Iona Quotes

Ar trebui să se pună un grătar la intrarea în orice suflet. Ca să nu se bage nimeni în el cu cuțitul.

E strâmt aici, dar ai unde să-ți pierzi minţile.

Începe să fie târziu în mine. Uite, s-a făcut întuneric în mâna dreaptă și-n salcâmul din fața casei.

De ce oamenii își pierd timpul cu lucruri care nu le folosesc după moarte?

Mamă, [...] mai naşte-mă o dată! Prima viaţă nu prea mi-a ieşit. Cui nu i se poate întâmpla să nu trăiască după pofta inimii? Dar poate a doua oară... [...] Tu nu te speria numai din atâta şi naşte-mă mereu.

E prea mică lumea. Întâlnim la fiecare pas numai umbre.

Un sfert de viaţă îl pierdem făcând legături. Tot felul de legături între idei, între fluturi, între lucruri şi praf. Totul curge aşa de repede, şi noi tot mai facem legături între subiect şi predicat. Trebuie să-i dăm drum vieţii, aşa cum ne vine exact, să nu mai încercăm să facem legături care nu ţin. De când spun cuvinte fără şir, simt că-mi recuperez ani frumoşi din viaţă.

Ne scapă mereu câte ceva în viaţă, de aceea trebuie să ne naştem mereu.

Cum se numea drăcia aceea frumoasă şi minunată şi nenorocită şi caraghioasă, formată de ani, pe care am trăit-o eu?

Dacă aș avea mijloace, n-aș face nimic altceva decât o bancă de lemn în mijlocul mării. Construcție grandioasă de stejar geluit, să respire pe ea, în timpul furtunii, pescărușii mai lași. E destul de istovitor să tot împingi din spate valul, dându-i oarecare nebunie; vântul, el, mai degrabă, s-ar putea așeza acolo din când în când. Și să zică așa, gândindu-se la mine: ”N-a făcut nimic bun în viața lui decât această bancă de lemn, punându-i de jur împrejur marea.” M-am gândit bine, lucrul acesta l-aș face cu dragă inimă. Ar fi ca un locaș de stat cu capul în mâini în mijlocul sufletului.

Perhaps you could take only one book with you to read at the gardens. After all, you'll only be there for the afternoon." Hazel choked on her tea. "One book? One book? Now you're being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? It what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.

E strâmt aici, dar ai unde să-ți pierzi mințile.

Why do you taste like dessert?” Iona wanted to know. He deliberately let his eyes widen. “Because I’m awesome?

The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,’ said Iona. ‘Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.

Dacă nu există ferestre, ele trebuie inventate.

It makes me furious that as men age, they gain gravitas. They become “silver foxes.” Women, however, become invisible. We cannot allow this to happen, my friends. We must all be more Iona. We all deserve, like Iona, to have a Triumphant Second Act.

If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....

De ce trebuie să se culce toţi oamenii la sfârşitul vieţii ?

An I mo chridhe, I mo ghraidh. - In Iona that is my heart's desire, Iona that is my love.

Her mouth lifted from his, a few inches. “What makes you think…” Iona asked him quietly, “that I would let you die by any hand other than my own?

Cărăbuşii au o groază de picioare, dar când se răstoarnă pe spate nu mai pot să-şi revină, sunt ca şi pe lumea cealaltă. Poate ar trebui să aibă o parte din picioare pe spate. Să-şi distribuie mai raţional picioarele.

You’ve been in the mating frenzy before.” Eric looked up at her, his eyes quiet. “Yes.” ”With Kirsten.” ”Yes.” Iona touched her hands together. “You must have loved her very much.” Eric nodded. “Yes. Very much.” ”Then why do you want another mate?” Eric pushed himself from the fireplace and came to her, the first flickers of fire shadowing his tall, naked body. He skimmed warm hands down her arms. ”Because I saw you.

Iona stared at me for a long time. “You are going to leave me a widow before I have a chance to become a bride.

Gata, Iona? Răzbim noi cumva la lumină!

Please know, my dearest darling, how much I miss you — every moment — and how I'm longing to be back with you soon. Have courage, brave girl. In a world that is small enough for the same moon to hang over us both, we can't ever be too far apart.

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage we did not take, Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden–T.S. ELIOT

Ar fi ca un lăcaş de stat cu capul în mâini în mijlocul sufletului.

she just wanted to sit quietly and imagine herself in a world where she still mattered.

Bridges are burned, Iona reminded herself, for the chance to build new ones. Wherever they led--and they'd already brought her closer to who she was than any of the ones before.

You are cruel even in love," Iona whispers, "How can you make me feel this way? I ought to hate you. I wanted to hate you.

Think about today, not tomorrow. Dance over the cracks so you don't fall into them. Drink champagne in the afternoons and invent ridiculous cocktails to make the ruined world glitter again. Keep going, one foot in front of the other. Don't look down.

E strâmt aici, dar ai unde să-i pierzi minţile. Nu e prea greu. - E chiar o nimica toată.

Înainte, mă gândeam aproape tot timpul la soţia mea. Acum, cu cât trec zilele, soţia se întunecă parcă în minte şi mama se luminează. Ca la fântânile cu două găleţi. Una se scoboară, alta se înalţă. Acum nu se înalţă decât mama.

Sunt ca un dumnezeu care nu mai poate învia. I-au ieșit toate minunile, și venirea pe pământ, și viața, până și moartea - dar o dată ajuns aici, în mormânt, nu mai poate învia. Se dă cu capul de toți pereții, cheamă toate șiretlicurile minții și ale minunii, își face vânt în dumnezeire ca leul, la circ, în aureola lui de foc. Dar cade în mijlocul flăcărilor. De atâtea ori a sărit prin cerc, nici nu s-a gândit c-o să se poticnească tocmai la înviere!

But we must remind ourselves that we are never truly apart from those we love very much. We might not be able to see them or speak to them or hold them in our arms, but we carry them always in our hearts.

Daisy, Daisy, the coppers are after you, If they catch you they'll give you a month or two, They'll tie you up with wi-er Behind the Black Mari-er, So ring your bell And pedal like hell On a bicycle made for two.

But sometimes when you put two very different people together, a kind of magic, an alchemy, occurs. Bea said I was like eggs and sugar, and she was flour and butter, and when you mixed us together, we were more than just the combination of our ingredients, we were the whole damn cake.

One book? One book? Now you’re being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? Or what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.” “Two books then, miss.

If you can't go to Hollywood You don't have to cry; Clark Gable is good looking But so am I.

Your anxiety is the other side of the coin of your empathy.

You've walked the woods today. Tell me there isna something about this land that doesna take hold of you and sink into your verra soul." Her smile slowly faded. "It did. How did you know?" "You were born here, Iona. You were part of this land, just as it's a part of you. You've been gone a long time, but it still remembers you. You just needed to remember it.

Al parecer, huir es poco glorioso. Lástima, porque es una sensación muy agradable. La huida proporc­iona la más formidable sensación de libertad que se pueda experim­entar. Te sientes más libre huyendo que si no tienes nada de lo que huir. [...] Uno debería tener siempre algo de lo que huir, para cultivar esa maravil­losa posibil­idad. De hecho, siempre hay algo de lo que huir. Aunque sólo sea de uno mismo.

Mother Goose will show newcomers to this world how astonishing, beautiful, capricious, dancy, eccentric, funny, goluptious, haphazard, intertwingled, joyous, kindly, loving, melodious, naughty, outrageous, pomsidillious, querimonious, romantic, silly, tremendous, unexpected, vertiginous, wonderful, x-citing, yo-heave-ho-ish, and zany it is.

It was on Iona years ago that I first became aware of the need to reclaim some of the features of ancient Christianity in the Celtic world as lost treasure for today. Part of that treasure is the much-cherished image of John the Evangelist, also known as John the Beloved, leaning against Jesus at the Last Supper. Celtic tradition holds that by doing this he heard the heartbeat of God. He became a symbol of the practice of listening—listening deep within ourselves, within one another, and within the body of the earth for the beat of the Sacred Presence.

I’m sorry to hear that. I was hoping for something more dramatic. What’s the point of a knife fight if you’ve nothing to show for it?

My dearest Lord, be thou a bright flame before me, a guiding star above me, a smooth path beneath me, a kindly shepherd behind me, today and for evermore. —St. Columba of Iona

You know, there’s a fabulous Buddhist saying that goes: When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears . . . ,” said Iona, with a loaded emphasis on teacher.

Angústia enorme, que não conhece limites. Se estourasse o peito de Iona e a angústia se derramasse, ela inundaria, parece, o mundo inteiro

The only way to be guaranteed of failure, dear boy, is not to try,” said Iona. “Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.

Cum am sărutat prima fată -asta a fost demult-, n-am simțit decât un gust de carne. Un gust de mână. Parcă sărutasem o mână în plus. Abia după vreo două zile m-a apucat o fericire. Așa din senin.

Eu cred că există, în viaţa lumii, o clipă când toţi oamenii se gândesc la mama lor. Chiar şi morţii. Fiica la mamă, mama la bunică, bunica la mamă... până se ajunge la o singură mamă, una imensă...

You’ve good speed and agility, and endurance enough. But you’ve no killer in the blood, and so you’ll always be bested.” Iona rubbed her butt. “I never planned on killing anyone.” “Plans change,” Branna pointed out. “Fix those flowers now, as it’s your rump that crushed them.

Healing must always seek to give voice to suffering, and the greater the range of words and meanings we have at our disposal, the clearer the voice becomes. Iona Heath in BMJ 2000;320:125 ( 8 January) Review of the book Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age by David Morris

I promised to love you forever, in a time when I didn’t know if I'd live to see the start of another week. Now it looks like forever is finally running out. I never stopped loving you. I tried, for the sake of my own sanity, but I never even got close, and I never stopped hoping either.

What kind of religion would celebrate its High Holidays by reading about a biblical figure as heartless as Abraham—a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia, in Iona’s opinion—who nearly killed his son because he heard voices in his head and was rescued from the dirty deed only by other voices?

Better we see them seeing us, because then we can all see together, but when not seeing them seeing us we might not see them seeing us doing what we are doing. MI5 agent Iona von Ustinov (father of actor Peter Ustinov) to MI6 agent Desmond Bristow about the PDVE (Portuguese Secret Police) in 1944.

- Am fost o dată pe un munte şi aerul era acolo atât de dens, încât m-am uitat la el. Se vedea. Am stat o jumătate de ceas şi m-am uitat la aer. I se zăreau toate celulele şi din cauza asta parcă era crăpat. - Aici nu eşti la munte, eşti la mare. - (Continuând primul gând.) Îţi venea să-ţi deschizi şi tu toţi porii. Îţi venea să-ţi deschizi chiar venele, să-l simţi năvălind prin toată suprafaţa ta. (Respiră adânc.) Aşa... (Îi e rău.) E aşa greu să respiri...

You guys used to walk through graveyards?” Iona asked, horrified. “It cut at least ten minutes off the walk to Tesco,” Harriet tried to reason. “I am so glad I go to Uni in the city,” Iona said, shaking her head. “A Tesco Metro on every second corner.” “And a Sainsbury’s Local on all the others,” Adam joked.

I love you. Iona Sheehan, I love you. Give me a bloody answer.” “It was yes as soon as you opened your mouth. I just wanted to hear it all. It was yes the minute you asked.” He blinked at her slowly, then narrowed his eyes. “It was yes? It’s yes?” “I love you. There’s nothing I want more than to marry you.” “Yes?

Be happy while ye're livin', for ye're a long time deid.' - Scottish proverb

Be happy while ye're livin', for ye're a long time deid." - Scottish proverb

If you’re going to get it wrong, Martha, make sure you get it wrong with PANACHE! Surely they’ll give you a mark for style, at least?

Nu ştiu de ce mi s-a făcut dor de-un cărăbuş.

It's all I can do, Give him something he'll regret losing The villains in my head already told me, That you'd never be mine

Why had it taken her so long to see her train carriage as a fascinating portal into other people's stories, rather than just a way of getting from A to B?

partially

The magic of acting is it takes you out of yourself. It allows you to try on other people’s clothes and inhabit different worlds. It’s the perfect therapy when real life is too hard.

What he needs to do,” Angus wheezed, “is travel south to Kintyre, turn back north and cross the Firth of Lorne to Mull so that he can scoot out to Iona, sail up to Skye, cross over to the mainland to Ullapool, back down to Inverness, pay his respects at Culloden, and from there, he can proceed south to Blair Castle, stopping in Grampian if he chooses so he can see how a proper bottle of whisky is made.

Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.

Iona found herself at a loss as to the required etiquette. Her recent exchanges with Piers had served only as salutary reminders that engaging with strangers on the train was not a good idea at all. That’s why there was an unwritten law against it. But she and Sanjay had shared a moment. They were joined together, like it or not, by a brush with death. So, what were the rules now? God, it was difficult being British sometimes

Her latest editor had scheduled a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree appraisal, which sounded altogether too intimate. At her age (fifty-seven), one didn’t like to be appraised too closely, and certainly not from every angle.

Well, all of a sudden, a coble with a brown sail and a pair of fishers aboard of it, came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for Iona. I shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and reached up my hands and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear — I could even see the colour of their hair; and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat never turned aside, and flew on, right before my eyes, for Iona.

The literature of childhood abounds with evidence that the peaks of a child's experience are not visits to the cinema, or even family outings to the sea, but occasions when he escapes into places that are disused and overgrown and silent. To a child there is more joy in a rubbish tip than a flowery rockery, in a fallen tree than a piece of statuary, in a muddy track than a gravel path.

Copulating Cats and Holy Men The Story of the Creation of the Book of Kells   In the year 791 A.D an Irish monk named Connachtach brought together a team of the finest calligraphers the world has ever seen, on the island of Iona, a sliver of limestone rock off the northwest coast of Scotland. They came from Northumbria in England, from Constantinople, from Italy and from Ireland. All of them had worked on other illuminated manuscripts. But Connachtach, eminent scribe and abbot of Iona, as he is described in contemporary annals, wanted from them the most richly ornamented book ever created by man’s hand. It was to be more beautiful than the great book of Lindisfarne: more beautiful than the gospel-books made at the court of Charlemagne: more beautiful than all the Korans of Persia. It would be known as the Book of Kells. Eighth century Europe was in a state of cultural meltdown. Since the end of the Pax Romana, three centuries earlier, warring tribes had decimated the continent. From the East the Ostrogoths had blundered into the spears of the Germanic tribes to be overrun, in their turn, by the Huns. Their western cousins, the Visigoths, plundered along a confident north- east, southwest axis from Spain to Cologne. The Vandals did what vandals do. As though that wasn't enough, a blunt-faced raggle-taggle band of pirates and pyromaniacs came looting and raping their way out of the freezing seas of the North. For a Viking there was no tomorrow, culture something you stuffed into a hemp sack; happiness, a warm sword. Wherever they went they extorted protection money: the Danegeld. Fighting drunk on a mixture of animist religion and aquavit they threatened to plunge the house of Europe into total darkness. The Book of Kells was to be a rainbow-bridge of light thrown across the abyss of the Dark Ages. Its colors were to burn until the end of time.   #

Johnny liked being with Iona; it made him feel like a man. She was petite - a good five inches shorter than him - but it was more than that. She let him pay for her, patronise her, made no demands on his time other than what he was already willing to offer. She made him feel nineteen as well, in her bed with sheets that smelt like cheap laundrette detergent, in bars drinking Snakebite from pint glasses still warm from the dishwasher.

pale grey eyes. ‘Mr Herriot,’ Hamish began, ‘can you tell me who you voted for to be Lammas queen last year?’ ‘I voted for Iona, the lassie on the switchboard.’ ‘Would it surprise you to learn that all ten votes were for Annie Fleming?

Heaven could have been a golden city in the clouds, or perhaps a splendid banquet hall surrounded by dearly departed loved ones. Maybe it was a field of wildflowers on a summer’s day or a shimmering kingdom of sapphire and starlight. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the Isle of Iona.

the impact of the rape, pillage and anarchy that marked the fifth century as the Goths, Alans, Vandals and Huns rampaged across Europe and North Africa is hard to exaggerate. Literacy levels plummeted; building in stone all but disappeared, a clear sign of collapse of wealth and ambition; long-distance trade that once took pottery from factories in Tunisia as far as Iona in Scotland collapsed, replaced by local markets dealing only with exchange of petty goods; and as measured from pollution in polar ice-caps in Greenland there was a major contraction in smelting work, with levels falling back to those of prehistoric times.

She was his strength and his heart and his soul, and she made him believe in the whole cannoli.

Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring. —ATTRIBUTED TO COLUMBA OF IONA SIXTH CENTURY A

If you spend enough time reading someone else’s thoughts, after a while their thoughts begin to infect you. Your grasp on yourself becomes tenuous. Or you begin to see that you never were the essential you in the first place, Iona thinks to herself as she takes the bus back to Angel. To be a person is to imagine being someone, and the someone you imagine most of the time is what people call ‘you’.

banjo. A plucked, fretted lute where a thin skin diaphragm is stretched over a circular metal frame amplifying the sound of the strings. The instrument is believed to have evolved from various African and African-American prototypes. Four- and 5-stringed versions of the banjo are popular, each associated with specific music genres; the 5-stringed banjo, plucked and strummed with the fingers, is associated with Appalachian, old-time and bluegrass music, while the four-stringed versions (both the “plectrum” banjo, which is an identical 22-fret banjo, just like the 5-string instrument but without the fifth string and played with a plectrum, and the tenor banjo which has fewer frets [17 or 19], a shorter neck, is tuned in fifths and is played with a plectrum) is associated with vaudeville, Dixieland jazz, ragtime and swing, as well as Irish folk and traditional music. The first Irish banjo player to record commercially was James Wheeler, in the U.S. in 1916, for the Columbia label; as part of The Flanagan Brothers duo, Mick Flanagan recorded during the 1920s and 1930s as did others in the various dance bands popular in the U.S. at the time. Neil Nolan, a Boston-based banjo player originally from Prince Edward Island, recorded with Dan Sullivan’s Shamrock Band; the collaboration with Sullivan led to him also being included in the line-up for the Caledonia and Columbia Scotch Bands, alongside Cape Breton fiddlers; these were recorded for 78s in 1928. In the 1930s The Inverness Serenaders also included a banjo player (Paul Aucoin). While the instrument was not widely used in Cape Breton, a few notable players were Packie Haley and Nellie Coakley, who were involved in the Northside Irish tradition of the 1920s and 1930s; Ed MacGillivray played banjo with Tena Campbell; and the Iona area had some banjo players, such as the “Lighthouse” MacLeans. The banjo was well known in Cape Breton’s old-time tradition, especially in the 1960s, but was not really introduced to the Cape Breton fiddle scene until the 1970s when Paul Cranford, a 6-string banjo player, arrived from Toronto. He has since replaced the banjo with fiddle. A few fiddlers have dabbled with the instrument but it has had no major presence within the tradition.

Alex's eyes were so full of love. Ty wondered how a song she had written so many years ago could so perfectly capture how she would feel when she finally found the love of her life.

I told Malcolm of my and Iona’s plan of replacing the sale of bread with the taffy at the Gathering. To my delight, he agreed enthusiastically. Pleased and slightly proud to have his support, I felt the first stirrings of importance and an ability to truly take part in life here. I could help my new family prosper. Family. Yes, that’s what this is—what they have become to me. The feeling of comfort and profound joy was so overwhelming that heat pricked at the backs of my eyes.

Even so, Iona wouldn’t concede the worthiness of the match. Jaoven and Lisenn deserved to wed. Perhaps one would kill the other and inadvertently bless the world. At the very least, their union would spare any other prospective partners from a terrible fate.

don’t care. I don’t need oxygen, I need Sierra.

I don’t need oxygen; I need Chance’s touch.

In her experience, most endings turned out to be beginnings in disguise.

Sunt ca un Dumnezeu care nu mai poate învia

WILL ST LEGER: Whatever time it was, it was fucking freezing. We were outside with one banner. There was about eight of us if I can remember … The Iona Institute were having a meeting in there. So it was directed at them and the participants. It was really nice because the cops came along just to kind of see what was going on. I don’t know who called them – knowing Noise they probably let them know beforehand because they’re very considerate like that. A very handsome Garda on a motorbike was there and he was saying to us, ‘What’s the story inside?’ We said, ‘Oh, it’s the Iona Institute; they think that marriage is just for heterosexuals to procreate and we’re not allowed access to marriage.’ And he was like, ‘That’s terrible!’ So I had this feeling either he was a really liberal person or a card-carrying homosexual guard – maybe hope for the latter, you know, he was quite cute.

He’d tried to cajole her out of her office space with sweet talk of an extra hour in bed and more flexibility, and, when that didn’t work, had attempted to drive her out by making her do something awful called hot desking, which—she learned—was corporate speak for sharing

My speckled beauty,” Ariadne whispers in Iona’s ear, “You cannot know how you have captivated me. I dreamed of you, wished for you, ached for only you, perhaps even more than you did for me. Every second in your presence was exquisite torture. You must know how much power you have over me, then and now.

I am hers and she is mine. We have nothing to fear anymore. To love her is my fate and I will thank the stars every night for their intervention, Iona thinks to herself.

I must admit your brooding has a certain allure, though I prefer your smile,” Iona says.

If I agree to get the ship past the Yulineon patrols and land us on the trading post in Wursh,” I interrupt. “You will agree to allow me the use of your cunt.

They do if the man has the stronger tie to sempiterna blood,” Ariadne says, “Whoever has the more prestigious name will have it passed down. It is better for the child, in theory, to have the more distinguished surname. None of the Zerynthos women have married men more powerful than them.” “So then if we had a child, they would be named Lysander?” Iona asks with a grin. Ariadne’s mouth falls open, “I beg to differ. It would be Zerynthos.” “I suppose I could humor you,” Iona shrugs.

You are worthy of the vows I will speak when you become my shoulsis. It will be an honor to be a male in your clov. Your sweet cunt is truly worthy of death.

You could think of crime as being the sordid failure of people without imagination, or you could see that it was rooted in lives. It was these stories that interested him. God, he thought.

What Am I to Write? What am I to write for you? Blank page, White emptiness, Broken words are not enough Nor spluttered ink spat out in ignorance, Contemptuous of its desire to mark And maim, Indulges so at first, And then again. But No I will not take to mediocre ways, Nor overplay the passion song in muse, For the heart well tuned Needs not the head To pump its life, And the arteries awakened to the rhythm, Subtle rhythm, Should suffice.

Everyone wears fear differently, Lane thought. Mrs. Castle was a woman who had clearly had a hard life. Perhaps fear for her was an angry, mute, hard knot inside her.