“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground
When John F. Kennedy's PT boat was cut in to by a Japanese destroyer in World War II, he rescued his surviving crew and brought them to safety, towing one of them for miles while swimming, and then undertaking another long swim to deliver word that the crew was alive. For this, he won Navy and Marine Corps Medal (the highest non-combat decoration awarded for heroism) and the Purple Heart. When asked later how he became a "World War II hero," he answered dryly, "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."
So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup. - James Lee Burke
As flawed as Southern culture is, mendacity has always been treated in the South as a despicable characteristic. Notice how often Southerners casually address others as “you son of a bitch” with no insult intended. When the same person calls someone a “lying son of a bitch", you know he’s serious. - James Lee Burke
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell
7 August 1.45pm Car to Leavesden for the H[arry] P[otter] wrap party. Almost every expense spared – at least in the food department. At 2.30pm little was left, anyway. -Alan Rickman, from his diary
I read this in an article meant to inspire writers: “You go to dark places so that you can get there, steal the trophy and get out.” ~ Frederick Busch
I thought there was no use for me in reading Sun Tzu and Machiavelli because I am neither a warrior nor a politician, but it turned out to be useful when I married. - Bangambiki Habyarimana
When I was back there in seminary school, there was a person there who put forth the proposition that you can petition the lord with prayer...petition the lord with prayer...petition the lord with prayer. YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER! Jim Morrison. I can't explain why, but it lifts my mood every time I hear it.
"It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley.
"I can hear you breathing. Nobody here does that any more." --- Ghostly girl's ghostly voice in The Cradle orphanage, Thief 3
Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men. - Charles de Gaulle
“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.” ― Emily Dickinson
"The path to the grave is lined with compromise after compromise until, at the moment of the final rattle, one has become a travesty, physically and spiritually, of the person one used to be. Not that I would want to overdramatise the whole thing, mind." --- Rod Liddle
"Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?" – Estraven, in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness
"Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." Gen. Colin Powell, referring to the Iraqi army in 1991.
"The recliner needs to be returned to rent-a-center once the dead patient has been removed from it." -my wife, the hospice nurse, in the oral notes she's reciting next to me
