“I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?”

— Roger Zelazny , Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 187)

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Roger Zelazny 112

American speculative fiction writer 1937–1995

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“Then I started to think in Lipp's about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d'Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assignment to Rhineland and the Ruhr. It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 8

“They can boo and hoot me all they want. That doesn't matter to me. But when a fan calls insulting names from the grandstand and becomes abusive I don't intend to stand for it. This fellow today, whoever he was, called me a low-down bum and other names that got me mad, and when I went after him he ran. Furthermore, I didn't throw any dust in Hildebrand's face. It didn't go into his face, only on his sleeve. I don't know what they will do to me for this. Maybe I'll be fined or suspended for kicking on the decision, but I don't see why I should get any punishment at all. I would go into the stands again if I had to.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

On his temper flaring on May 25, 1922, when he threw dirt at an umpire and chased after a heckler in the stands, as quoted in "Ruth in Row With Umpire and Fan at Polo Grounds" in The New York Times (May 26, 1922), reprinted in Sultans of Swat: The Four Great Sluggers of the New York Yankees (2006) by The New York Times, p. 35 https://books.google.com/books?id=rvsETfrxDacC&pg=PA35

“Fairy tales had been her first experience of the magical universe, and more than once she had wondered why people ended up distancing themselves from that world, knowing the immense joy that childhood had brought to their lives.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“I wish I could be near you to hold your hand and explain in some detail the reasons for my death. I know at this point that it has fallen upon you in a way that I wish would not have happened. I wanted to explain to you the night before I left New York that I was really going to Spain, and the reasons why. But I knew that no matter what I might have told you, it would never have made sense to you. I found that trying to explain was an impossibility. I am sorry for that.”

Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran) (1910–1995) American labor activist

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

“I don’t know the why of anything, even when I pretend most diligently I do. The truth is the last time I had any idea why or what I was supposed to do I was lying in a shell hole, looking up at the sky. My mind was filled with a Bach keyboard sonata, which was one of the last I’d learned, I forget which one now. I absolutely knew I was about to die and I was completely happy and at peace, in a way I never was before or since, not even with you, in our best moments. It was so easy, you see, a kind of absolute joy and peace, because I knew it was all done and I was all square with life. Nothing left to do but let things take their course. And when I didn’t die, I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’ll take my revolver, go out and blow a hole through my head. Only I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew, I just knew you couldn’t do it that way. You couldn’t make it happen, not if you wanted to find peace. So, I thought, then, a sniper can do it for me. But no matter how I tried to let them no sniper ever found me. And all the other times I went out and lay in shell holes in No Man’s Land it wasn’t the same, and I knew I wouldn’t die this time, and of course I never did. I had this mad feeling I’d become some sort of Wandering Jew. And everything for so long afterwards was about dragging this living corpse of myself around, giving it things to do, because here it was, alive. And nothing made any sense and I didn’t even hope it would. I followed paths that were there to be followed, I did what others said to do.”

Basil Rathbone (1892–1967) British actor

Letter https://thegreatbaz.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/fuller-text-of-letter-quoted-in-a-life-divided/

“I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway. Why would they believe me about something so unlikely?”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Chapter 3 (p. 37)

“[After the 1990 bus accident] I could not feel my legs, and I knew that I was paralysed. For me, this was a premonition of my worst fate proved right. When I was a child, I always ran up the stairs two at a time, and when I reached the top I would say to myself, one day I won't be able to do this because like my father I will lose the use of my body. Now I knew it had happened. For months afterwards I was locked back in myself, just as I had been when I was a child. But also part of my premonition had always been, strangely, that I would lose my body but in the end it would be all right.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

cubanet.org (May 15, 2000}
2007, 2008

“She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overboard and lighten ship withal.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. I

“My own story is like a fairy tale nobody would believe because it's exactly what you expect but it never happened.”

François-Eudes Chanfrault (1974–2016) Composer and musician

Twitchfilm.com interview (September 10, 2008)

“Clair, the moment I met you
I swear, I felt as if something somewhere
had happened to me
which I couldn't see
And then, the moment I met you again,
I knew in my heart that we were friends,
it had to be so
it couldn't be no
But try as hard as I might do, I don't know why
you get to me in a way I can't describe.
Words mean so little when you look up and smile.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Clair" (song)
(+ Live performance in Japan, 1993. On YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpdBX-u1dv8
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Clair" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmeZaAry830 (song on YouTube.))

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Roger Zelazny 112

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