"Of course, they didn’t get that staring at flowers is a form of being busy. That watching the flow of the clouds is an important activity. That in a period of depression and fear, to think about beautiful things, your dreams and wishes, and to smile is highly, highly important, a vital task." -- from 'The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen' by Shokoofeh Azar (the translator is anonymous for security reasons)

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“How could we let them get away with it for so long?” But the question, of course, contained its own answer: We let them get away with it. Power is more often surrendered than seized." -- from 'Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir' by John Banville

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"It is a May morning of luminous loveliness. The sunlight glows through a delicate muslin mist, the soft air is fragrant with the smell of lilac, and out over the tawny reaches of Sandymount strand, where Stephen Dedalus once trod upon seaspawn and seawrack while seeking myopically to make out the signatures of all the things he was sent there to read, the pale sky shines and shimmers like the inner skin of a vast soap bubble." -- from 'Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir' by John Banville

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Kleinkariert steht niemandem gut. ✋ Dieses Zitat aus »Lost Bastards« sitzt einfach. Es erinnert uns daran, dass Souveränität dort beginnt, wo das Ego aufhört. Habt ihr das Buch schon gelesen? #buchsky #booksky #books #BookQuote #zitat

“Maybe that’s why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they’ve been duped by the same pair of eyes.” — *[Francis] “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt*


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"Then she opens the book like she’s raising the lid of a treasure chest. Each illuminated psalm is vibrant as a sunrise. She pictures the monk who copied the verse and decorated the margins, but instead of ink, she imagines him dipping his quill in the colors of bluebirds and holly berries and bright spring moss." ~~ from 'Canticle' by Janet Rich Edwards

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Once again I must repeat it—our world is populated by the sleeping, who have died and are dreaming that they are alive. That is why there are more and more people in the world, for it is populated by the sleeping dead who keep growing in number, while the real people living for the first time are few. In all this confusion none of us knows or can possibly know if he is someone who is only dreaming life or really living it. -- from 'House of Day, House of Night' by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones

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An excerpt from Stone of Serpents, book 3 of my Arcanium series, that has been on my mind of late because reason (i.e. because I read the news).

This bit takes place in the middle of a huge battle between the Siershasai'dan fighters and the legions of the dark sorcerer who has terrorized Arcania for 25 years. These are the thoughts of my MC, who gets caught up in the middle of it with his friends.

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"He looked at no one. His face was a mask.

They walked on."

- The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

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A Persian inscription on a sixteenth-century platter reads: “That this platter always be full, always surrounded by friends, that they are lacking for nothing and that they enjoy everything well.” -- from 'Adventures in the Louvre' by Elaine Sciolino

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