Quotes about hole
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“It's just that… I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Life, Way, Thinking, Universe

“You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

People, Reality

“Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

World

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Waiting

“Sebastian lay a few feet away from her, on his back. There was a great blackened hole across the front of his chest. He turned his head toward her, his face taut and white with pain, and her heart contracted.
His eyes were green.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Pain, Heart

“(Sookie's Thoughts on Debbie Pelt) she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and—oh—tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

Stupidity

“All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Life

“When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you
have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Variant: when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Source: House Rules

Feeling

“In theory, when yoou're done with training, you should be able ot kick a hole in a wall or eknock out a moose with a single punch."

"I would never hit a moose," said Clary. "They're endangered.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Variant: And second, keep in mind that you are a weapon. In theory, when you're done with training, you should be able to kick a hole in a wall or knock out a moose with a single punch."
"I would never hit a moose," said Clary. "They're endangered.
Source: City of Fallen Angels

Training

“He’s not your typical prince, more like a square peg in a round hole, kind of like me. He’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t mind reading side by side on a date.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Guy, Reading

“[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes (2007)

Sad, Depressing, Hurtful, Heart

“Where did you get that?" Jace looked down and saw that the spider demon's poison had eaten a hole in his shirt, leaving a good deal of his left shoulder bare.
"The shirt? At Macy's Winter sale.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Winter

“I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over."
I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?"
That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.”

Charlaine Harris book Definitely Dead

Source: Definitely Dead

Pain, Hope, Heart

“When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Variant: If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

“From Santi's earthly tomb with demon's hole,
'Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold.
The path of light is laid, the sacred test,
Let angels guide you on your lofty quest.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Angels, Light

“The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, People, Star, Time

“When somebody walks out, it leaves a hole in you. Some people fill it up, the good and the bad, and get on that way. Some people leave it open, maybe long enough to heal, maybe too long, picking at it now and then so it doesn't heal all the way.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Chasing Fire

People, Way

“What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

“For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Cheating, Box

“You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.”

“I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground… And so are you. So are we all.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace

Men, Sadness

“He thought about all the holes in him, the blank places, the voids where others felt things. When it came down to it, he was really just a screen, more empty than solid, his emotions blowing through him, only angry catching and holding.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

Lovers, Kiss

“To the wise, a prick on the finger avoids a hole in the heart.”

Donita K. Paul (1950) American writer

Heart

“Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Cery: So, Hem, tell me why I shouldn't see how many holes I need to make before you start leaking money?”

Trudi Canavan book The High Lord

Source: The High Lord

Money

“Careful, Mr. Spiro, guns are dangerous. Especially the end with the hole.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Eternity Code

“That’s the way it is with dreams. They scratch at your door. You see them through the peep hole: a stray dream looking for a home. You think it might go away if you ignore it. Wrong. It’s still there when you open the door, smiling. Wagging its tail.”

Monique Duval (1924–2014) Canadian journalist

Smile, Dreams, Way, Home

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“What's a flange?" asked Marcia.
A what?"
A flange. It says here attatch piece Y to the long, upright D, taking care to align holes P and Q with the corrosponding holes N and O in the left-hand flange. I can't see a wrethed flange anywhere.”

Angie Sage book Flyte

Source: Flyte

“it's colder than hell (yes) but
the blankets are thin,
and the pulled-down shades
are as full of holes as love is.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Love, Hell

“The Theory of Evolution has more holes in it than a dam made out of Swiss cheese.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

“Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."

I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Past

“I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

Time

“You never realize the holes a person leaves behind until you fall into them.”

Neal Shusterman book The Dark Side of Nowhere

Source: The Dark Side of Nowhere

Personality

“I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Dead

“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.”

Brian Evenson book Fugue State

Source: Fugue State

“You know someone for a while and then one day a hole opens underneath them, and they fall out of your world.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: 20th Century Ghosts

World

“A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 13

“Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?”

Richard Brautigan book An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey

Page 15
An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey

Perfection

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”

Guy Sajer book The Forgotten Soldier

Source: The Forgotten Soldier

Death, People, Reality, Sleep

“Morfran thrust his axe straight up. He pretty much seemed to have one sign for everything: poke a hole in the sky.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“SITTING TIGHT? Holing up? Waiting for answers?
Those are things I'm not good at.
Planning a massive attack against mechanical geeky-like things when i was already furious and itching to kill something?
Piece o'cake”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

Waiting

“I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Thinking

“Paintings are seldom guilty and often framed for crimes they did not commit. Some cover holes-holes in walls, holes in lives. Some make holes-in wallets, holes in hearts… in negative space.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Heart, Painting

“There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street

People, Idea

“Your master plan has holes big enough to drive a truck through.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

People, Thinking, Reality

“I was cold, hungry, and in a hole in the ground. But at least I had my elven porn, damnit!”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

“From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Revenge

“I've never understood why people run to get out of the rain in the summertime… People will drive miles and miles to go jump in a cool swimming hole, but when it rains, they scatter.”

Silas House (1971) American writer

Source: Eli the Good

People

“But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Problem

“The first rule of holes: When you're in one stop digging.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

“This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Star

“So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

Love, Life, Loss

“Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can't grab onto.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: Girl With Curious Hair

Love, Men, Hope

“Succotash my cocker spaniel, you fudging crevasse-hole dipshiitake!”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Life is short,
and pleasures few,
and holed the ship,
and drowned the crew,
But O! But O!
How very blue
the sea is!”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Abarat, Book One

Life, Pleasure, Sea

“Oh -- who's the Queen?"

"Her, of course. The White Queen. You're just like Alice, you know. Down the rabbit hole with the Mad Hatter.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

Madness

“It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy

Life, World, Christmas

“We are crayons and lunchboxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Feeling, Thinking, Time

“We get used to living one way, even if it's a bad way or a hard one. When that's gone, there's a hole to fill. It's in our nature to try to fill it with anxieties and fears. It can take time to fill it with good things instead.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Fear, Way, Nature, Time

“That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 71

Secret, Happiness

“Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us."
If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.”

Dean Koontz book The Taking

Source: The Taking

“Should I get you a shovel, so you can dig that hole deeper?”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

“It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

“Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, People, Hope, Thinking

“We had and incident. I took care of it."
"Really." Jace's voice dripped sarcasm. "Do you even know how to use that knife, Clarissa? Without poking a hole in yourself or any innocent bystanders?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Learning, Loss

“Hole…" He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole…" And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnDivided

Smile

“So what really happened to you? (Astrid)
Nothing. (Zarek)
Well, I hope I never come across Nothing then if it’s capable of putting a hole in my back. (Astrid)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Hope

“anymore time in that black hole and ill go insane.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Intertwined

Time

“This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Heart

“But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.”

Cressida Cowell book How to Speak Dragonese

Source: How to Speak Dragonese

“There is a serious discrepancy between what we really wants, and what we usually do to get what we think we want. What we really want is to fill the hole inside and become complete, and what we do is look for success and growth outside.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

Thinking, Success

“Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Game

“They don't know my head's full of me
And that I have my own special thing,
And there's no hole in my head.
Too bad.”

Malvina Reynolds (1900–1978) American folk singer

Song No Hole In My Head

“The little hen poked her head up from the hole she had dug and looked at the crowing rooster. She thoughtfully looked from the rooster in the window sill to the high row of nests that rose against the end wall of the hen house. She started to dig again, but then she hurried through the loose straw to the nests. The time had come to lay an egg.”

Meindert DeJong book Along Came a Dog

Along Came a Dog (1958)

Time, Housing

“I tell you what, if any of you survive here, I promise you this: As sure as I have a hole in my bloody arse, when it gets down to the two of you, all these people who are saying nice things about you at the moment, will not! So start thinking about yourself!”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 2

People, Thinking

“The BEH mechanism operates within the context of gauge theories. Despite the fact that grand unification schemes reach scales comparable to the Planck scale, there was, a priori, no indication that Yang-Mills fields offer any insight into quantum gravity. The only approach to quantum gravity that had some success, in particular in the context of a quantum interpretation of the black hole entropies, are the superstring theory approaches and the possible merging of the five perturbative approaches (Type IIA, IIB, Type I and the two heterotic strings) into an elusive M-theory whose classical limit would be 11-dimensional supergravity.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

page 19 of [2002, A brief course in spontaneous symmetry breaking ii. modern times: The BEH mechanism, arXiv preprint hep-th/0203097, https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0203097.pdf]

Gauge, Success

“Well I love her;
But I love to fish.
I spend all day out on this lake
And hell is all I catch.
Today she met me at the door
Said I would have to choose.
If I hit that fishin' hole today,
She'd be packin' all her things,
And she'd be gone by noon.Well, I'm gonna miss her
When I get home.
But right now I'm on this lake shore
And I'm sittin' in the sun.
I'm sure it'll hit me
When I walk through that door tonight
That I'm gonna miss her.
Oh, lookie there, I've got a bite.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song), written by Brad Paisley and Frank Rogers
Song lyrics, Part II (2001)

Love, Home, Hell, Fish

“Black holes are not rare, and they are not an accidental embellishment of our Universe. They are a fundamental driving force of its evolution. They are a dominant source of energy. For every ounce of matter consumed, they yield more than ten times as much energy as the nuclear reactions of fusion and fission that cause our sun to shine and our hydrogen bombs to explode.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Universe, Time, Sun

“Give a beggar a dime and he'll bless you. Give him a dollar and he'll curse you for withholding the rest of your fortune. Poverty is a bag with a hole at the bottom.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

Red Ribbon on a White Horse, ch. 9 (1950)

“Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Don't Point That Thing At Me (1972), Ch. 3.

People, Understanding, Housing

“All the absurdity and hope are the stimulants to create. You make art to find a little hole to go on. You go through the whole to find the world again, and the absurdity is that still, somehow it is the same... Hopelessness and hope are the same. It's a very thin line you don't see any more. I don't believe in that line between hopelessness and hope today.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

in 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

World, Hope, Art

“Herc really slipped up. With the monostrous power he had he couldn't mix too well. He was playing little breaks but it would sound so sloppy. I noticed that the mixer he was using was a GLI 3800. It was a very popular mixer at that time. It's a scarcity today but it's still one of the best mixers GLI ever made. At the time he wasn't using no cueing. In other words, the hole was there for a headphone to go in but I remember he never had headphones over his ears. All of a sudden, Herc had headphones but I guess he was so used to dropping the needle down by eyesight and trying to mix it that from the audio part of it he couldn't get into it too well.”

Grandmaster Flash (1958) musician

Quoted in Rap Attack 2 (1991) by David Toop, p. 62

Time, Parting

“The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy—a process that reached its peak during the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

People, Time, Wealth

“For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade. You know, it's like one of those deep diamond mined holes in South Africa, you know, they're about a mile underground. He'd have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium, let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

ABC Radio interview, March 5, 2007.

“Surely, Shakespeare is wicked and the map a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Love, Children, Time, Sun

“I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

News summaries (31 December 1963).

“A four wood I hit on the 13th hole at Bel Air Country Club in June of 1945. It landed right on the green and rolled into the cup for a hole in one.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Fred Astaire on his proudest achievement in Lewis, Jerry D. "Interview : Fred Astaire." Glendale Federal Magazine, Summer 1982, pp. 8-10. (M).

Country

“If you are going to build the Empire State Building, the first thing you need to do is dig a deep hole and pour a strong foundation. If you are going to build a home in the suburbs, all you need to do is pour a 6-inch slab of concrete. Most people, in their drive to get rich, are trying to build an Empire State Building on a 6-inch slab.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

People, Home, Strong

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 385 et seq.

Home, Grass

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life, People, Books, Age

“One day, through my prayers, an overwhelming amount of love started flowing into me, filling up the dark hole that threatened to consume me. I suddenly realized that what I was feeling was the love of the Earth, the love of Creation. Every day we, as a species, do so much to destroy Creation's ability to give us life. But that Creation continues to do everything in its power to give us life anyway. And that's true love.”

Julia Butterfly Hill book The Legacy of Luna

Source: The Legacy of Luna (2000), Ch. 5

Love, Life, Feeling

“She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

“States should practice multilateralism and abandon unilateral actions that adversely affect a democratic and equitable international order, refraining from the threat or use of force. They should apply international law uniformly, abandon overreliance on “positivism” and efforts to circumvent treaty obligations or invent loopholes. As “nature abhors a vacuum” (Spinoza, Ethics), human rights law abhors “legal black holes””

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. <br class="br">2013

Law, Nature, Effort

“Revenge is good. I think revenge is healthy too, and if you can use music in that way, a sort of therapeutic way for yourself, it can't do any harm. So if King (For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime) is angry in any way, it's angry in a random, chaotic, healthy way. Like the guy who goes into a building, shoots a bunch of holes in the wall and then leaves. He didn't kill anybody.”

Mike Patton (1968) American singer

"Faith No More" - (CMJ New Music Monthly, April 1995)

Fools, Music, Way, Guy

Quotes about hole page 2

Quotes about hole
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