Steven Saiki > Steven's Quotes

“As I reached the door, the constable said, “Good luck in Canada, son.” For a second I expected his voice to morph into Uncle Sid’s as he urged me to give his love to Rose Marie and the Mounties.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“It started to feel like this thing happening to me was an invisible wall between us, a barrier none of us wanted to acknowledge but that was continuously pushing us apart. I started to feel like an outsider even among my closest friends.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“But if you flip this around, the reason women are smaller and weaker is that men weren’t worth fighting over.
Hold my bag while I victory-lap.”
― Sara Pascoe

“The fourth man in the terrorist team was Conor Lenihan. Conor had been born in Catholic Belfast and brought up in the sectarian ways of his peers.”
― Michael Parker, The Eagle's Covenant

“I said to Hun Sen, “Thank you, Hun! You have also told me that there was a kidnapping incident which almost bankrupted your family! Can you please elaborate upon that?”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“We know about the wildlife for God’s sake!” screamed Aideen. “We’re being attacked by a feckin’ pack of chimpanzees right now! Get us out of here!”
― Steven Decker, The Balance of Time

“Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton.”
― Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy

“I liked you better when you were this timid little kid. What happened?”
“I started living with you guys.”
“Oh, right.”
― Rachel Caine, The Dead Girls' Dance

“Da settembre il villaggio non era più abituato a sentire passi, risate, voci giovanili; era stordito, sopraffatto dal rumore crescente che saliva da quella marea di uniformi verdi, da quell'odore di corpi sani, di carne giovane, e soprattutto dai suoni di quella lingua straniera. I tedeschi invadevano le case, i negozi, i caffè. I loro stivali risuonavano sui pavimenti rossi delle cucine. Chiedevano da mangiare, da bere. Passando accarezzavano i bambini. Gesticolavano, cantavano, ridevano alle donne. La loro aria felice, la loro ebbrezza da conquistatori, quella febbre, quella follia, quell'entusiasmo misto a una sorta di stupore, come se loro stessi non riuscissero a credere a quanto stava accadendo, tutto questo produceva una tale tensione, era così eccitante che i vinti erano portati a dimenticare per qualche attimo il proprio dolore e il proprio rancore.”
― Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française

“The people of former times [...] they're dead that's the only thing they have over the living but in their own day they were just as sickening. Picturesqueness: I don't fall for that not for one minute. Stinking filthy dirty washing cabbage-stalks what a pretentious fool you have to be to go into such ecstasies over that! And it's the same thing everywhere all the time whether they're stuffing themselves with chips paella or pizza it's the same crew a filthy crew the rich who trample over you the poor who hate you for your money the old who dodder the young who sneer the men who show off the women who open their legs. I'd rather stay at home reading a thriller although they've become so dreary nowadays. The telly too what a clapped-out set of fools! I was made for another planet altogether I mistook the way.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the mind's roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feed pulled to.”
― Christopher Moore, Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

“After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod? Every”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

“What’s your version of old-fashioned discipline?”
“A belt across the back! I felt the belt a few times growing up. Didn’t hurt the way I turned out.”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“Well, thank you, Charles. Can I have another one of those for Aideen?”
― Steven Decker, Time Chain: A Time Travel Novel

“Making it to the Super Bowl is something few and far between. Many football players never get the opportunity to make it that far.”
― Vernon Davis, Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Socialism is not a competition; it is not a monopoly, either. Socialism is not a private property; it is not a state one, either. Socialism is a completely different thing. What is socialism in such case?”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“The sunset bled into the edges of the village. Smoke curled out of the cottage chimney like a crooked finger.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“At first she didn't listen to it and then she heard what she was feeling. She said it several times to hear it better.”
― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

“If you live,” I whispered, “I’ll let you call me your dear. I won’t complain, I promise.”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“Ah, Piglet, you must never trust
Young ladies from the upper crust.”
― Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes

“We believed in a good God, a bad Devil, and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that same God did not intend man should ever fly.”
― David McCullough, The Wright Brothers