L'evidenziatore

Da Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker:

"One of those here-today-gone-tomorrow freak cults you get in the City says that the way to virtue is loving your enemies. I have no problem with that. My enemies have always come through for me, and I owe them everything. My friends, on the other hand, have caused me nothing but aggrevation and pain."

"You know your problem? You are so full of resentment it oozes out of you, like a cow that hasn't been milked. You put people's back up, and then they'd rather die than do what you tell them, even though it's the right and sensible thing."

"You remember the old parable about the holy prophet who got thrown into the lions' den. I feel like a lone lion in a den of prophets."

"That's how the word changes. It's either so quick that we never know what it us, or so gradual that we don't notice. It's only later, when books are written and scholars decide what matters and what didn't, that red lines are drawn - before this point, the world was this way, after this point, everything was different. You could be there and not have a clue. You could be asleep, or looking the other way, having a quiet shit or screwing in an alley, and an unseen pen draws a line. Here the Empire ended. Here the Dark Ages began."

"I am not a court of law. I am not bound to do wath's just, or what's right, or what's in the interests of the human race. If I was, you'd be warming your hands by a nice big fire right now. But I'am not. And I reserve the right to be wrong, if I choose to be."

"Winning is winning. Cheating is just one of many ways of prevailing; just happens to be the way I'm best at."

"By being loved, you're under an obligation. You've undertaken to still be there, tomorrow and the next day. Wheng things get to the point where it's just plain stupid to carry on, you can't simply drink hemlock or open a vein. You're stuck. The ship's sailed away without you on it."

"I fell in love for the first time at the age of thirty-four. I's like other childhood ailments. If you catch it when you are a kid, it doesn't do much harm, and then you're basically immune. But if you get it when you're grown up, it can be very serious indeed."

"There's some freak cult somewhere that believes that the king of the gods sent his eldest son down to earth to die for the sins of the people; they arrested him and strung him up and stretched his neck for him, and he died; and on the third day he rose again from the dead, and that was supposed to prove something though I'm not sure what. The hell with that. The eldest son knew perfectly well that he'd rise again, unlike his temporarily fellow mortals, so it really didn't matter, just a brief inconvenience. I assume that's why the cult never caught on, because any fool can see the gaping hole in the logic."




marco

Citazione:E io odio la speranza, perché è il trampolino della delusione, e io odio la delusione perché è il trampolino dell'"avrei dovuto saperlo". 

Alice Basso, Un caso speciale per la ghostwriter

Da Alice Basso, Un caso speciale per la ghostwriter:

"La cosa peggiore del tenere alle persone non è stare male a causa loro; è quando loro stanno male a causa tua."

"È la legge delle relazioni umane, Vani. Come dicevamo prima, parlando dell'equivoco con Lara e Randi: 'Chi fa, sbaglia'. Se ti metti in gioco, se entri a far parte di relazioni, legami, interazioni con altri esseri umani, c'è un margine di rischio di far male e farsi male. C'è e basta. È normale, è parte del quadro; succede a tutti, di continuo. Ma almeno significa che ci stai provando, che sei in pista."

"La cosa divertente del toccare il fondo è che la vita va avanti. Tu prendi residenza sulle assi melmose del barile e c'è chi dice che è fantastico, che non è un problema, è un'opportunità!, perché quando tocchi il fondo non puoi che risalire, e tutte quelle puttanate lì. La verità è che il fondo del barile te lo puoi arredare, ti ci puoi appendere i tuoi quadri - di solito fotogrammi che ti ricordano di continuo i tuoi motivi di disgusto verso te stesso - e puoi, anzi devi, continuare a vivere la tua vita da lì. Non puoi fare alttro."



Da That Sense of Wonder, Francesco Dimitri:

"We should be suspicious of common sense. We want all our senses to be extraordinary."

"The thing we call 'identity' is a storybook, a selection of tales we tell ourselves, which have very practical consequences."

"A lot of unsatisfactory sex happens when we do with our partners things that look good, rather than things that feel good. In our minds, we are continuously watching the film of our life, to the point that we forget to enjoy starring in it."



marco

Da The Things We Do for Love di KJ Parker:

"Love is in fact the worst thing, the very worst thing, because it can hurt us more than anything else; more than fire or a broken arm or childbirth. Love is worse than death, because it carries on hurting the living. Love is the worst thing at all, because we always lose the people we love, and it hurts so much."

"Love is something that has to be worked out cold, like sheet metal, beaten and persuaded into an acceptable shape by countless pecks of the hammer. It's not bar stock, to be made white-hot in the fire, until it bends, flows, upsets, takes a perfect form, even picks up the marks of the hammer-head. It's too thin for that, too flimsy and slight to heat red without burning. Or take the other obvious analogy. Wars start in furious, passionate anger, but peace is made to give away things it wants to keep, to do things it doesn't want to do, the objective being to reach an arrangement of which both parties can eventually, reluctantly, say: I can live with that."

"Maybe that's what love really is, the anticipation of loss."


Da A Little Hatred di Joe Abercrombie:

"Guilt is a luxury reserved for those still breathing and with no unbearable pain, cold or hunger demanding all their fickle attention."

"Honest women have the law to protect them. Bandits must take more care with their earnings."

"The dead fight for no one."

"Honestly, every generation seems to think coupling is some grand new invention never thought of before."

"Once you call it a war, folk tend to get overexcited."

"Winning made people friendly. Winning too much made them nervous."

"A certain number of bitter enemies are an essential accessory for a lady of fashion."

"We all yearn for a simple world, but people are imperfect, unpredictable, contradictory beasts with sympathies, and needs, and feelings."

"One cannot eliminate unhappiness any more than one can eliminate darkness. The goal of government is to load the unhappiness onto those least able to make you suffer for it."

"A cynic may observe that the scriptures can be used to support both sides of every argument."

"Nothing like being wanted, is there? Wanted by someone you want. Always seems like magic, that something can feel so good but cost nothing."

"Law alone, without enforcement, is just breath."

"Rikke had never been able to understand why you'd care a shit who someone you'd never even met lay with. How few problems do you need to have before you count that among 'em?"

"Pain only makes you sorry for yourself."

"A coward's just a man with the proper respect for sharp metal."

" 'A battle's no place for a warrior.'
'What the fuck?'
'No room to swing. More man killed by bad luck than good sword-work. It's all just shove and grunt, at the mercy of choices made miles away and hours before by men you'll never meet.' "

"You can hate things about a person and still love 'em."

"If you build a boat from cheese, d'you see, you can't wail at the heavens when it sinks, for cheese is known to be a poor material for boat-building."

"Vengeance is just an empty chest you choose to carry. One you have to go bent under the weight of all your days."

"Smile all the time and you'll make them sick, like a cook serving nothing but meringue. Make your smile a rare treat, you'll leave them desperate to taste another."

"Perhaps comfortable is the last thing a romance should be. Perhaps it should have an edge."

"That's kings for you. The shit ideas are always someone's else."


Da The Orphans of Raspay di Lois McMaster Bujold:

"Just once he'd like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one."

"Fear is easy. Joy is hard."

"The gods take almost all who do not refuse them, slave or free. I'm not sure they see a difference between one for of human misery and another."



marco

(Wow Umbra, quante belle citazioni dall'ultimo libro di Abercrombie! Adesso sono ancora più curiosa di leggerlo. Grazie)


"Bisognerebbe sempre fare attenzione alle parole che usiamo, ci tradiscono"

Da Un certo Paul Darrigrand di Philippe Besson

"E leggere, è un genere d'amore inossidabile, dura per sempre."

"Qualcuno dovrebbe aggiungere una postilla alla teoria della relatività di Einstein. Anche i libri che amiamo, annullano il tempo e lo spazio."

"...ma l'amore è fatto di tante cose e nessuna logica."

"- Ti amo? Mio dio, se il tuo amore fosse un granello di sabbia, il mio sarebbe un universo di spiagge."

Da La principessa sposa di William Goldman

"Jared non cambiava il mondo per lei, ma le offriva l'opportunità di vederlo sotto una luce diversa. Era lei a scegliere di coglierla."

Da Unmade di Sarah Rees Brennan

"A volte l'artista ha il privilegio si sapere cose del proprio soggetto che lo stesso soggetto ignora."

"...Desidero dipingere ciò che sento, e sentire ciò che dipingo." 

"I quadri di Vincent sono bellissimi. Vincent vive il colore, lo dona alla tela, al mondo; ha catturato il sole, ha impartito al mondo una benedizione di colori. I suoi dipinti sono prodigiosi impasti di pigmenti: giallo cromo, blu di Prussia, vermiglio, carminio, verde cinabro molto leggero, verde smeraldo, verde veronese, arancio, giallo cromo limone, lacca geranio, bianco argento, bianco di zinco..."

"Morire è difficile, ma vivere è più difficile ancora." (Vincent Van Gogh)

Da Vincent e Theo di Deborah Heiligman

Da Heaven Thunders the Truth, KJ Parker:

"Death is nothing, it isn't important. It only matters because the people who are left behind, the people who love the person who dies, are vey unhappy."

"That's the most wonderful thing, love without loss; because love should be the best thing in the world, but because you lose the people you love, love is the worst thing, it hurts more than anything else, it's an enemy to be avoided at all costs unless you want to spend most of your life in pain."

Da Rules, KJ Parker:

"Contrary to common misconception, courage is only a virtue when displayed by the virtuous. A brave sinner is worse than a cowardly one, because he dares more."

" - I believe in the gods, but I don't agree with them. We have fundamental differences on a number of key issues. I don't like the way the world is run, I don't like the way things work, and I really don't want to spend the eternity cooped up in a confined space with a pack of idiots I disagree with about everything that matters. -
...
- You don't want to go to heaven because you disagree with the gods? -
- That's right. -
- You can't. They're the gods. -
- So? They have their opinions, I have mine. They may be much bigger than me, but that doesn't mean they are right. - "




marco

"I think that if you love someone, you don't get to choose how they love you back."

N. K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

Da un po' non aggiorno e voglio recuperare. Per me se non per altri.

Da The Summer That Melted Everything di Tiffany McDaniel:

"You know where the name hell come from. After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating, this, I started to shorten it to He'll forgive me. Then finally to one word. He'll. He'll. Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it's only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophe and, therefore, no hope."

"As I dangled there in the sky from His hand, I knew. He didn't want to let me go. But I also knew that if He did not let go, He would be ruined by holding onto me. So in that choice, I let go of Him. I had to, for His sake. I had to fall as the Devil, so He could stay the God."

"People always ask, why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we'll do. He's stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering's biggest spectator."

"Melancholy is the woman with ribs like nails and lies like hammers."

"As we walked home, I knew from far away that the trees would've looked nice, the grass would've looked green, and we would've looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwestern love and Bible Belt morals.

But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge on tears with the belt of those morals tightened around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity."

"Faggot.
What did I say in that one word of six letters, sometimes only three? I suppose I said, I don't want you to be gay. I don't want you to be happy, and no, it isn't fine that you want to be with a man. Faggot. Isn't that what that one word is supposed to mean? Faggot? One word that said I was scared. That I didn't understand. That no one ever sat us down and patted our heads and said sometimes a man loves another man and they make something nice together."

"Kids are never afraid of bein' hated for somethin', 'cause they're still kids and easily forgiven. But men, they're not so easily forgiven and live in fear of bein' hated."

"The way to eternal glory is one long, narrow passage. Maybe that's why it's hard to get there. Our sins widen us until the narrow way is something we can never go through. We have no choice but to languish in the boiling of what's left."

"The bowl when intact was one shadow. One single shadow. Now each piece will have a shadow of its own. My God, so many shadows have been made. Small little slivers of darkness that seem at once to be larger than the bowl ever was. That's the problem of broken things. The light dies in small ways, and the shadows -- well, they always win big in the end."

"Love leads to cannibalism. I know that now. Sooner or later, our hearts will devour, if not the object of our affections, our very selves. Teeth are the heart's miracle. That a mouth should burst forth on that organ without throat and crave another's flesh, another's heart, is nothing short of a miracle.
To fall in love is our species' best adventure, and when love, in its burgeoning industry, coils sweetly around our soul, we surrender to the heart's fang and we pray -- yes, we pray -- to the infinite span that all love has its fair chance, its own share of miracles. And yet the miracles seem pushed to the side when the lovers are young, as if in their youth, there seems to be an almost certain prophecy to be had.
Maybe the misfortune of young love is just that Romeo and Juliet fragments Shakespeare has left us with, or maybe it really is the voyages of fate that youth and love should burn on contact. What is it the Greek chorus sings? Something like, Young lovers are tragedy's excuse."

"Madness. The compassing violin when in our head, the directionless chaos when out of it. Isn't that what madness is, after all? Clarity to the beholder, insanity to the witnessing world."

"It's hard not to fall in love with the only blanket in winter."

"Heaven was no bigger than a queen-sized bed during those days. Blankets kicked off, pillows even. Just a white sheeted square and us. Chests were pillows. Arms and legs were blankets. Waist deep in each other. A heaven of mounting gasps and sides rising and falling in the same deep breaths, breaths grassy enough to walk on from here to Elysian Fields, where paradise is set in motion by the almost too beautiful connection of one man on another."

"Fear is ignorance's first shadow."

"I said to him when you hold the knife, you have to ask yourself will more light come from this dark? And if the answer is yes, then by all means cut away. If through your death, you can walk someone home, then do it -- but if by your death, they lose a home, then think again."

"The thing about light is it all looks the same when you're in the dark, so you can't tell if what powers that light is good or if it is bad, because the light blinds you to the source of its power. All you know is that it saves you from the darkness."



marco

"Per chi ascolta il canto dei lupi, udite bene: il vostro branco ulula per riportarvi a casa."

Da Ravensong di TK Klune