Quote of the Week

The girl glances at the surface of the desk, which looks as if toddlers have been trying to eat potatoes off it. With pitchforks. In the dark.
   --Fredrik Backman in Britt-Marie Was Here

Quote of the Week

The hitman apologized, saying he had become quite a wizard at counting years while in the slammer, but all he knew about percentages was that there were about forty of them in vodka and sometimes even more in the kind of stuff that was produced in random basements without any oversight.
   –Jonas Jonasson in Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

Quote of the Week

When facts contradict an ideological group's accepted narrative, especially one that has received prominence in the media, it is far easier to ignore the truth than to confront the failure of your argument.
   –Ari Rabin-Havt in Lies, Incorporated

Quote of the Week

"It's their story, too. Other people are as real as you are, Ronnie had said. It's one of God's best jokes: to give you a perspective, even visually, that suggests you're the center of the universe and then to rub your nose in the fact that you're clinging for dear life to the far edge."
   –Timothy Hallinan in King Maybe

 

Quote of the Week

"Democracy can never flourish...at the end of a gun."
    –Iain Overton in The Way of the Gun

Quote of the Week

That put her a good six steps up the crazy stairs from standard divorce behavior.
    –Joshilyn Jackson  in The Opposite of Everything

Quote of the Week

The fact is, there's enough money on earth to make everyone whole, if we could just learn to do what any toddler knows--share.
   --Noah Hawley in Before the Fall

Quote of the Week

His oval, chiseled face conjures images of African masks worn by ancestors in battle. Meager flesh cloaks a strong skeletal structure, although Lazarus is not thin. People think of him as lanky though, undoubtedly because his strut isn't stereotypical black. There's no rhythm, no syncopation, no glide. It's staccatoed and hesitant, as if, somewhere along life's journey, he lost faith in his feet.
   —Daniel Black in Listen to the Lambs

Quote of the Week

Justice is, ubiquitously and dispiritingly, not only for sale but also costly.
    Baz Dreisinger in Incarceration Nations

Quote of the Week

But just because I couldn't figure Pete's angle didn't mean he didn't have one. Pete had so many angles they could've named a branch of geometry after him.
   –Reed Farrel Coleman in Where It Hurts

Quote of the Week

If I didn't understand something, she would say, 'Would you like me to repeat the question?' with delicacy and grace, savoring the honeyed tones of her own voice. And that honey blended like wildflowers in a spring meadow with all the adventures and friendships of her mysterious life, in an indefinable accent that was both foreign and familiar, and actually more than familiar, dripping from my ears down into my heart. And I prayed that the Maestra would continue to speak with me like that forever, while I jotted down in my notebook every detail of a life that I hadn't lived, which she was bequeathing to me through her words.
    –Nicola Gardini in Lost Words (trans. by Michael F. Moore)

Quote of the Week

"On a pistachio day, Delirium and Barnabas went out wandering. They sniffed the music and tasted the words that were particularly crispy on the tongue, like twinkle and citrus."
   –Jill Thompson in The Little Endless Storybook

Quote of the Week

The bassoon is absurd. They should be banned for being horrible, unnecessary, and adenoidally grating.

It takes like an hour to assemble one. They're enormous and are made out of Lincoln Logs, aluminum twigs, and paper towel tubes. There are these tiny double wooden reeds that you have to soak and trim and tend to all the time. There's a strap that you actually have to sit on when you play so the whole thing doesn't fall onto the floor like a bundle of garbage. And, after all that folderol, it ends up sounding like an anemic donkey with laryngitis.
   —Rainn Wilson in The Bassoon King

Quote of the Week

And the reason that drama geeks are at the pinnacle of that food pyramid of geekdom? It's not the tragedy/comedy logo or Cats pins on the raincoats. It's not the black eyeliner on both the boys and the girls. Neither is it the ability to burst into song or a tap dance in the school hallway at the drop of a theater reference. No. The thing that separates theater dorks from the rest is one word...you guessed it...once again...girls. There were and always will be pretty girls who sing and dance and act and improvise and joke around and are willing to make fools of themselves. And--and this is the most important point of all--and they 're willing to hang out with geeky guys and even go to wrap parties and occasionally make out with them. This sets up drama geeks as the lions of the dork Serengeti.
   —Rainn Wilson in The Bassoon King

Quote of the Week

Gosh, it's always such a joy to dig into a James Lee Burke book, isn't it? Today's quote is from his upcoming (and wonderful) House of the Rising Sun:

"The screams of the children and the women were like sounds one hears inside the wind. Or in a dream. Or in a burning building about to collapse. Or in a universe where you helped dim the stars and murder the voices of charity and pity that should have defined your soul."
   –James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

Quote of the Week

"'Besides, even at night Memphis is going to be hotter than a billy goat's ass in a pepper patch.'"
   –Annie England Noblin in Sit! Stay! Speak!

Quote of the Week

"And there sat in front of me: a pair of black lace panties. If I opened a pair of black lacy panties now, at my age, I would probably throw them in the bottom of my underwear drawer and only take them out when I had let my laundry pile grow so large, the air pressure would change if you climbed to the top of it. I mean, if I want to feel sexy I'll just put on a pair of Spanx, which cuts off enough circulation to my brain that I believe I am sexy."
   –Alida Nugent in You Don't Have to Like Me

Quote of the Week

Straight couples, gay couples, single folks, older folks and young–there's no 'traditional' forever family. All you need to create one is a heart.
     –Peter Zheutlin from Rescue Road

Quote of the Week

No one should confuse income for virtue, net worth for worthiness.
   –Robert Reich in Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

Quote of the Week

'But of course one does not need to have committed murder to write about it, any more than one needs a time machine to write about the Battle of Agincourt. One simply requires an acquaintance with the dark depths of the human soul, along with the inclination to explore them to their very end.'
   –Kate Morton in The Lake House