Quotes about sort
page 4

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Death, World, Fear, Making love

“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2H_4_0002 <br class="br">Christian Science (1907)

Bad luck, Family, Art, Cars

“I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood. When I look for my diametric opposite, an immeasurably shabby instinct, I always think of my mother and sister, — it would blaspheme my divinity to think I am related to this sort of canaille.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

The way my mother and sister treat me to this very day is a source of unspeakable horror; a real time bomb is at work here, which can tell with unerring certainty the exact moment I can be hurt — in my highest moments, … because at that point I do not have the strength to resist poison worms …
"Why I Am So Wise", 3, as translated in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings (2005) edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, p. 77
Ecce Homo (1888)

Bad luck, Thinking, Sister, Relation ships

“Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn (1939) New York: Grove Press, 1961, p. 313

Thinking, Dead

“…as you'll know, the word 'fuck' sort of is used quite a lot in my house. Now, that's not to say, I think to say 'fuck this' or 'fuck you' a lot more, so it should be entered into the English language, because it has a lot more impact when you say, 'I fucking hate this thing.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

MTV.com, 2002

Hate, Thinking, Housing

“About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

God, War, Time, Parting

“It takes all sorts”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

to make a world
de todos ha de haber en el mundo (literally, “There must be of all [types] in the world”)
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 6 / El ingenioso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha, Capítulo VI

“What the exploiter needs is that the will and intelligence of the victim be disengaged from the projects of resistance and escape but that they not be simply broken or destroyed. Ideally, the dis-integration and mis-integration of the victim should accomplish the detachment of the victim's will and intelligence from the victim’s own interests and their attachment to the interests of the exploiter. This will effect a displacement or dissolution of self-respect and will undermine the victim’s intolerance of coercion. With that, the situation transcends the initial paradigmatic form or structure of coercion; for if people don’t mind doing what you want them to do, then, in a sense, you can’t really be making them do it. In the limiting case, the victim’s will and intelligence are wholly transferred to a full engagement in the pursuit of the dominating person’s interests. The “problem” had been that there were two parties with divergent interests; this sort of solution (which is very elegant, as that word is used in logic) is to erase the conflict by reducing the number of interested parties to one. This radical solution can properly be called “enslavement.””

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60

People, Making love, Intelligence, Problem

“I never know when I start out. You know, I sort of know what the ending is. I know where the characters always end up, and I usually have an image of the last page before I start. I'm a big outliner. But you can't know everything and you have to be open to discovery…”

Colson Whitehead (1969) novelist

On how envisioning an ending allows him to conclude each character’s journey in “Extended interview: Colson Whitehead on writing ‘The Nickel Boys’" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/extended-interview-colson-whitehead-on-writing-the-nickel-boys/ in CBS News (2019 Jul 14)

“[P]leasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 10: Of Motives

Pain, Pleasure, Evil

“The multi-dimensional aspects of water are amazing. Water contains within itself the knowing or the memory of anything it comes into contact with. This means it carries the knowing and the memory of a place and the happenings there, going back sometimes thousands of years. It is full of information… Sort of like a mirror that keeps the reflection of anything it has ever encountered.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

Water, Memory

“However many things we may have done, we are yet to a certain degree fresh for that which we are going to begin. Who, on the contrary, would not be stupified if he were to listen to the same teacher of any art, whatever it might be, through the whole day? But by change a person will be recruited, as is the case with respect to food, by varieties of which the stomach is re-invigorated and is fed with several sorts less unsatisfactorily than with one.”

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Quamlibet multa egerimus, quodam tamen modo recentes sumus ad id quod incipimus. quis non obtundi potest, si per totum diem cuiuscunque artis unum magistrum ferat? mutatione recreabitur sicut in cibis, quorum diversitate reficitur stomachus et pluribus minore fastidio alitur.
H. E. Butler's translation:
However manifold our activities, in a certain sense we come fresh to each new subject. Who can maintain his attention, if he has to listen for a whole day to one teacher harping on the same subject, be it what it may? Change of studies is like change of foods: the stomach is refreshed by their variety and derives greater nourishment from variety of viands.
Book I, Chapter XII, 5
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Food, Art, Teachers, Change

“Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Life, Time

“It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Local Girls

Beauty, Feeling

“Don't let two men fall in love with you, girls. It's not the sort of thing that ends well."
-Uncle Charles”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Love, Men, Girl

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Variant: I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.
Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

Sadness, Feeling, Thinking, Cry

“It [Ashfair House] was an old fashioned house—the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Fashion, Housing

“Also … the plan sounded exactly like the sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag. Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 9 “A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass” section 1 (p. 433)

“Which meant his only assets were one whiny imprisoned goddess, one sort-of-girlfriend with a dagger, and Leo, who apparently thought he could defeat the armies of darkness with breath mints.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

At any rate that afforded me some comfort.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Silence

“A FEATHER.

A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.”

Gertrude Stein book Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms

Source: Tender Buttons

Light

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

Life, People

“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Reading, Personality

“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“She's a sort of human vampire-bat”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Angels, Personality

“No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life, People, Time, Past

“Kissing Simon was pleasant. It was a gentle sort of pleasant, like lying in a hammock on a summer day with a book and a glass of lemonade”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Books, Lying, Kiss, Summer

“I did know once, only I've sort of forgotten.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“For there are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Variant: ... for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Idea, Heart

“Acquaintances, in sort, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: 引爆趨勢 : 小改變如何引發大流行 [Yin bao qu shi: xiao gai bian ru he yin fa da liu xing]

“To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Variant: I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“He hates me more," says Peeta. "I don't think people in general are his sort of thing.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hate, People, Thinking

“If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.”

Catherine Fisher book Incarceron

Source: Incarceron

Death, Freedom

“She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Love, Pain

“You're my sister," he said finally. "My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you"- he laughed soundlessly and without any humor- "to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Family, Boy, Sister

“I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Success, Dead

“The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Interview with Don Swaim (1987)

Hunger, Art

“It's all your fault, Mother,' said Larry austerely; 'you shouldn't have brought us up to be so selfish.' 'I like that!' exclaimed Mother. 'I never did anything of the sort!' 'Well, we didn't get as selfish as this without some guidance,' said Larry.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals

Selfishness

“the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)
Context: These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light—the soul’s certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

Soul, Sleep

“My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Way

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Personality

“Black Stache had no love for the Queen, no love for women of any sort, except for his ma. He had a real soft spot for his ma, and was truly sorry for the time he’d marooned her.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

Love, Women, Time

“Overall, she seemed to be going for a sort of mid-’80s postapocalyptic cyberpunk girl-next-door look. And it was working for me, in a big way. In a word:.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Way, Girl

“We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Falseness

“I hated labels anyway. People didn’t fit in slots—prostitute, housewife, saint—like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Variant: I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
Source: White Oleander

Hate, People, Fear, Water

“There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.”

Thomas Hardy Under the Greenwood Tree

Source: Under the Greenwood Tree

Music

“What nobody understood then is this: The only way that you achieve what you want and fulfill your dreams and become great is by demanding that sort of attention. You have to make it happen.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Dreams, Way

“I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it-- those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.”

Rudyard Kipling Kim

Source: Kim

Women, World

“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I

People

“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.”

Iain Banks book Excession

Source: Excession

Way, Problem

“It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Icehenge

Source: Icehenge

Dreams, Thinking, Sleep

“Goodness, real goodness, has it's own sort of cruelty to it.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Hold on to me," Alec said, and Magnus gave him the sort of smile that made Alec feel like someone had taken an apple corer to his heart and tried to dig out the center.
“I always do, Alexander,” he said. “I always do.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Smile, Feeling, Heart

“Just because I'm a murdering, thieving, cowardly, traitorous sort doesn't mean I can't do my job properly.”

James A. Owen The Search for the Red Dragon

Source: The Search for the Red Dragon

“I have a lot on my mind and not a lot to do so it's going to come out, all of it, and then, then, it may begin to make a sort of sense”

Bryan Lee O'Malley book Lost at Sea

Source: Lost at Sea

Sense

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

People, Reading

“The thing is- and I know this is going to sound strange-that I seem to love you sort of desperately”

L.J. Smith book Daughters of Darkness

Source: Daughters of Darkness

Love

“I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Summer

“…books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Life, Books, Bee, Heart

“If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

People

“It's a party house."
"I hope for your sake it's a very tame party." If he brought me to some sort of sex orgy, he would fly right through one of those pretty windows, headfirst.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Hope, Sex, Housing, Flying

“There are as many sorts of women as there are women.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: The Tale of Genji

Women

“I decided that giving a girl a ring when you're not in a serious relationship is sort of like giving a guy a blow job when you have no real feelings for him. It makes everything feel a little cheap. It cheapens the giver and the recipient.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Baby Proof

Guy, Feeling, Girl

“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and know the same women.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Women, Men

“It wasn't even a good note. 'If you are reading this I am probably dead.' What sort of a note is that?”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Reading, Dead

“He sniggered.
He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Thinking, Personality

“It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Sadness, Feeling, Night, Sad

“But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

People, Dead

“We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Imagination, Universe

“Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Parent, Singing

“But a sort of rupture-in anguish-leaves us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves, we forget ourselves and communicate with an elusive beyond.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Communication, Tear, Forgetting

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Way, Universe, Appearance

“You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can't exist without the other. It's sort of a hippie thing.-Wes”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Feeling

“When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.”

Robin McKinley book Spindle's End

Source: Spindle's End

Friendship, Way

“Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 3

Hate

“I've had the sort of day that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Baby

“Psychopaths [make] the world go around… society [is] an expression of that particular sort of madness… I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Source: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

World, Madness

“I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.”

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

Time, Personality

“To cry was to release all sorts of ugly little pressures and tensions. Like waking out of a long, dark dream to a sun-filled day.”

Anne McCaffrey book Nerilka's Story

Source: Nerilka's Story

Dreams, Sun, Cry

“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: The 39 Steps

“Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: La Milla Verde

“The battle cry sort of gave you away. Try not to yell next time.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Time, Cry

“Law of the jungle. The betrayee gets to eat the betrayer. (Dante)
Law of my jungle. Kill them all and let Hades sort them out. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Law, Betrayal

“Did you just kiss me?" Will inquired.
Magnus made a slip-second decision. "No."
"I thought-"
"On occasion the aftereffects of the painkilling spells can result in hallucinations of the most bizarre sort."
"Oh," Will said. "How peculiar.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Kiss, Decision

“In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

As quoted in Charting the Candidates '72 (1972) by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7
1940s–present
Context: The state — or, to make the matter more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.