β
Read, read, read. That's all I can say.
β
β
Carolyn Keene (The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #1))
β
Drunk, Jane spoke as though she were Nancy Drew. I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon.
β
β
Michael Chabon (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh)
β
I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.
β
β
Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
β
I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.
β
β
Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1))
β
The point is to be compassionately, not cruelly, honest. Tell the person what you have heard that worries you. Allow him to respond. You may be surprised at how much sense his answers make.
β
β
Nancy O'Meara (The Cult around the Corner: A Handbook on Dealing with Other People's Religions)
β
It is absolutely okay with me if you need to keep some secrets. I've been thinking about this and I decided that a best friend is someone who, when they don't understand, they still understand.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
When you first fall in love, it's supposed to be awful. Awful, uncertain, scary, wonderful, confusing, all at once. That's how you know it's real. You have to care deeply. Passionately. That hurts.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise.
β
β
Nancy Thayer
β
The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl's highest calling. I hope I am ready.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner
β
There's only one thing I want."
"And that is?"
"I want to see Kat."
Nancy's smile didn't fade. "And what are you willing to do to accomplish that?"
"Anything," I said without hesitation, and I meant it. "I will do anything, but I want to see Kat first and I want to see her now.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Origin (Lux, #4))
β
The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
The Doctor: It's my nose; it has special powers.
Nancy: Yeah? That why it's so...?
The Doctor: What?
Nancy: Nothing.
The Doctor: What?
Nancy: Nothing. Do your ears have special powers too?
β
β
Steven Moffat
β
Why had my life suddenly become a Nancy Drew mystery from hell?
β
β
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
β
The person at the other end is answering questions from a person she has never met and about whom she knows nothing. Good manners from you will certainly elicit a more complete response than a threatening or superior attitude.
β
β
Nancy O'Meara (The Cult around the Corner: A Handbook on Dealing with Other People's Religions)
β
Do act mysterious. It always keeps them coming back for more.
β
β
Carolyn Keene (Nancy's Mysterious Letter (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #8))
β
Thereβs a Greek legendβno, itβs in something Plato wroteβabout how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. Thatβs why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
Nancy, every place you go, it seems as if mysteries just pile up one after another.
β
β
Carolyn Keene (The Message in the Hollow Oak (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #12))
β
The Doctor: Amazing.
Nancy: What is?
The Doctor: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says "No. No, not here." A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. I don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me.
β
β
Steven Moffat
β
Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
How did I become President?
I began by setting an example, hanging out my own dirty laundry in front of Village Earth right from the start. Every ugly little life secret became a matter of public record. Of course, that included sordid love-life details.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Nancy Astor: "Sir, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madame,i f you were my wife, I'd drink it!"
(Exchange with Winston Churchill)
β
β
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
β
It became increasingly common to resolve international tensions by legal means. The chant βCriminal Trials, Not Missilesβ became prevalent after its use in my first State of the Union address. Nice ring to it.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
β
β
Nancy Mitford
β
-BDB on the board-
Knitter's Anonimous
May 8, 2006
Rhage (in his bedroom posting in V's room on the board)
Hi, my name is V.
("Hi, V")
I've been knitting for 125 years now.
(*gasping noises*)
It's begun to impact my personal relationships: my brothers think I'm a nancy. It's begun to affect my health: I'm getting a callus on my forefinger and I find bits of yarn in all my pockets and I'm starting to smell like wool. I can't concentrate at work: I keep picturing all these lessers in Irish sweaters and thick socks.
(*sounds of sympathy*)
I've come seeking a community of people who, like me, are trying not to knit.
Can you help me?
(*We're with you*)
Thank you (*takes out hand-knitted hankie in pink*)
(*sniffles*)
("We embrace you, V")
Vishous (in the pit): Oh hell no...you did not just put that up. And nice spelling in the title. Man...you just have to roll up on me, don't you. I got four words for you, my brother.
Rhage: Four words? Okay...lemme see... Rhage, you're so sexy.
hmmm....
Rhage, you're SO smart. No wait! Rhage, you're SO right! That's it, isn't it...g'head. You can tell me.
Vishous: First one starts with a "P"
Use your head for the other three.
Bastard.
Rhage: P? Hmm... Please pass the yarn
Vishous: Payback is a bitch!
Rhage: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh
I'm so scuuuuuurred.
Can you whip me up a blanket to hide under?
β
β
J.R. Ward (The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide (Black Dagger Brotherhood))
β
He was still a mystery to me. And God, did I want to play Nancy Drew.
β
β
Cora Carmack (Losing It (Losing It, #1))
β
If you're 50 years old or younger, give every book about 50 pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up.
If you're over 50, which is when time gets shorter, subtract your age from 100 - the result is the number of pages you should read before deciding whether or not to quit. If you're 100 or over you get to judge the book by its cover, despite the dangers in doing so.
β
β
Nancy Pearl
β
I love you," Matt said.
I love you, too," Maria replied. "I know that's a sin, and I'll probably go to hell for it."
If I have a soul, I'll go with you," promised Matt.
β
β
Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1))
β
I love Nancy Drew!
β
β
Carolyn Keene (The Clue of the Tapping Heels (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #16))
β
Don't you see what's happened? You wanted to be in love again. To feel that feeling where a man you hardly know gazes into your eyes and seems to be the only human being who ever understood the real you.
β
β
Nancy Horan (Loving Frank)
β
I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.
β
β
Nancy Mitford
β
Why was I the Most Popular President Who Ever Lived?
I castrated the IRS, implemented the National Sales Tax (Fair Tax) and brought an end to parasitic government - all through the use of numbers, statistics. business metrics, graphs, pie charts, efficiency - in short - results.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Peopleβs souls are like gardens. You canβt turn your back on someone because his gardenβs full of weeds. You have to give him water and lots of sunshine.
β
β
Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1))
β
You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.
β
β
Nancy D. Solomon
β
No. It's actually not okay. And I hate when people say that, when they say it's okay even though it's not. It's better to tell the truth.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (The Rules of Survival)
β
Man, it was a good thing he fought like a nasty bastard or he might have been taken for a nancy.
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #3))
β
Confound my genteel upbringing! I could not think of any name foul enough to call him.
β
β
Nancy Springer (The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (Enola Holmes, #2))
β
Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.
β
β
Coco Chanel
β
We women talk too much, but even then we don't tell half what we know.
β
β
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
β
Being the Worldβs Most Powerful Leader is Easier Than You Think
One of my first executive orders was to impose a moratorium on any new federal government hiring. That got the βIncredible Shrinking Governmentβ meal simmering. Veto stamps branded into any Congressional salary increase proposal added a certain singed aroma.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Conform, go crazy, or become an artist.
β
β
Nancy Springer
β
Was true love when you wanted to slap someone and kiss him madly at the same time?
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.
β
β
Nancy Wynne Newhall
β
Written twenty years after she held office, this abridged biography is being released now, prior to taking place.
Maybe we can learn from history before it happens.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
The universe is always speaking to us. ... Sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.
β
β
Nancy Thayer
β
MATTHEW'S RULES OF SURVIVAL
1. Sometimes, the people who mean you harm are the ones who say they love you.
2. Fear is your friend. When you feel it, act.
3. Protect the little ones.
4. If you coped before, you can cope now.
5. Always remember: In the end, the survivor gets to tell the story.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (The Rules of Survival)
β
As she walked, she breathed a quick benediction to the patron saint of sleuthing. "Nancy Drew," she whispered, "be with me now.
β
β
Colin Meloy (Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles, #1))
β
When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.
β
β
Kathleen Norris
β
Future Politics
Effecting change in national politics was mostly a matter of making better use of online forums, encouraging voters to press forth with hard questions, providing statistics and solutions. Direct-to-voter referendums became an increasingly common way of effecting national policy. If Congress were deadlocked over a particular issue, the voters would be asked to make up their minds for them in the form of an online referendum.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Chuckling to herself, Nancy said aloud, "Romance and detective work won't mix tonight!
β
β
Carolyn Keene (The Bungalow Mystery (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #3))
β
We are a noisy and blessed little family
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world," said Sumi. Her voice was suddenly crystalline and clear, with none of her prior whimsy. She looked at Nancy with calm, steady eyes. "Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that really bad. She never bans hope.
β
β
Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1))
β
Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.
β
β
Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love (Radlett & Montdore, #1))
β
Sometimes questions are more important than answers.
β
β
Nancy Willard
β
I wheeled and dealed with leaders from all over the world on behalf of the American people. In fact, my favorite headline from Washington Speaks magazine was βShe Walks, She Talks, She Negotiatesβ.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
There is nothing in this world that I want or need, but you.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
Convincing all nations in the civilized world to agree that any investments into these corporations should be tax-free was not an easy task. Tea with the Queen didnβt quite cut it. Saki with the Japanese Prime Minister was pleasant, but not quite enough. We had to offer major trade concessions to our partner nations to bring them to the negotiating table. In retrospect, it was a small price to pay. The talks earned me the title of βThe Great Negotiator.β I didn't mind.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weight hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank,and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
You do what you were made to do. Some of us were made to read and write. Thanks be to God.
β
β
Nancy M. Malone (Walking a Literary Labyrinth)
β
Organize, don't agonize.
β
β
Nancy Pelosi
β
Don't let ignorance win. Let love.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
A nice girl should never go anywhere without a loaded gun and a big knife." ~ Sarah Agnes Prine
β
β
Nancy E. Turner
β
We formed the fellowship of the ring when we should've all just gone on medication
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β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.
β
β
Nancy Mitford (Christmas Pudding (Mitford, Nancy))
β
After iris-scanning was legally accepted as identity verification for drivers licenses, passports and so much more, anyone could securely log onto the Internet from any computer anywhere via such a scan.
Elections (much less air travel) have never been the same
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
The Bookshop has a thousand books,
All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door
That turns on magic hinges.
β
β
Nancy Byrd Turner
β
Slow people are just paying close attention.
β
β
Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1))
β
My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop to read it.
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β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories (Sarah Agnes Prine, #1))
β
I'm not saying I'm glad it happened. Not exactly. But I'm not sorry to be the person I am today, and to have the life I have now. Even though it's not what I thought I wanted for my future, a year ago, it is what I want now. ...
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
An Affair With The Media
Being President presupposes a relationship with the media. One does have control over the intimacy of that connection.
My media association might be best represented by the following interview, recently undertaken for this book:
βWhat do you think of Newstimeβs review of your book, Madam President?β
βNewstimeβs review? Surely you mean Bill Bologna who works for Newstime?β
βWell, yes.β
βNow, Bill Bologna. What has he published?β
βHeβs a critic. He does reviews.β
βOh, he gets paid for reading what other people have published and then writing what he thinks of their writing?
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.
β
β
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
β
I have learned that in every circumstance that comes my way, I can choose to respond in one of two ways: I can whine or I can worship! And I can't worship without giving thanks. It just isn't possible. When we choose the pathway of worship and giving thanks, especially in the midst of difficult circumstances, there is a fragrance, a radiance, that issues forth out of our lives to bless the Lord and others.
β
β
Nancy Leigh DeMoss (Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy)
β
[Children] just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them, as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives.
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Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, thereβs always a chance that the dancing bear will win.
β
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Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
β
Educate not Legislate
Refusing to pass unnecessary laws requires a converse β encouraging education and understanding. We started by slashing the salaries of legislators (Dubbed βBloodbath on the Beltwayβ). That move provided funds to instigate incentive programs for high school teachers β to attract the best and brightest. The result was a generation of bright, energetic 18-year-olds graduating high-school, equipped to tackle the future.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Taking up marriage is a good excuse for taking up cursing, I think.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories (Sarah Agnes Prine, #1))
β
The requirement for anyone running for elected office to have held a position of public service, such as fireman, school teacher, librarian, scout leader, or policeman was never actually passed into law.
Still the range of day jobs that some of our Congress people now hold are pretty amazing.
Somehow these days a background as a lawyer is a big minus.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Not many girls would have used their wits the way you did," the officer observed.
β
β
Carolyn Keene (The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #1))
β
I went downstairs to Dadβs encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didnβt tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in the whole long article, the word βloveβ wasnβt used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didnβt know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
Sometimes the people who mean you harm, are the ones that say they love you.
β
β
Nancy Werlin
β
It's Annie and me they're all sitting around here like cardboard people judging; It's Annie and me. And what we did that they think is wrong, when you pare it all down, was fall in love.
β
β
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
β
I don't promise to forget the mystery, but I know I'll have a marvelous time.
β
β
Carolyn Keene (Nancy's Mysterious Letter (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #8))
β
Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world.
β
β
Nancy R. Pearcey (Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity)
β
I have for a long time felt that our society is becoming more and more fractured and divisive and that you could go a whole day without really talking to another person. If you give people a good book to talk about, you can build a community out of a diverse group. A common language grows out of it.
β
β
Nancy Pearl
β
I might like to have someone courting me. But it would have to be someone who is a square shooter and who has a train load of courage. And it would have to be someone who doesn't have to talk down to folks to feel good, or to tell a person they are worthless ifthey just made a mistake. And he'd have to be not too thin. Why, I remember hugging [my brother] Ernest was like warpping your arms around a fence post,and I love Ernest, but I want a man who can hold me down in a wind. Maybe he'd have to be pretty stubborn. I don't have any use for a man that isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn fellow will stay with you through thick and thin, and a spineless one will take off, or let his heart wander.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
He has his good side and his bad side. Very dark indeed is his majesty when he wants to be. When he was young, he made a choice, like a tree does when it decides to grow one way or the other. He grew large and green until he shadowed over the whole forest, but most of his branches are twisted.
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Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1))
β
I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (Sarah's Quilt (Sarah Agnes Prine, #2))
β
Killing War
I had no desire to alter the viable occupations of humanity, but I was determined to do something about the level of regional bloodshed.
Education was my weapon of choice, based on a simple hypothesis: that the advance troops of physical carnage are the propaganda and lies that justify murder, making the real battleground that of ideas.
I was determined to address a situation where so many people were ready to kill, driven by the conviction that others are either evil incarnate or will murder them first if they donβt kill them first if they donβt β¦
Entire nations were buried in twisted truths submerged by hate, covered with vengeance. Voices of remorse, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation were drowned out by the din of screams for death or revenge.
The best defense system against the cycle of violence was something that is impervious to any tool of destruction ever spawned. That something is knowledge.
β
β
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
β
Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day. It is beautiful and this seems like the best time to live and the best place
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
Passion now begins to wake
and whom we desire, we will take
then we'll cut them down to the quick
love itself the cruelest trick.
Moved we are by loves sweet song
though it plays not for long
we can blow on embers bright
till passion outtakes the light.
β
β
Nancy Holder (Legacy (Wicked, #3))
β
When you're living your life in endurance mode, you don't expect anything good to happen. I'm not saying that you don't dream about some miracle that would change everything for the better. But you pretty much know it's only a fantasy, and that you have no real control over anything.
β
β
Nancy Werlin
β
But just now, he'd gotten on his knees and proposed marriage, like in a television commercial for a diamond ring. Except of course they had the roll of duct tape instead, which, when you came to think about it, was a far more practical item. Such a bad mistake it would be, to embark on marriage and adult life without a nice supply of duct tape.
β
β
Nancy Werlin (Impossible (Impossible, #1))
β
The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married. When it isn't they blame the other person, which is clearly absurd. I believe that is what generally starts the trouble.
β
β
Nancy Mitford (Christmas Pudding (Mitford, Nancy))
β
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the tree the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like theyh ave a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone.
β
β
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
β
What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur--I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
β
β
Robert A. Heinlein (Glory Road)
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Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening.
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Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate (Radlett and Montdore, #1-2))
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Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.
Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she became with all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouching over the pool, she brooded.
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Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
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This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.
If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:
To Gaylene deceased
To Ray deceased
To Francy permanent psychosis
To Kathy permanent brain damage
To Jim deceased
To Val massive permanent brain damage
To Nancy permanent psychosis
To Joanne permanent brain damage
To Maren deceased
To Nick deceased
To Terry deceased
To Dennis deceased
To Phil permanent pancreatic damage
To Sue permanent vascular damage
To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage
. . . and so forth.
In Memoriam.
These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.
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Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
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Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.
Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.
For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.
We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.
I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.
We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.
I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."
There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."
Thank you.
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Ronald Reagan