The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘quotes of the day’

Quotes of the Day!

Recently I read The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. My wife loved it, I’ll give it a resounding “eh.” But Steinbeck did have a way with words, so while I didn’t love the book, I still really enjoyed his use of language. The quotes are of course better with the context of what is happening around them, but some are still nice even while isolated. And, I should add, the book is good, there is no doubt about that.

 

The banker’s voice became frosty. “I don’t understand.” His inflection said he did understand and found it stupid, and his tone twisted a bitterness in Ethan, and the bitterness spawned a lie.

 

It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder: If I’ve missed this, what else have I failed to see?

 

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.

 

It has been my experience to put aside a decision for future pondering. Then one day, fencing a piece of time to face the problem, I have found it already completed, solved, and the verdict taken. This must happen to everyone, but I have no way of knowing that. It’s as though, in the dark and desolate caves of the mind, a faceless jury had met and decided.

 

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This, dear reader, is a picture of a good day.

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Quotes of the Day!

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Quotes of the Day!

The quotes today are from John Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row.

***

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

but Alfred has triumphed over his environment and has brought his environment up with him

Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom.

While he was looking for a question Doc asked one. Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits.

It had become his custom, each time he was deserted, to buy a gallon of wine, to stretch out on the comfortably hard bunk and get drunk. Sometimes he cried a little all by himself but it was luxurious stuff and he usually had a wonderful feeling of well-being from it.

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Quotes of the Day!

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Quotes of the Week!

When I was home around Christmas time, I took the opportunity of having no classes or work to read some really dorky books. (I wrote out one of the books back of the book summary already.)

These books were really impressively dorky, and I’d like to share some of the great quotes from them.

Edward S. Aarons

When all was quiet again, he closed the door and turned back to her, and saw that she had shed her bikini and was waiting for him.
“No dice,” he said.

***

Three hours later, he found Valetti.
It was in the Brighton morgue.

***

The face was round and babyish; the eyes were those of a disillusioned old man.

***

“A pity. Do you know the term ‘berserker,’ Mr. Durell? I am a berserker. A Viking filled with the lust for blood. Your blood.”

***

Bron Fane

“If you can imagine your own problems in detection multiplied by infinity, and laced with a thousand indescribably important technical details, then you will realise something of the task which confronts a Time Warden,” said Chronol.

***

“It sounds rather frightening,” he said. “Time and Space mean nothing to the killer from Tomorrow.”

***

Reality was a ship that defied reality, and he was in it – a passenger of the Time Warden. He shook his head slowly.

***

“You’ve been mixed up with things natural and supernatural. You also, quite recently, got yourself tangled up with a rather strange planet.”
“Oh, you mean the adventure which my friend Bron Fane chronicled under the title The Intruders,” answered Val.

***

Bron Fane is the AUTHOR of this book, and referenced another one of his books in this book. That is amazing!

But, a quick wikipedia search has now confused me … Apparently Bron Fane is a pseudonym that was used by Lionel Fanthorpe, a British priest (Somewhere Out There did have a clearly pro-Christian part). Fanthorpe wrote for Badger Books which had a number of pseudonyms that any of their authors could pick up and use. SO, the author was referencing himself … but possibly a different person.

Kooky, eh?

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Quotes of the Day!

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