Novels

"“Honey, don’t you like hamburgers?” Bruce wanted to know, crestfallen. “That beef is chalked full of protein!” Bruce grinned contagiously. “And we could both use some protein, after last night! If you know what I mean!”"

"He didn't ever want to be stuck with riffraff like that so he had used the computer skills he had learned from cracking play station games and writing viruses on the internet to build his company to a person was today."

"Pain. Whispering voices. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Need pee--new pain--what are they sticking in me? . . . Sleep. Pain."

"Isadore:"Fortunately, fast and efficient Emergency Medical Services, based on a program founded by Lyndon Baines Johnson the 36th President of the United States helped y'all survive an otherwise, deadly crash""

"The longtime security guard saluted the pair as they passed. What lucky people, he thought, so young and rich, they can afford to live here. Not like me. I have to live across town and wear a uniform and salute the young rich kids who make more money in a minute than I can make in my whole life."

"Both men and women and couples were eating lunch."

"Yvonne Perrin stood up and walked over to the waiter and took the shot glass full of vodka and poured it out in a planter that held a spindly rubber tree that never got enough light to grow properly even though it was near one of the windows that looked out onto the lake where some ducks were floating like they were waiting for someone to throw them some bread but there was nobody there at this time of day."

"Those big, jiggle breasts, so close to him."

"Then he took her home, and they had held hands like little kids and kissed outside her door. He couldn't remember any woman or boy as hot as she was. None of those teen-agers had ever been like this. He defiantly wanted to see her again."

"As he held those big, jiggle breasts, so close to him, he whispered into her ear "I love those Big Ole Bujuby jublies"."

"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de veinte casa de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo."

"Cuando el pirata Francis Drake asaltó a Riohacha, en el siglo XVI, la bisabuela de Úrsula Iguarán se asustó tanto con el toque de rebato y el estampido de los cañones, que perdió el control de los nervios y se sentó en un fogón encendido. La quemaduras la dejaron convertido en una esposa inútil para toda la vida. [ . . . ] Su marido, un comerciante aragonés con quien tenía dos hijos, se gastó media tienda en medicinas y entretenimientos buscando la manera de aliviar sus terrores. Por último, liquidó el negocio y llevó a la familia a vivir lejos del mar, en una ranchería de indios pacíficos [ . . . ] Vario siglos más tarde, el tataranieto del criollo se casó con la tataranieta del aragonés. Por eso, cada vez que Úrsula se salía de casillas con las locuras de su marido, saltaba por encima de trescientos años de casualidades, y maldecía la hora en que Francis Drake asaltó a Riohacha."

"Entonces se confió a aquella mano, y en un terrible estado de agotamiento se dejó llevar hasta un lugar sin formas donde le quitaron la ropa y lo zarandearon como un costal de papas y lo voltearon al derecho y al revés, en una oscuridad insondable en la que le sobraban los brazos, donde ya no olía más a mujer, sino a amoníaco, y donde trataba de acordarse del rostro de ella y se encontraba con el rostro de Úrsula, confusamente consciente de que estaba haciendo algo que desde hacía mucho tiempo deseaba que se pudiera hacer, pero que nunca se había imaginado que en realidad se pudiera hacer, sin saber cómo lo estaba haciendo porque no sabía imaginado que en realidad se pudiera hacer, sin saber cómo lo estaba haciendo porque no sabía dónde estaban los pies y dónde la cabeza, ni los pies de quién ni la cabeza de quién, y sintiendo que no podía resistir más el rumor glacial de sus riñones y el aire de sus tripas, y el miedo, y el ansia atolondrada de huir al mismo tiempo de quedarse para siempre en aquel silencio exasperado y aquella soledad espantosa."

"Aureliano fijó en ella una mirada que la envolvió en un ámbito de incertidumbre. —Alguien va a venir—le dijo. Úrsula, como siempre que él expresaba un pronóstico, trató de desalentarlo con su lógica casera. Era normal que alguien llegara."

"La presencia de Amparo Moscote en la casa fue como una premonición. «Tiene que venir con ella», se decía Aureliano en voz baja. «Tiene que venir.» Tantas veces se lo repitió, y con tanta convicción, que una tarde en que armaba en el taller un pescadito de oro, tuvo la certidumbre de que ella había respondido, a su llamado. poco después, en efecto, oyó la vocecita infantil, y al levantar la vista con el corazón helado de pavor vio a la niña en la puerta con vestido de organdí rosado y botitas blancas."

"Implantó el servicio militar obligatorio desde los dieciocho años, declaró de utilidad pública los animales que transitaban por las calles después de las seis de la tarde e impuso a los hombres mayores de edad la obligación de usar un brazal rojo. Recluyó al padre nicanor en la casa cural, bajo amenaza de fusilamiento, y le prohibió decir misa y tocar las campanas como no fuera para celebrar las victorias liberales. Para que nadie pusiera en duda la severidad de sus propósitos, mandó que un pelotón de fusilamiento se entrenara en la plaza pública disparando contra un espantapájaros. Al principio nadie lo tomó en serio."

"En la escuela desportillada donde experimentó por primera vez la seguridad del poder, a pocos metros del cuarto donde conoció la incertidumbre del amor, Arcadio encontró ridículo el formalismo de la muerte. En realidad no le importaba la muerte sino la vida, y por eso la sensación que experimentó cuando pronunciaron la sentencia no fue una sensación de miedo sino de nostalgia."

"En realidad, no se atrevían a ejecutar la sentencia. La rebeldía del pueblo hizo pensar a los militares que el fusilamiento del coronel Aureliano Buendía tendría graves consecuencias políticas no sólo en Macondo sino en todo el ámbito de la ciénaga, así que consultaron a las autoridades de la capital provincial. La noche del sábado, mientras esperaban la respuesta, el capitán Roque Carnicero fue con otros oficiales a la tienda de Catarino. Sólo una mujer, casi presionada con amenazas, se atrevió a llevarlo al cuarto. «No se quieren acostar con un hombre que saben que se va a morir», le confesó ella. «Nadie sabe cómo será, pero todo el mundo anda diciendo que el oficial que fusile al coronel Aureliano Buendía, y todo los soldados del pelotón, uno por uno, serán asesinados sin remedio, tarde o temprano, así se escondan en el fin del mundo.» El capitán roque Carnicero lo comentó con los otros oficiales, y éstos lo comentaron con sus superiores. El domingo, aunque nadie lo había revelado con franqueza, aunque ningún acto militar había turbado la calma tensa de aquellos días, todo el pueblo sabía que los oficiales estaban dispuestos a eludir con toda clase de pretextos la responsabilidad de la ejecución. […] Cuando oyó el grito, creyó que era la orden final al pelotón. Abrió los ojos con una curiosidad de escalofrío, esperando encontrarse con la trayectoria incandescente de los proyectiles, pero sólo encontró al capitán Roque Carnicero con los brazos en alto, y a José Arcadio atravesando la calle con su escopeta pavorosa lista para disparar. —No haga fuego—le dijo el capitán a José Arcadio—. Usted viene mandado por la Divina Providencia."

"Tanto joderse uno», murmuraba el coronel Aureliano Buendía. «Tanto joderse para que lo maten a uno seis maricas sin poder hacer nada."

"No había dejado de desearla un solo instante. La encontraba en los oscuros dormitorios de los pueblos vencidos, sobre todo en los más abyectos, y la materializaba en el tufo de la sangre seca en las vendas de los heridos, en el pavor instantáneo del peligro de muerte, a toda hora y en todas partes. Había huido de ella tratando de aniquilar su recuerdo no sólo con la distancia, sino con un encarnizamiento aturdido que sus compañeros de armas calificaban de temeridad, pero mientras más revolcaba su imagen en el muladar de la guerra, más la guerra se parecía a Amaranta. Así padeció el exilio, buscando la manera de matarla con su propia muerte."

"Sus cino hijas, herederas de una semilla ardiente, se perdieron por los vericuetos de la vida desde la adolescencia. De los dos varones que alcanzó a criar, uno murió peleando en la huestes del coronel Aureliano Buendía y otro fue herido y capturado a los catorce años, cuando intentaba robarse un huacal de gallinas en un pueblo de la ciénaga. En cierto modo, Aureliano José fue el hombre alto y moreno que durante medio siglo le anunció el rey de copas, y que modo todos los enviados de las barajas llegó a su corazón cuando ya estaba marcado por el signo de la muerte. Ella lo vio en los naipes."

"Carmelita Montiel, una virgen de veinte años, acababa de bañarse con agua de azahares y estaba regando hojas de romero en la cama de Pilar Ternera, cuando sonó el disparo. Aureliano José estaba destinado a conocer con ella la felicidad que le negó Amaranta, a tener siete hijos y a morirse de viejo en sus brazos, pero la bala de fusil que le entró por la espalda y le despedazó el pecho estaba dirigida por una mala interpretación de las barajas."

"Extraviado en la soledad de su inmenso poder, empezó a perder el rumbo. Le molestaba la gente que lo aclamaba en los pueblos vencidos, y que le parecía la misma que aclamaba al enemigo. Por todas partes encontraba adolescentes que lo miraban con sus propios ojos, que hablaban con su propia voz, que lo saludaban con la misma desconfianza con que él los saludaba a ellos, y que decían ser sus hijos. Se sintió disperso, repetido, y más solitario que nunca. Tuvo la convicción de que sus propios oficiales le mentían. Se peleó con el duque de Marlborough. «El major amigo—solía decir entonces—es el que acaba de morir.»"

"Al amanecer, estragado por la tormentosa vigilia, apareció en la cuarto del cepo una hora antes de la ejecución. «Terminó la fasa, compadre», le dijo al coronel Gerineldo Márquez. «Vámonos de aquí, antes de que acaben de fusilarte los mosquitos.» El coronel Gerineldo Márquez no pudo reprimir el desprecio que le inspiraba aquella actitud. —No, Aureliano —replicó—. Vale más estar muerto que verte convertido en un chafarote. —No me verás —dijo el coronel Aureliano Buendía—. Ponte los zapatos y ayúdame a terminar con esta guerra de mierda. Al decirlo, no imaginaba que era más fácil empezar una guarra que terminarla."

"Cuando terminó el libro, muchos de cuyos cuentos estaban inconclusos porque faltaban páginas, Aureliano Segundo se dio a la tarea de descifrar los manuscritos. Fue imposible. Las letras parecían ropa puesta a secar en un alambra, y se asemejaban más a la escritura musical que a la literaria. Un mediodía ardiente, mientras escrutaba los manuscritos, sintió que no estaba solo en el cuarto. Contra la reverberación de la ventana, sentado con las manos en las rodillas, estaba Melquíades. No tenía más de cuarenta años. Llevaba el mismo chaleco anacrónico y el sombrero de alas de cuervo, y por sus sienes pálidas chorreaba la grasa del cabello derretida por el calor, como lo vieron Aureliano y José Arcadio cuando eran niños. Aureliano Segundo lo reconoció de inmediato, porque aquel recuerdo hereditario se había transmitido de generación en generación, y había llegado a él desde la memoria de su abuelo."

"Mientras estuvo encerrado en el cuarto de Melquíades fue un hombre ensimismado, como lo fue el coronel Aureliano Buendía en su juventud. Pero poco antes del tratado de Neerlandia una casualidad lo sacó de su ensimismamiento y lo enfrentó a la realidad del mundo. Una mujer joven, que andaba vendiendo números para la rifa de un acordeón, lo saludó con mucha familiaridad. Aureliano Segundo no se sorprendió porque ocurría con frecuencia que lo confundieran con su hermano. Pero no aclaró el equívoco, ni siquiera cuando la muchacha trató de ablandarle el corazón con lloriqueos, y terminó por llevarlo a su cuarto.[…] Al cabo de dos semanas, Aureliano Segundo se dio cuenta de que la mujer se había estado acostando alternativamente con él y con su hermano, creyendo que eran el mismo hombre, y en vez de aclarar la situación se las arregló para prolongarla. No volvió al cuarto de Melquíades.[…] Durante casi dos mese compartió la mujer con su hermano. […] Una mañana descubrió que estaba enfermo. Dos días después encontró a su hermano aferrado a una viga del baño.[…] José Arcadio Segundo no volvió a ver a la mujer. Aureliano Segundo obtuvo su perdón y se quedó con ella hasta la muerte."

"Cuando Úrsula se dio cuenta de que José arcadio Segundo era gallero y Aureliano Segundo tocaba el acordeón en las fiestas ruidosas de su concubina, creyó enloquecer de confusión. Era como si en ambos se hubieran concentrado los defectos de la familia y ninguna de sus virtudes. Entonces decidió que nadie volviera a llamarse Aureliano y José Arcadio. Sin embargo, cuando Aureliano Segundo tuvo su primer hijo, no se atrevió a contrariarlo. —De acuerdo —dijo Úsula—, pero con una condición: yo me encargo de criarlo. Aunque ya era centenaria y estaba a punto de quedarse ciega por las cataratas, conservaba intactos el dinamismo físico, la integridad del carácter y el equilibrio mental. Nadie mejor que ella para forma al hombre virtuoso que había de restaurar el prestigio de la familia, un hombre que nunca hubiera oído hablar de la guerra, los gallos de pelea, las mujeres de mala vida y las empresas delirantes, cuatro calamidades que, según pensaba Úrsula, habían determinado la decadencia de su estirpe. «Este será cura», prometió solemnemente. «Y si Dios me da vida, ha de llegar a ser Papa.»"

"El secreto de una buena vejez no es otra cosa que un pacto honrado con la soledad."

"Uno no se muere cuando debe, sino cuando puede."

"—¡Carajo! —gritó. Amaranta, que empezaba a meter la ropa en el baúl, creyó que la había picado un alacrán. —¿Dónde está?— preguntó alarmada. —¿Qué? —¡El animal!—aclaró Amaranta. Úrsula se puso un dedo en el corazón. —Aquí—dijo."

"El mundo se redujo a la superficie de su piel, y el interior quedó a salvo de toda amargura."

"Un minuto de reconciliación tiene más mérito que toda una vida de amistad."

"La ansiedad del enamoramiento no encontraba reposo sino en la cama."

"—Qué quería —murmuró—, el tiempo pasa. —Así es,—dijo Úrsula—, pero no tanto. Al decirlo, tuvo conciencia de estar dando la misma réplica que recibió del coronel Aureliano Buendía en su celda de sentenciado, y una vez más se estremeció con la comprobación de que el tiempo no pasaba, como ella lo acababa de admitir, sino que daba vueltas en redondo."

"En aquel Macondo olvidado hasta por los pájaros, donde el polvo y el calor se habían hecho tan tenaces que costaba trabajo respirar, recluidos por la soledad y el amor y por la soledad del amor en una casa donde era casi imposible dormir por el estruendo de las hormigas coloradas, Aureliano y Amaranta Úrsula eran los únicos seres felices, y los más felices sobre la tierra."

"La ciudad de los espejos (o los espejismos) sería arrasada por el viento y desterrada de la memoria de los hombre en el instante en que Aureliano Babilonia acabara de descifrar los pergaminos, y que todo lo escrito en ellos era irrepetible desde siempre y para siempre, porque las estirpes condenadas a cien años de soledad no tenían una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra."

"[One Hundred Years of Solitude] is one of those rare bestsellers that has real literary value. It's the story of a family, and is full of love, violence and madness. García Márquez only deals with events. And his characters are so solitary, despite many of them living together, that García Márquez doesn't describe their thoughts: he himself felt the insuperable solitude of that whole breed of lunatics, poets, revolutionaries, bandits, and beautiful women, all caught up in a relentless flow of action replete with poetry, humor, and sublime verbal magic." The poet Eliane Zagury has made a magnificent translation (there's not a trace of foreignness in the Portuguese)..."

"Those first days before classes started I spent alone in my whitewashed room, in the bright meadows of Hampden. And I was happy in those first days as really I'd never been before, roaming like a sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with beauty."

"In this swarm of cigarettes and dark sophistication they appeared here and there like figures from an allegory; or long-dead celebrants from some forgotten garden party."

"But do you really think," he said, concerned, "that one can call psychology a science?" "Certainly. What else is it?" "But even Plato knew that class and conditioning and so forth have an inalterable effect on the individual. It seems to me that psychology is only another word for what the ancients called fate." "Psychology is a terrible word."

"Are you the new neanias?" he said mockingly. The new young man. I said that I was. "Cubitum eamus?" "What?" "Nothing."

""Death is the mother of beauty," said Henry. "And what is beauty?" "Terror." [...] "And if beauty is terror," said Julian, "then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?" "To live," said Camilla. "To live forever," said Bunny, chin cupped in his palm."

"For a warning of what happens in the absence of such a pressure valve, we have the example of the Romans. The emperors. Think, for example, of Tiberius, the ugly stepson, trying to live up to the command of his stepfather Augustus. Think of the tremendous, impossible strain he must have undergone, following in the footsteps of a savior, a god. the people hated him. No matter how hard he tried he was never good enough, could never be rid of the hateful self, and finally the floodgates broke. He was swept away on his perversions and he died, old and mad, lost in the pleasure gardens of the Capri: not even happy there, as one might hope, but miserable. Before he died he wrote a letter home to the Senate. 'May all the Gods and Goddesses visit me with more utter destruction than I feel I am daily suffering.'"

"The Greeks were different. They had a passion for order and symmetry, much like the Romans, but they knew how foolish it was to deny the unseen world, the old gods. Emotion, darkness, barbarism." He looked at the ceiling for a moment, his face almost troubled. "Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?" he said. "It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn."

"[Henry and Bunny] seem to argue quite a bit." "Well, of course," said Camilla, "but that doesn't mean they're not fond of each other all the same."

""You had better watch out," she said. "I have heard some weird shit about those people [...] like they worship the fucking Devil." "The Greek have no Devil," I said pedantically."

"Since the two of them had been out of sorts for over a month, Henry in particular. Bunny, I knew, had been hitting him hard for money in the past week,s but though Henry complained about this he seemed oddly incapable of refusing him. I was fairly sure that it wasn't the money per se, but the principle of it; I was also fairly sure that whatever tension existed, Bunny was oblivious of it."

"If I threw myself off, I thought, who would find me in all that white silence? Might the river beat me downstream over the rocks until it spat me out in the quiet waters, down behind the dye factory, where some lady would catch me in the beam of her headlights when she pulled out of the parking lot at five in the afternoon? Or would I, like the pieces of Leo's mandolin, lodge stubbornly in some quiet place behind a boulder and wait, my clothes washing about me, for spring?"

"I don't have any friends here for the winter," I said, and I didn't. "You shouldn't push your friends away like that. The best friends you'll ever have are the ones you're making right now. I know you don't believe me, but they start to fall away when you get to be my age."

"When Bunny started in again ("And then there's the one about the Old West—this is when they still hung folks...") camilla edged over on the windowsill and smiled nervously at me. I went over and sat between her and Charles. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "How are you? she said. "Did you wonder where we were?""

"I suppose in that regard my tastes are rather Hellenistic. Landlocked places interest me, remote prospects, wild country. I've never had the slightest bit of interest in the sea. Rather like what Homer says about the Arcadians, you remember? With ships they had nothing to do...." "It's because you grew up in the midwest, " Charles said. "But if one follows that line of reasoning, then it follows that I would love flat lands, and plains. Which I don't. The descriptions of Troy in the Iliad are horrible to me—all flat land and burning sun. No. I've always been drawn to broken, wild terrain. The oddest tongues come from such places, and the strangest mythologies, and the oldest cities, and the most barbarous religions—Pan himself was born in the mountains, you know. And Zeus. In Parrhasia it was that Rheia bore thee," he said dreamily, lapsing into Greek, "where was a hill sheltered with the thickest brush...."

"Someone who didn't know there was such a thing in the world as Death; who couldn't believe it even when he saw it; had never dreamed it would come to him. Flapping crows. Shiny beetles crawling in the undergrowth. A patch of sky, frozen in a cloudy retina, reflected in a puddle on the ground. Yoo-hoo. Being and nothingness. ...I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me, even if he die, shall live; and whoseover liveth and believeth in Me shall never die...."

"Horrific as it was, the present dark, I was afraid to leave it for the other, permanent dark — jelly and bloat, the muddy pit."

"Even after all that had happened, the bitterness and disappointment in his voice cut me to the heart. "Henry," I said. I wanted to say something profound, that Julian was only human, that he was old, that flesh and blood was frail and weak and that there comes a time when we have to transcend our teachers. But I found myself unable to say anything at all. He turned his blind, unseeing eyes upon me. "I loved him more than my own father," he said. "I loved him more than anyone in the world.""

"Don't say 'fuck' anymore," said Henry, in a quiet, but ominous voice. "Fuck? What's the matter, Henry? You never heard that word before? Isn't that what you do to my sister every night?"

"She really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart."

"There is much to admire in Tartt's novel, but it is especially laudable for how persuasively she chronicles the steps from studying classics to committing murder. This is a difficult transition to relate in a believable manner, and all the more difficult given Tartt's decision to tell the story from the perspective of one of the most genial of the conspirators. Her story could easily come across as implausible—or even risible—in its recreation of Dionysian rites on a Vermont college campus, and its attempt to convince us that a mild-mannered transfer student with a taste for ancient languages can evolve, through a series of almost random events, into a killer. Yet convince us she does, and the intimacy with which Tartt brings her readers into the psychological miasma of the unfolding plot is one of the most compelling features of The Secret History."

"Most historical novels suffer from the fatal twin defects of emphasizing the pastness of the past too much while at the same time seeking to be over-familiar with it (“Have some more of this Chian,” drawled Alcibiades)."

"I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.”"

"What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny...the time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's. The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered. The free-floating self--the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen--is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures.”"

"If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents.”"

"To read, when one does so of one's own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and to set off toward it"

"All novels are sequels; influence is bliss."

"In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns."

"People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are."

"A good novel tells us about the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author...A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man, an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind"

"A good novel tells us about its hero. A bad novel tells us about the author."

"The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time."

"It was only after two years' work [he confesses] that it occurred to me I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is — an intense form of thought."

"When I want to read a novel, I write one."

"Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do."

"Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world."

"Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth"

"Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise."

"But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters."

"As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored"—"I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft."

"I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.”"

"You can't write a novel without sentences."

"Novels aren't about heroes. They're about us."

"For novelists, there is one big idea, always present and always demanding of attention. It goes something like this: what does it mean to be human? How can we conduct our lives to best effect? For many readers, the novel is as close as we ever come to philosophy. And it may be quite close enough. Ideas, big and little, should never be discounted in the novel because "it's only fiction." It's fiction, all right, but not only."

"The novel is dead. As dead as alchemy."

"He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed."

"Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be."

"Since 1900 there must have been published far more than twenty thousand novels. No man could read them all; if he did, a new spate of fiction would foam and swirl round him while he was at the task, and he would never catch up. Selection, voluntary and involuntary, there is bound to be. And it is bound to involve injustice."

"A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions."

"Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.”"

"Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."

"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead...In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than ask so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties"

"The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble."

"Jane: What do you think of his book Arthur? Gideon: I don't think of it. I've had no reason to, particularly. I've not had to review it. ...I'm afraid I'm hopeless about novels just now, that's the fact. I'm sick of the form—slices of life served up cold in three hundred pages. Oh, it's very nice; it makes nice reading for people. But what's the use? Except, of course, to kill time for those who prefer it dead. But as things in themselves, as art, they've been ruined by excess. My critical sense is blunted just now. I can hardly feel the difference, though I can see it, between a good novel and a bad one. I couldn't write one, good or bad, to save my life, I know that. And I've got to the stage when I wish other people wouldn't. I wish everyone would shut up, so that we could hear ourselves think..."

"Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us."

"The novel belongs to the category of natural poetry - the allegory to that of the artificial."

"Sir, ’said Stephen,‘ I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.”"

"[on an unnamed book] This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."

"Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels."

"The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? Were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? Did you mistake eleven for ten? Were you too late to dress? And did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing."

"Someone ought to write a novel about me, ”said Lebedeva loftily.“ I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar."

"In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust"

"What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry."

"It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo."

"...in a volume of dozen lines of Milton, Proper and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator and a chapter from the Sterne are eulogized by a thousand pens-there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and slighting the performance which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them."

"I am no novel reader – I seldom look into novels - Do not imagine that I often read novels - It is only very well for a novel."

"And what are you reading miss...? It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”"

"...A novel is a daily labor over a period of years. A novel is a job…But a story can be a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend."

"Punning on the typographical and literary meaning of the word “character” and exploiting the resemblance of the “word” with “world”, Moore has identified the purpose of transpositions like this which continue throughout the novel: I was inspired by the idea of anagram, which is the rearrangement of characters to make new worlds."

"I believed the novel to be a messy expression of that mysterious banality ‘the creative process’- not unlike life, I suppose."

"I didn't choose for my job to be a secret, Nasnet said. It's ironic, though. Society makes it so and then they try to oust you and ostracize you for the secret they have demanded and imposed in the first place."

"First we root our sensibility in the camp, and with each seed sown a bit of that fear is stripped off."

"It’s one thing to love a child, but it’s an entirely different thing for the same child to feel loved. A home is the last place a child should feel conditionally loved."

"I often think of how much love is lost as gay kids grow up. We are robbed of the chance to experience the innocence of early teenage love. Because you spend all that time filled with fear, mastering your own pretense."

"My mother died a virgin and so will I’, to which they reply, ‘You are the child of sin and your mother was stoned to death’"

"A strange face, neither human nor animal; a face that belonged not to a man, or to a father, or to an Imam’"

"Just before she dies, Bint Allah always asks her murderers polemical questions: ‘What crime can be the crime of a virgin never touched by the hand of a man?’"

"‘It was he that took me away from my misery. I saw him seated on his throne and fell in love with him immediately’"

"A few days had brought us nearer to one another. The sense of companionship had gotten the better of the old political differences as well as the deeply rooted aversion of two opposed temperaments, though occasionally the buried differences would drift up to the surface, reawakening an ugly antagonism""

"His body was foiund on the road to the Palma.'"

"Only Tolba believes it possible and suggests that the motive is a hidden love of Zohra"

"Miramar - Summary & Analysis"

"I said no more, but the flames of rage continued to burn inside me.....Why should we protect those who contributed to our own destruction?""

"A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil”"

"Those who followed Akhenaten to the end seemed to believe in conscience, they believed in God before and despite of His weak messenger"

"for Nefertiti, “beauty and brilliance combined,” who believes in his cause and does everything she can to stand by her husband"

"One can believe that Akhenaten was indeed a “mouse that fancied himself a lion”"

"“Life is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions”"

"Some see Akhenaten a betrayer of the people’s trust, an Oedipal adulterer, and his wife Nefertiti conniving, unloving, and disloyal"

"Sindbad then gave him a hundred sequins, and henceforward counted him among his friends; also he caused him to give up his profession as a porter, and to eat daily at his table that he might all his life remember Sindbad the Sailor.""

"Since I must die,' he said, 'before I choose the manner of my death, I conjure you on your honour to tell me if you really were in that vase?'""

"Spare me and Allah will spare thee; slay me not or Allah shall slay thee.”"

"It is true, Prince Ahmed, the princess my niece is obliged to your artificial apple for her cure, but let me ask you, whether you could have been so serviceable to her if you had not known by Prince Ali's tube the danger she was in, and if Prince Houssain's carpet had not brought you to her so soon?"

"Never bite the hand that feeds you.""

"Scheherazade possessed courage, wit, and penetration. She had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time. Besides this, she was a perfect beauty, and all her accomplishments were crowned by solid virtue.""

"Aladdin had won the hearts of the people by his gentle bearing. He was made captain of the Sultan's armies, and won several battles for him, but remained as courteous as before, and lived thus in peace and content for several years.""

"He told his son the secret of the cave, which his son handed down in his turn, so the children and grandchildren of Ali Baba were rich to the end of their lives.""

"So I conjure thee, by the honor of thine ancestors, make haste to kill me and do her justice upon me, as there is no living for me after her!""

"Rich and happy as I was after my third voyage, I could not make up my mind to stay at home altogether. My love of trading, and the pleasure I took in anything that was new and strange, made me set my affairs in order, and begin my journey through some of the Persian provinces.""

"place is so noisy I wonder how locals sleep. The bars, filled mainly with very young kids, are pumping out the latest hits at an ear-splitting level. Some are dancing on the terraces, their movements very suggestive of making love."

"I miss Douala! I feel as if I’ve left the country!"

"Since we left Douala, you’ve seen with your own eyes how beautiful the country is, how rich … but even so, people prefer to go, even if they have to die on the way."

"On either side of the asphalt road, the savannah stretches as far as the eye can see. In the distance, we glimpse a herd of thin cows with long horns."

"If someone had told me that that could happen in Cameroon, I’d never have believed it: perhaps because until then, my Cameroon had been limited to Douala."

"Pa had brought out our entire stock of beer. Simon, Roger and I had the job of serving. We ran to and fro between the kitchen, the living room and the porch. Our h-fi pumped out old Makossa hits: our parents’ favorites. A few women neighbors of their generation, also wearing kaba ngondos, had begun shimmying in the empty space at the center of the room. They looked like they were showing off: you can’t dance the Makossa without showing off."

"Most of all I want to say to him: "You know, my very own Roger Milla, I love you so-so much." Exactly that, spoken like that, calmy, clearly, in such a way that he won't doubt my sincerity. But I say nothing. It's not done, that kind of declaration between brothers. At least not like that."

"You are more than what they say you are, Sloane"

"They’d sooner destroy you for fear of what they do not understand”"

"“I am only half of what I really am. I cannot afford to be whole”"

"Make me normal. Make me whole. Make me like them. Make me worthy of life”"

"They feared us, feared our advanced weaponry, feared what we could do to their devilish practices and rituals, and so they tried to eliminate us”"

"They will destroy every last semblance of your humanity, and you cannot fight it, you cannot change it. Because from now on, they own you”"

"It births such a ravenous beast . . . that not even the risk of failure is enough to sate its cravings”"

"Treat something like a monster, and it will certainly learn to become a monster”"

"As long as you live and walk this earth, you must make a mark”"

"Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming.”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 1)"

"Learning the Queen’s English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had.”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 3)"

"Truly, this is the one thing that people from your country and people from my country agree on. They say, That refugee girl is not one of us. That girl does not belong. That girl is a halfling, a child of an unnatural mating, an unfamiliar face in the moon.”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 8)"

"That summer—the summer my husband died—we all had identities we were loath to let go of. My son had his Batman costume, I still used my husband’s surname, and Little Bee, though she was relatively safe with us, still clung to the name she had taken in a time of terror. We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refuges from ourselves."

"(Chapter Two)"

"In place of my finger is a stump, a phantom digit that used to be responsible for the E, D, and C keys on my laptop. I can’t rely on E, D, and C anymore. They go missing when I need them most. Pleased becomes please. Ecstasies becomes stasis."

"I stowed away in a great steel boat, but the horror stowed away inside me. When I left my homeland I thought I had escaped—but out on the open sea, I started to have nightmares. I was naïve to suppose I had left my country with nothing."

"(Chapter Three )"

"They told us we must be disciplined to overcome our fears. This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready."

"Yu nivver notice dey interview rooms didn’t have no windows? Me swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus kept her legs cross for da last ten years, de way he took me up on me offer. An it wasn’t jus on de one day, mind. It took de man four interviews fore he was certain me papers was in order.”"

"(Chapter Three)"

"How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing—a finger, perhaps, or a husband—is of absolutely no consequence at all."

"(Chapter Four)"

"So, I realized—life had finally broken through. How silly it looked now, my careful set of defenses against nature: my brazen magazine, my handsome husband, my Maginot line of motherhood and affairs. The world, the real world, had found a way through. It had sat down on my sofa and it would not be denied any longer."

"“I just think this is not our affair and so…”"

"Then I listened to my sister’s bones being broken one by one. That is how my sister died. […] When the men and the dogs were finished with my sister, the only parts of her that they threw into the sea were the parts that could not be eaten."

"(Chapter Five)"

"I think [Andrew] truly started to believe that Britain was sinking in to the sea. […] Now that Charlie was almost two I suppose I was looking into the future my child would have to inhabit, and realizing that bitching about it might possibly not be the most constructive strategy."

"(Chapter Six)"

"I’ve spent two years denying what happened on that beach. Ignoring it, letting it fester. That’s what Andrew did too, and it killed him in the end. I’m not going to let it kill me and Charlie"

"The gasoline flowing through the pump made a high-pitched sound, as if the screaming of my family was still dissolved in it. The nozzle of the gasoline hose went right inside the fuel tank of Sarah’s car, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden."

"(Chapter Seven)"

"I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing of the fax machines, and the fluid chatter of the editorial girls on their phones to fashion houses. It all seemed suddenly insane, like wearing a little green bikini to an African war."

"(Chapter Eight )"

"Save [Little Bee] and there’s a whole world of them behind her. A whole swarm of Little Bees, coming here to feed.”"

"The boy’s father had dark skin, darker even than my own, and the boy’s mother was a white woman. They were holding hands and smiling at their boy, whose skin was light brown. It was the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness. It was such a good color that tears came into my eyes."

"(Chapter nine)"

"I smiled and watched Charlie running away with the children , with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful […] and that is a word I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language"

"(Chapter Eleven)"

"You must know, my dear young lady, that in Lagos you may be a million publicity officers for the Americans; you may be earning a million pounds a day; you may have hundreds of servants: you may be living like an elite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen.”"

"Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why, then did they claim to be superior?"

"(Narrator, p. 53)"

"Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?"

"(Narrator, p. 166)"

"Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed."

"(Narrator, p. 141)"

"London, having killed Adah's congregational God, created instead a personal God who loomed large and really alive."

"(Narrator, p. 151)"

"They were going to get the room they were asking for. Pa Noble was too old for Sue."

"(Narrator, p. 93)"

"Hunger drove Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. Adah's hopes rose. This might save the marriage after all."

"(Narrator, p. 162)"

"This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband."

"(Narrator, p. 175)"

"Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school."

"(Narrator, p. 9)"

"So, sorry as she was for making a fool out of an old doctor, this was just one of the cases where honesty would not have been the best policy."

"(Narrator, p. 42)"

"She felt eight when she was being directed by her dream, for a younger child would not be capable of so many mischiefs. Thinking back on it all now that she was grown up, she was sorry for her parents. But it was their own fault; they should not have had her in the first place, and that would have saved a lot of people a lot of headaches.”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 7)"

"Not like those of their children who later got caught up in the entangled web of industrialisation. Adah’s Ma had no experience of having to keep up mortgage payments: she never knew what it was to have a family car, or worry about its innards; she had no worries about pollution, the population explosion or race. Was it surprising, therefore, that she was happy, being unaware of the so-called joys of civilisation and all its pitfalls?”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 15)"

"One might think on this evidence that Africans treated their children badly. But to Adah’s people and to Adah herself, this was not so at all; it was the custom. Children, especially girls, were taught to be very useful very early in life, and this had its advantages. For instance, Adah learned very early to be responsible for herself. Nobody was interested in her for her own sake, only in the money she would fetch, and the housework she could do and Adah, happy at being given this opportunity of survival, did not waste time thinking about its rights or wrongs. She had to survive.”"

"(Chapter 2, Page 19)"

"My name is really Marnus, but when Dad speaks to me he mostly says ‘my son’ or ‘my little bull’ and him and Mum also like calling me ‘my little piccanin.’”"

"I know that it’s one of the greatest commandments, never to take the name of the Lord in vain. It’s one of those sins where the punishment gets carried from one generation to the next. Even if you don’t take the name of the Lord in vain yourself, but your great grandfather did, you’ll still be punished for it.”"

"One year we didn’t even see a single [whale] and then Jan said it was because the bay doesn’t belong to nature anymore. He says the bay has been taken over by the factories.”"

"Because Chrisjan liked fishing, Mum knew immediately that he must have stolen our stuff. Mum says that's exactly the way the Coloureds are. You can never ever trust them. After all the years of supplying them with a job and a decent income, they simply turn around and stab you in the back."

"(Marnus, 19-20)"

"It's the most dreadful of dreadful disgraces if a woman gets raped."

"(Marnus, 45)"

"Pop music can cause you to become a drug addict. Before Lucifer was thrown out of Heaven, he was the angel of music, and so it's only logical that the communists will use pop music to take over the Republic."

"(Marnus, 67)"

"His back is turned in our direction. Across it, stretching from one shoulder right down to the other hip, we can see the scar, curled almost like a snake."

"(Marnus, 99)"

"Then Ilse says she thinks the story is about much more than just whaling."

"(Marnus, 150)"

"I smell the apple in his hand. It smells sour."

"(Marnus, 179)"

"I must have slept for a while, because when I come to, I remember that I've been dreaming. Only a vague memory remains. Me, with someone else, galloping down a dry river-bed on horseback. We're chasing something across the sand, but I don't know what. It feels as though we're laughing, and I can see his teeth against his dark skin. It seems strangely familiar, and I try to remember . . ."

"(Marnus, 63)"

"But then he's a Coloured!" Frikkie cries out. I thought he was as dark as anything."

"(Marnus, Frikkie, 166)"

"This is detente," Dad says. It's a soldier holding up a black arm with pink meat hanging out where it was cut from the body. I close my eyes, because I don't want to look at it."

"(Marnus, Dad, 172)"

"Battles and sex are the only free diversions in slum life. Couple them with drink, which costs money, and you have the three principal outlets for that escape complex which is for ever working in the tenement dweller’s subconscious mind."

"[P]erhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses — mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds — without knowing why — and had given her his hand."

"Islands of memory begin to rise above the river of his life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just peeping above the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched to gold by the sun."

"He was not a bad man, but a half-good man, which is perhaps worse—weak, without spring, without moral strength, but for the rest, in his own opinion, a good father, a good son, a good husband, a good man—and perhaps he was good, if to be so it is enough to possess an easy kindness, which is quickly touched, and that animal affection by which a man loves his kin as a part of himself. It cannot even be said that he was very egoistic; he had not personality enough for that. He was nothing. They are a terrible thing in life, these people who are nothing. Like a dead weight thrown into the air, they fall, and must fall; and in their fall they drag with them everything that they have."

"Everything is music for the born musician."

"His loyal and eager nature, brought for the first time to the test of love, gave itself utterly, and demanded a gift as utter without the reservation of one particle of the heart. He admitted no sharing in friendship. Being ready to sacrifice all for his friend, he thought it right and even necessary that his friend should wholly sacrifice himself and everything for him. But he was beginning to feel that the world was not built on the model of his own inflexible character, and that he was asking things which others could not give."

"When Christophe at last made up his mind to go to bed, chilled in body and soul, he heard the window below him shut. And, as he lay, he thought sadly that it is cruel for the poor to dwell on the past, for they have no right to have a past, like the rich: they have no home, no corner of the earth wherein to house their memories: their joys, their sorrows, all their days, are scattered in the wind."

"[D]id he then love God, or was it only the music, as an impudent priest said to him one day in jest, without thinking of the unhappiness which his quip might cause in him? Anybody else would not have paid any attention to it, and would not have changed his mode of living — (so many people put up with not knowing what they think!) But Christophe was cursed with an awkward need for sincerity, which filled him with scruples at every turn. And when scruples came to him they possessed him forever."

"Wrong or right, he would never again for anything in the world have recourse to a priest. He admitted that these men were his superiors in intelligence or by reason of their sacred calling; but in argument there is neither superiority, nor inferiority, nor title, nor age, nor name; nothing is of worth but truth, before which all men are equal."

"Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can. ... Als ich kann.""

"You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero! ... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it."

"I, too, shall wake again."

"There are some dead who are more alive than the living." "No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some who are more dead than the dead." "Maybe. In any case there are old things which are still young." "Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves. ... But I don't believe it. What has been good once never is good again."

"All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities"

"It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails."

"Stones are hard everywhere."

"The public will only stand genius in infinitesimal doses, sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature. ... A 'fashionable genius'! Doesn't that make you laugh? ... What waste of power!"

"The continual endeavor of man should be to lessen the sum of suffering and cruelty: that is the first duty of humanity."

"He could not think of the animals without shuddering in anguish. He looked into the eyes of the beasts and saw there a soul like his own, a soul which could not speak; but the eyes cried for it: "What have I done to you? Why do you hurt me?" He could not bear to see the most ordinary sights that he had seen hundreds of times—a calf crying in a wicker pen, with its big, protruding eyes, with their bluish whites and pink lids, and white lashes, its curly white tufts on its forehead, its purple snout, its knock-kneed legs:—a lamb being carried by a peasant with its four legs tied together, hanging head down, trying to hold its head up, moaning like a child, bleating and lolling its gray tongue:—fowls huddled together in a basket:—the distant squeals of a pig being bled to death:—a fish being cleaned on the kitchen-table. ... The nameless tortures which men inflict on such innocent creatures made his heart ache. Grant animals a ray of reason, imagine what a frightful nightmare the world is to them: a dream of cold-blooded men, blind and deaf, cutting their throats, slitting them open, gutting them, cutting them into pieces, cooking them alive, sometimes laughing at them and their contortions as they writhe in agony. Is there anything more atrocious among the cannibals of Africa? To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous.—And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that men may suffer."

"The slaughter accomplished by man is so small a thing of itself in the carnage of the universe! The animals devour each other. The peaceful plants, the silent trees, are ferocious beasts one to another. The serenity of the forests is only a commonplace of easy rhetoric for the literary men who only know Nature through their books! ... In the forest hard by, a few yards away from the house, there were frightful struggles always toward. The murderous beeches flung themselves upon the pines with their lovely pinkish stems, hemmed in their slenderness with antique columns, and stifled them. They rushed down upon the oaks and smashed them, and made themselves crutches of them. The beeches were like Briareus with his hundred arms, ten trees in one tree! They dealt death all about them. And when, failing foes, they came together, they became entangled, piercing, cleaving, twining round each other like antediluvian monsters. Lower down, in the forest, the acacias had left the outskirts and plunged into the thick of it and, attacked the pinewoods, strangling and tearing up the roots of their foes, poisoning them with their secretions. It was a struggle to the death in which the victors at once took possession of the room and the spoils of the vanquished. Then the smaller monsters would finish the work of the great. Fungi, growing between the roots, would suck at the sick tree, and gradually empty it of its vitality. Black ants would grind exceeding small the rotting wood. Millions of invisible insects were gnawing, boring, reducing to dust what had once been life. ... And the silence of the struggle! ... Oh! the peace of Nature, the tragic mask that covers the sorrowful and cruel face of Life!"

"Ce n'est pas la paix que je cherche, c'est la vie."

"Thou art come back to me, Thou art come back to me! O Thou, whom I had lost! ... Why didst Thou abandon me?" "To fulfil My task, that thou didst abandon." "What task?" "My fight." "What need hast Thou to fight? Art Thou not master of all?" "I am not the master." "Art Thou not All that Is?" "I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night. I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with Me."

"Thou art not alone, and thou dost not belong to thyself. Thou art one of My voices, thou art one of My arms. Speak and strike for Me. But if the arm be broken, or the voice be weary, then still I hold My ground: I fight with other voices, other arms than thine. Though thou art conquered, yet art thou of the army which is never vanquished. Remember that and thou wilt fight even unto death." "Lord, I have suffered much!" "Thinkest thou that I do not suffer also? For ages death has hunted Me and nothingness has lain in wait for Me. It is only by victory in the fight that I can make My way. The river of life is red with My blood." "Fighting, always fighting?" "We must always fight. God is a fighter, even He Himself. God is a conqueror. He is a devouring lion. Nothingness hems Him in and He hurls it down. And the rhythm of the fight is the supreme harmony. Such harmony is not for thy mortal ears. It is enough for thee to know that it exists. Do thy duty in peace and leave the rest to the Gods."

"Christophe returned to the Divine conflict. ... How his own fight, how all the conflicts of men were lost in that gigantic battle, wherein the suns rain down like flakes of snow tossing on the wind! ... He had laid bare his soul. And, just as in those dreams in which one hovers in space, he felt that he was soaring above himself, he saw himself from above, in the general plan of the world; and the meaning of his efforts — the price of his suffering, were revealed to him at a glance. His struggles were a part of the great fight of the worlds. His overthrow was a momentary episode, immediately repaired. Just as he fought for all, so all fought for him. They shared his trials, he shared their glory. "Companions, enemies, walk over me, crush me, let me feel the cannons which shall win victory pass over my body! I do not think of the iron which cuts deep into my flesh, I do not think of the foot that tramples down my head, I think of my Avenger, the Master, the Leader of the countless army. My blood shall cement the victory of the future. ...""

"God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole! Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries war into the eternal peace. The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls, and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song."

"Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of to-morrow."

"Je sais enfin ce qui distingue l'homme de la bête: ce sont les ennuis d'argent."

"Tout homme qui est un vrai homme doit apprendre à rester seul au milieu de tous, à penser seul pour tous- et au besoin contre tous."