived Lost Tribe of the Sith* Pantheon Secrets Red Harvest The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance 1032 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope Knight Errant Darth Bane: Path of Destruction Darth Bane: Rule of Two Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil RISE OF THE EMPIRE 33–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope Darth Maul: Saboteur* Cloak of Deception Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter 32 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope STAR WARS: EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace Rogue Planet Outbound Flight The Approaching Storm 22 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope STAR WARS: EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 22–19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope The Clone Wars The Clone Wars: Wild Space The Clone Wars: No Prisoners Clone Wars Gambit Stealth Siege Republic Commando Hard Contact Triple Zero True Colors Order 66 Shatterpoint The Cestus Deception The Hive* MedStar I: Battle Surgeons MedStar II: Jedi Healer Jedi Trial Yoda: Dark Rendezvous Labyrinth of Evil 19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope STAR WARS: EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader Imperial Commando 501st Coruscant Nights Jedi Twilight Street of Shadows Patterns of Force The
George Lucas (Star Wars: Trilogy - Episodes IV, V & VI)
O’Neill and his army marched south from Ulster to meet the enemy while his ally Red Hugh O’Donnell marched in from the west. But once the Irish armies were in place, O’Neill and O’Donnell began arguing as to which of them should begin the attack. This delay proved fatal as the agreed upon hour of rendezvous with the Spaniards passed, and the window of opportunity for an Irish victory slammed shut. The Battle of Kinsale lasted three months, and in the end O’Neill was unable to defeat Mountjoy’s siege lines. Finally the Spanish troops surrendered to the English and sailed home. Thousands of Irish rebels died in the fighting or, taken prisoner, were hung. Hugh O’Neill was forced to submit to the English conquerors in a series of humiliating ceremonies, first on his knees to Mountjoy, then to the Lord Deputy and the Irish Privy Council. It was only after he’d put his submission in writing, renouncing his title of “The O’Neill and his allegiance to Spain, as well as protesting loyalty to the Crown, was he told that Elizabeth had died six days before. Mountjoy had tricked him. It was said that O’Neill wept openly and copiously for both his personal defeat and the ruination of the “Irish cause.” The rebel leader retreated to Ulster, and by the good graces of the new king of England, was pardoned once again, and his lands restored to him. He took up residency in his luxurious home, but spurred by a series of dangerous events and the realization that no hope was left for a free Ireland, O’Neill and a handful of Irish overlords and their families sailed from their homeland in 1607. The tragic “Flight of the Earls” ended the most tumultuous century in Ireland’s history. Tyrone,
Robin Maxwell (The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate O'Malley)
After a time I saw what I believed, at the time, to be a radio relay station located out on a desolate sand spit near Villa Bens. It was only later that I found out that it was Castelo de Tarfaya, a small fortification on the North African coast. Tarfaya was occupied by the British in 1882, when they established a trading post, called Casa del Mar. It is now considered the Southern part of Morocco. In the early ‘20s, the French pioneering aviation company, Aéropostale, built a landing strip in this desert, for its mail delivery service. By 1925 their route was extended to Dakar, where the mail was transferred onto steam ships bound for Brazil. A monument now stands in Tarfaya, to honor the air carrier and its pilots as well as the French aviator and author Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry better known as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. As a newly acclaimed author in the literary world. “Night Flight,” or “Vol de nuit,” was the first of Saint-Exupéry’s literary works and won him the prix Femina, a French literary prize created in 1904. The novel was based on his experiences as an early mail pilot and the director of the “Aeroposta Argentina airline,” in South America. Antoine is also known for his narrative “The Little Prince” and his aviation writings, including the lyrical 1939 “Wind, Sand and Stars” which is Saint-Exupéry’s 1939, memoir of his experiences as a postal pilot. It tells how on the week following Christmas in 1935, he and his mechanic amazingly survived a crash in the Sahara desert. The two men suffered dehydration in the extreme desert heat before a local Bedouin, riding his camel, discovered them “just in the nick of time,” to save their lives. His biographies divulge numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé, known as “Nelly” and referred to as “Madame de B.
Hank Bracker
[Wigs were formerly used instead of brooms in Ireland for sweeping or dusting tables, stairs, etc. The Editor doubted the fact till he saw a labourer of the old school sweep down a flight of stairs with his wig; he afterwards put it on his head again with the utmost composure, and said, ‘Oh, please your honour, it’s never a bit the worse.
Maria Edgeworth (Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth)
Amalfitano had some rather idiosyncratic ideas about jet lag. They weren’t consistent, so it might be an exaggeration to call them ideas. They were feelings. Make-believe ideas. As if he were looking out the window and forcing himself to see an extraterrestrial landscape. He believed (or liked to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist. The time difference only masked their nonexistence. And so if you suddenly traveled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jet lag, which arose not from your exhaustion but from the exhaustion of the people who would still have been asleep if you hadn’t traveled. This was something he’d probably read in some science fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read. • Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.
Roberto Bolaño (2666)
Every bookshop is a condensed version of the world. It is not a flight path, but rather the corridor between bookshelves that unites your country and its language with vast regions that speak other languages. It is not an international frontier you must cross but a footstep--a mere footstep--you must take to change topography, toponyms and time: a volume first published in 1976 sits next to one launched yesterday, which has just arrived; a monograph on prehistoric migrations cohabits with a study of the megalopolis in the twentieth-first century; the complete works of Camus precede those of Cervantes (it is in that unique, reduced space where the line by J.V. Foix rings truest: "The new excites and the old seduces"). It is not a main road, but rather a set of stairs, perhaps a threshold, maybe not even that: turn and it is what links one genre to another, a discipline or obsession to an often complementary opposite; Greek drama to great North American novels, microbiology to photography, Far Eastern history to bestsellers about the Far West, Hindu poetry to chronicles of the Indies, entomology to chaos theory." - Jorge Carrión, Bookshops: A Reader's History
Jorge Carrión (Bookshops: A Reader's History)
The sensation of flight was novel and delightful, and the fact of accomplishing what several eminent scientists have 'proved' impossible gave an added satisfaction.
Laurence Meynell
Hemingway’s great novels, which all revolve around journeys, bear ominous witness; for it can be argued that each journey is a quest for death. A Farewell to Arms details desertion to, flight with and death of the beloved; For Whom the Bell Tolls asserts the impossibility of escape even though it beautifully lengthens into fullness the last moments and days of its doomed hero. In both To Have and Have Not and Islands in the Stream, unlucky sailors of Cuban waters flee domestic loneliness to win death from the bullets of bad men. Finally, The Old Man and the Sea, whose protagonist completes an arduous circle from poverty and failure to the same, with only the skeleton of his once-in-a-lifetime fish to show for it, spells out the paradigm: It was the journey itself, with its hardships, triumphs, puzzles and unexpected joys, that made these books alive in the first place.
William T. Vollmann (Riding Toward Everywhere)
It’s time,” Aunt Beatrice whispered into the ear that wasn’t up against the phone. I assumed my aunt was telling me that it was time to board our flight, and so I told Dawn that I had to go, that my flight was boarding, that I’d text her when I got to Stockholm. Then I hung up, looked at the time, and saw that we had at least an hour before boarding. I looked to my aunt for clarification. “It’s time to grow up,” she said. “I’m nearly fifty years old,” I told her, which was my way of saying I already have. But of course Aunt Beatrice heard it otherwise. “It’s never too late to grow up, Calvin,” she said.
Brock Clarke (Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?: A Novel)
he warmed up a frozen seafood casserole
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
Haruyuki Arita, student No: 460017, grade eight, class C: As soon as you arrive at school, report to the counseling office on the first floor of the general classroom wing. —Koji Sugeno, class C homeroom teacher
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
DESTROY HIM, EAT HIM. DEVOUR HIS FLESH, DRINK HIM DRY OF BLOOD, TAKE EVERYTHING.
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
Opening the box, Haruyuki grabbed a slice of the seafood pizza,
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
The first headgear-type VR machine realizing the full-dive technology had come onto the market in May of 2022.
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
Here I thought you were a pig, and the truth is you’re a rat,
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
Come home, Fuko! I need you!!
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
the first HDD I bought had a capacity of twenty megabytes, but apparently, this spring, an SD card with sixty-four gigabytes is going on sale…
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
the quanta inside microtubules in the brain create human consciousness, this is in fact a complete fabrication I made up from the words of the very real theory of quantum mind. The actual quantum mind theory is a totally different thing and exceedingly difficult, which means I can’t understand a word of it. For those of you who are interested in the subject, a man called Roger Penrose has written a book on the topic, so please read that. And then please break it down and quietly explain it to me. (LOL)
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
Th-that’s like repaying a meal of curry with a plate of SPAM!
Reki Kawahara (Accel World, Vol. 4 (light novel): Flight Toward a Blue Sky)
M. Romains had taken many journeys in his country’s interest and at his own expense. He had talked with the statesmen of fourteen European lands. Three years ago he had traveled to Berlin and delivered a lecture under government auspices. Brownshirted leaders had been summoned from all over the land to hear him, and one of the top-flight Nazis had said to him: “You know, no private individual has ever been received like this in Berlin.” The philosopher-novelist had also been welcomed by the King of the Belgians, who had discussed frankly that country’s attitude to the gravely threatened war. As M. Romains told about these matters, you couldn’t doubt that he was patriotically in earnest, but also you couldn’t help feeling that he was intensely impressed by his own importance. His plan was the one known as le couple France-Allemagne, and it meant reconcilation with Germany, by the simple method of giving the Nazis whatever they demanded. For example, he had had the idea that the Allies should have got out of the Saar without the formality of a plebiscite. Lanny happened to know that Briand had been trying to work out some compromise on this question as far back as ten years ago; but apparently M. Romains didn’t know that, and certainly it wasn’t up to Lanny to correct him on his facts. The philosopher-novelist seemed to have the idea that the Saar settlement had been a matter between France and Germany, and that the plebiscite had taken place under French military control, whereas the fact was it had been a League matter, and French troops had been withdrawn nine years before the plebiscite was held. Among the members of that attentive audience was Kurt Meissner, who had met the Frenchman many years ago in Emily’s drawing-room. Evidently he had put his opportunity to good use, for it was just as if M. Romains had sat in a seminar conducted by the Wehrmacht’s agent, had absorbed the entire doctrine, and was now giving an oral dissertation to demonstrate what he had learned and get his degree. His discourse embraced the complete Nazi program for the undermining of the French republic: warm protestations of friendship; unlimited promises of peace; the sowing of distrust of all politicians and of the entire democratic procedure; and, above all else, fear of the Red specter. The Reds kept faith with nobody, their country was a colossus with feet of clay, their army a broken reed upon which France persisted in trying to lean. The republic had to choose between Stalin and Hitler; between an illusory military alliance and a secure and enduring peace. The words burned Lanny’s tongue: “M. Romains, have you ever read Mein Kampf?” Of course, Lanny couldn’t say them; but he wondered, how would this somewhat self-conscious idol of the bourgeois world have replied? Lanny recalled the Max Beerbohm cartoon in which a drawing-room fop is asked if he has read a certain book, and replies: “I do not read books; I write them.
Upton Sinclair (The Lanny Budd Novels Volume Two: Wide Is the Gate, Presidential Agent, and Dragon Harvest)
Lexi Cooper is not a quiet, mild mannered woman. She is outspoken, vibrant and fiercely protective of the people she loves.
Harley Reid (Fight Or Flight (Fighting For Love, #2))
Ratso got his name early in life because of his nose and chin and the name stuck to him later because of his habit of scavenging through alleyway dumpsters.
Trevor Holliday (Trinity Takes Flight: A Frank Trinity Crime Novel (Frank Trinity Novels Book 6))
We’re driving. A car is an instrument of time. An aircraft can’t be that. In a car, on the road, you’re reduced to bare existence and the body is focused on real time. A plane is something else, a flight from one place to another is a violent contraction of time that completely interrupts your real experience of space. The two of us have often driven together from one coast of America to the other. I’m always bad-tempered before a journey, but once I’m on the road, I relax and enjoy this constant succession of vistas. When I’m on the road I forget myself and become aware of the outside world . . . We’re driving. No one is coming to meet us, just occasionally, across the road in front of us, the shadow of a bird passes.
Semezdin Mehmedinović (My Heart: A Novel)
...she's the only person in the world who ever saw me the way she saw me, who loved me like that, who remembered me as all the things I'd ever been and also thought of me as all the things she still thought I might become...It feels harder--fucking terrifying--that there is no longer any person in the world who loves me like she did.
Lynn Steger Strong (Flight)
In addition, participants were entirely unaware that their performance was being affected by their own future perceptions, suggesting that unconscious nervous system activity may be used to detect precognitive perceptions. Studies relying on unconscious responses may be more effective than those relying on conscious responses by bypassing psychological defense mechanisms that may filter out psi perceptions from ordinary awareness.8 Future Feelings In a recent series of experiments conducted in our laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, we’ve explored unconscious nervous system responses to future events. Strictly speaking, such responses are a subset of precognition known as “presentiment,” a vague sense or feeling of something about to occur but without any conscious awareness of a particular event.9 The unconscious responses studied in our experiments took advantage of a well-known psychophysical reflex known as the “orienting response,” first described by Pavlov in the 1920s. The orienting response is a set of physiological changes experienced by an organism when it faces a “fight or flight” situation. For human beings, the response also appears in less dangerous contexts, such as when confronting a novel or unexpected stimulus. The classical orienting response is a series of simultaneous bodily changes that include dilation of the pupil, altered brain waves, a rise in sweat gland activity, a rise/fall pattern in heart rate, and blanching of the extremities.10 These bodily changes momentarily sharpen our perceptions, improve our decision-making abilities, increase our strength, and reduce the danger of bleeding. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because when our ancestors were challenged by a tiger, the ones who survived were suddenly able to see and hear exceptionally well, make very fast decisions, become unusually strong, and not bleed as easily as usual. It’s relatively easy to produce an orienting response on demand by showing a person an emotionally provocative photograph. Stimuli like noxious odors, meaningful words, electrical shocks, and sudden tactile stimuli are also effective. Because a person’s general level of arousal is affected cumulatively by successive stimuli, the strength of the orienting response tends to diminish after three to five emotional pictures in a row. In our study, to prevent participants from “habituating,” we randomly interspersed the photos used to produce the orienting responses within a pool of twice as many calm photos.
Dean Radin (The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena)
Because there is a growing belief among the community of thinking beings that by 2050 men and women will be marrying human like robots. At that point, how Craig Raine will describe his experiences will be fascinating to know. And in my imagination I have already travelled with the Green Man into the future called 2075 and witnessed How humans will experience love in 2075. Because this science fiction novel navigates through the possibility of men and women falling in love with machines, without knowing they are robots imitating human emotions. Will you still dare to fall in love in 2075 or will you strive to tell the difference between a human lover and a robotic lover? Now it is your turn to join the Green Man on this exciting journey into 2075, where he will reveal to you what the world would look like in 2075, and take you on an excitingly epic journey with the protagonist, Saabir, who criss crosses the highways and all by ways of emotional trajectory in the midst of synthetic emotions and feelings that engulf him. To know more, travel with the Green Man via the science fiction titled, They Loved in 2075. With this anticipation I shall dream of you tonight and hope that you will be able to unlock the alien imagination within you, to realise the part of you that is from Heaven. If you have any doubts, here is the poem by ​​Craig Raine to make you a dreamer who while asleep is always awake in his/her subconscious state too. Because he/she has learned the art of having a rendezvous with the light that radiates through the universe, to eventually settle in a dreamer's eyes who dares to dream beyond the ordinary and the 3 dimensional reality. "A Martian Sends A Postcard Home” Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings-- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on the ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper Rain is when the earth is television. It has the properites of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside -- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anything missed. But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips and soothe it to sleep with sounds. And yet, they wake it up deliberately, by tickling with a finger. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves -- in colour, with their eyelids shut. Dedicated to you, the Green Man and Saabir who hails from 2075 and dares to love a real woman in 2075 because he loves her a lot!
Javid Ahmad Tak and Craig Raine
The morning was shrouded in mist. Crouched in a ditch just northeast of Noah Murray’s farm, David Kendall, secret agent, thought the espionage business was nowhere near as glamorous as Hollywood and spy novels made it out to be. In fact, it was fucking miserable most times, especially when you had slept the night in a ditch and been wakened by an inquisitive sheep, blaaa-ting in your ear just as the dawn broke. Then you had to piss in a bottle because you couldn’t afford to venture out of said ditch. All in all, not terribly glamorous.
Cindy Brandner (Flights of Angels)
Gone was the stifling humidity of the coast, replaced by a warm, pliant breeze. The ocean rolled and foamed beneath them, a layer of confection spread as far as the eye could see. The only thing ruining the flight was the company.
F.C. Yee (The Legacy of Yangchen (The Yangchen Novels, #2))
As a newly acclaimed author in the literary world, Night Flight, or Vol de nuit, was the first of Saint-Exupéry’s literary works and won him the prix Femina, a French literary prize created in 1904. The novel was based on his experiences as an early mail pilot and the director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline in South America. Antoine is also known for his narrative The Little Prince and his aviation writings, including the lyrical 1939 Wind, Sand and Stars, which is Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir of his experiences as a postal pilot. It tells how on the week following Christmas in 1935, just a year after I was born, he and his mechanic amazingly survived a crash in the Sahara desert. The two men suffered dehydration in the extreme desert heat before a local Bedouin, riding his camel, discovered them “just in the nick of time” to save their lives. His biographies were quite hot for the time and divulged numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé, known as “Nelly,” who was referred to as “Madame de B.” Photo Caption: Monument of Saint-Exupéry’s airplane in the Sahara desert. Read these award winning books!
Hank Bracker
You can repair anything but dead. You can't fix that
Chris Bohjalian (The Flight Attendant)
Failures are more likely in novel than consistent contexts, so we don’t get upset about them, right? Wrong. Your amygdala—that small part of your brain responsible for activating a fight-or-flight response—detects a threat no matter the context. Relatedly, you might be surprised to discover that your negative emotional reaction to failures, regardless of the level of real danger, can be surprisingly similar.
Amy C. Edmondson (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well)