A Room Of One S Own Quotes

...go live happily alone requires a serious amount of intentional thought. It's not as simple as signing the lease on your own apartment and leaving it at that. You must figure out what you need to feel comfortable at home and in the world, no matter your means (indeed, staying within your means), and arrange your life accordingly--a metaphorical architecture. ~ Kate Bolick

Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled. ~ Kate Bolick

Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own any more. ~ Elfriede Jelinek

Struck by the pain of the ice and the rage of the water below that was forced to make room for the huge piece of frozen time, the glacier, trapped in a solid state for centuries, melting into the ocean and becoming one with its future. She feels small and insignificant in the face of such a display of nature. ~ Garth Stein

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. ~ C.S. Lewis

My New Year's Eve is always 2 July, the night before my birthday. That's the night I make my resolutions. And this year scares the life out of me, because no matter how successful, how good things appear, there is always a deep core of failure within me, although I am trying to deal with it. My biggest fear, this coming year, is that I will be waking up alone.
It makes me wonder how many bodies will be fished out of the Thames, how many decaying corpses will be found in one-room flats.
I'm just being realistic. ~ Tracey Emin

You can see Musk's embrace of the car as lifestyle in Tesla's abandonment of model years. Tesla does not designate cars as being 2014s or 2015s, and it also doesn't have "all the 2014s in stock must go, go, go and make room for the new cars" sales. It produces the best Model S it can at the time, and that's what the customer receives. This means that Tesla does not develop and hold on to a bunch of new features over the course of the year and then unleash them in a new model all at once. It adds features one by one to the manufacturing line when they're ready. Some customers may be frustrated to miss out on a feature here and there. Tesla, however, manages to deliver most of the upgrades as software updates that everyone gets, providing current Model S owners with pleasant surprises. ~ Ashlee Vance

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. ~ William S. Burroughs

Sixty-four percent of managers in the U.S. are afraid to be alone in a room with a woman. Mentoring is all about being alone in a room with someone. Let's start talking about this honestly. The lack of equal access is the silent killer for women and no one wants to talk about it. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

I turned to the room
and in the light from the street
beheld one beautiful
bare breast of a friend's friend
gently rising and falling
as though I were not there
already not there ~ W.S. Merwin

Gen. George S. Patton Jr. fears no one. But now he sleeps flat on his back in a hospital bed. His upper body is encased in plaster, the result of a car accident twelve days ago. Room 110 is a former utility closet, just fourteen feet by sixteen feet. There are no decorations, pictures on the walls, or elaborate furnishings - just the narrow bed, white walls, and a single high window. A chair has been brought in for Patton's wife, Beatrice, who endured a long, white-knuckle flight over the North Atlantic from the family home in Boston to be at his bedside. She sits there now, crochet hook moving silently back and forth, raising her eyes every few moments to see if her husband has awakened. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Ben's dead," he says not moving or breaking his stare.

"And?"

"Just thought you should know," he says, looking at me in the eyes like he's waiting for me to confess.

"Thanks for waking me up to share the information," I tell him. "Where's Venessa?"

"At home," he says. "Needed to see you first, alone."

"Quit looking at me like that, partner," I tell him. "I ain't left this floor all night." Which isn't a lie. Ben's room is on this floor, but he doesn't know I know that.

"Even if you did, you know I wouldn't - "

"Partner," I tell him straight, letting him figure it out. "I didn't shut off his life support."

After he blinks several times he gives me that smirk. He looks around me to my sleeping wife and then back at me and tells me straight, too. "Go back to sleep partner. You look like shit."

With that he gets up and walks out.

Staring at the door he walks out of, I smile. He gets it. Turns out the staff at that front desk got it, too. They didn't stop my wife from doing what she needed to do; seems like they had other shit going at that time. Heard through the grapevine one of the women taken and held by Ben happened to work on this very floor. It also turns out the coffee pot wasn't working and it was an all hands on deck kinda thing to get it fixed. I get it, the women need their coffee. They also didn't run to his aid until I had my wife safe back in her bed. Those ~ K.S. Adkins

I never knew what Mother knowed,
Like how a thread and needle sewed,
And how a kiss healed boo-boos fast.
Why family knots were made to last.

I never knew how Mother saw
A caring man in angry pa,
A smile beneath the teary gloom,
A game inside a messy room.

I never knowed what Mother knew,
Like how to smile when days were blue,
And how to laugh for laughter's sake,
While giving up her slice of cake.

I never saw what Mother see'd
Like honor pulling garden weeds,
Or deep confessions in a look,
And hope alive in storybooks.

I never knew how Mother knowed
To hand out carrots when it snowed,
And why hot cocoa liked the rain,
While naptime kept a person sane.

For mother knowed and see'd it all.
A winner in a strike-out ball.
A 'yes, please' in a shoulder shrug.
A 'love you mostest' in a hug.

Perhaps, someday, I'll come to know
What Mother saw and knowed as so.
Like how 'I'm right' can be all wrong,
And why the night requires a song.

But of the things I learned and knew
I never doubted one thing true.
My mother made it crystal clear,
she knowed and loved me ever dear. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

He smiled. "I suppose I thought we'd have a madly impractical, terrifyingly modern sort of marriage. One based on love. Not to mention dangerous undertakings and hair's-breadth escapes from burning buildings, high ledges and exploding sewers."
"And bickering."
"Always that, yes."
"Assuming I want to marry at all."
"True. I know of no good way of forcing you to do anything."
"And you're mad enough to think it could work - one day?"
He cupped her face in his hands. His smile was so brilliant it seemed to illuminate the room. "I think it would be heaven."
She trembled, then. "You have a very strange idea of heaven."
"Kiss me and see. ~ Y.S. Lee

Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit
Kid, it was tasty.
~ William S. Burroughs

If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep. It is true that by living together without marriage they will be guilty (in Christian eyes) of fornication. But one fault is not mended by adding another; unchastity is not improved by adding perjury. The idea that 'being in love' is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. ~ C.S. Lewis

At a bit over two meters tall, she was only slightly above average height for a Martian male, but thanks in part to her Polynesian ancestry, she weighed in at over a hundred kilos at one g. None of it was fat, but her muscles seemed to get bigger every time she even walked through a weight room. As a marine, she trained all the time. ~ James S.A. Corey

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew.
Some of the members of the life-saving were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.
Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it as sort of a club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in this club`s decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some had black skin and some ha ~ Ross Paterson

If one plan goes wrong there is need to make another, that is all. And, as for despair - there was no room for despair in Dodd's make-up. The regiment had taught him that he must do his duty or die in the attempt; a simple enough religion fit for his simple mind. As long as there was breath in his body or a thought in his mind he must struggle on; as long as he went on trying there was no need to meditate on success or failure. The only reward for the doing of his duty would be the knowledge that his duty was being done. ~ C.S. Forester

life. She leaned back in her chair, blinked back a tear and looked at her oak dining room table. The evening had taken her several hours to prepare. She concentrated on the two candles in the center. She watched as the flame flickered and wondered if one of them would go out. She heard the grandfather clock chime and one of the candles finally did burn out. More tears were stinging her eyes as she longingly looked at the door. She was becoming disconsolate and wanted to know what had become of her husband. Even on the most chaotic of days he had never forgotten their anniversary. He had always found a way ~ S.C. King

Boarding a ship was one of the riskiest maneuvers in naval combat. It was basically a race between the boarders rushing to the engine room and the collective will of those who had their fingers on the self-destruct button. ~ James S.A. Corey

Readin' all those books makes me wonder whether
anyone ever dies natural."

" They don't," said William mysteriously. " Robert
says so. At least he says there's hundreds an' thousands
of murders what no one finds out. You see, you c'n
only find out a person's died nacheral by cuttin' 'em
up an' they've not got time to cut everyone up what
dies. They've simply not got the time. They do
it like what they do with our desks at school. They
jus' open one sometimes to see if it's all right. They've
not got time to open 'em all every day. An' same as
every time they do open a desk they find it untidy, jus'
in the same way whenever they do cut anyone dead
up they find he's been poisoned. Practically always.
Robert says so. He says that the amount of people
who poison people who aren't cut up and don't get
found out mus' be enormous. Jus' think of it. People
pois'nin' people all over the place an' no one findin' out.

If I was a policeman I'd cut everyone dead up.
But they aren't any use, policemen aren't. Why, in
all those books I've read there hasn't been a single
policeman that was any good at all. They simply
don't know what to do when anyone murders anyone.
Why, you remember in ' The Mystery of the Yellow
Windows,' the policemen were s' posed to have searched
the room for clues an' they di'n't notice the cigarette
en ~ Richmal Crompton

Anyhow, he asks himself, what is an intimate secret? Is that where we hide what's most mysterious, most singular, most original about a human being? Are her intimate secrets what make Chantal the unique being he loves? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing everybody has: the body and its needs, it maladies, its manias - constipation, for instance, or menstruation. We ashamedly conceal these intimate matters not because they are so personal but because, on the contrary, they are so lamentably impersonal. How can he resent Chantal, for belonging to her sex, for resembling other women, for wearing a brassiere and along with it the brassiere psychology? s if he didn't himself belong to some eternal masculine idiocy! They both of them got their start in that putterer's workshop where their eyes were botched with the disjointed action of the eyelid and where a reeking little factory was installed in their bellies. They both of them have bodies where their poor souls have almost no room. Shouldn't they forgive that in each other? Shouldn't they move beyond the little weaknesses they're hiding at the bottom of drawers? He was gripped by an enormous compassion, and to draw a final lune under that whole story, he decided to write her one last letter. ~ Milan Kundera

The dining room was formidably elegant--I couldn't take it in all at once. A swift glance gave the impression of the family colors, augmented by gold, blended with artistry and grace. The table was high, probably to accommodate the elderly Prince. The chairs, one for each diner, were especially fine--no angles, everything curves and ovals and pleasing lines.
The meal, of course, was just as good. Again I left the others to work at a polite conversation. I bent my attention solely to my food, eating a portion of every single thing offered, until at last--and I never thought it would happen again, so long it had been--I was truly stuffed.
This restored to me a vestige of my customary good spirits, enough so that when the Prince asked me politely if the dinner had been sufficient, and if he could have anything else brought out, I smiled and said, "It was splendid. Something to remember all my life. But--" I realized I was babbling, and shut up.
The Prince's dark eyes narrowed with amusement, though his mouth stayed solemn--I knew I'd seen that expression before. "Please. You have only to ask."
"I don't want a thing. It was more a question, and that is: If you can eat like this every day, why aren't you fatter than five oxen?"
Bran set his goblet down, his eyes wide. "Burn it, Mel, I was just thinking the very same!"
That was the moment I realized that, though our rank was as high as theirs, or nearly, and our name as old, Branaric and I must have s ~ Sherwood Smith

For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned freinds, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue forth from their rath in joy and power: and then perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old medieval blessing of certain simple people - who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun. ~ T.H. White

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers. ~ Utah Phillips

By noon, silence arrives one last time, flowing into every space of her room. And before long, silence swallows sound and color and seconds and equations and entire stanzas of old poetry, leaving new words. The sheets are breathless. The room is bruised.

My mother is still warm. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I've always found the thousand dollar dinners more unsettling than the twenty-five-thousand dollar ones
if someone pays the Republican National Committee twenty-five thousand dollars (or, more likely, fifty per couple) to breathe the same air as Charlie for an hour or two, then it's clear the person has money to spare. What breaks my heart is when it's apparent through their accent or attire that a person isn't well off but has scrimped to attend an event with us. We're not worth it! I want to say. You should have paid off your credit-card bill, invested in your grandchild's college fund, taken a vacation to the Ozarks. Instead, in a few weeks, they receive in the mail a photo with one or both of us, signed by an autopen, which they can frame so that we might grin out into their living room for years to come. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Dear brother,
I feel what Pa and Ma instinctively think about me (I don't say reasonably).
There's a similar reluctance about taking me into the house as there would be about having a large, shaggy dog in the house. He'll come into the room with wet paws - and then, he's so shaggy. He'll get in everyone's way. And he barks so loudly.
In short - it's a dirty animal.
Very well - but the animal has a human history and, although it's a dog, a human soul, and one with finer feelings at that, able to feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog can't do.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them as they are.
Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nuenen, 15 December 1883 ~ Vincent Van Gogh

And at the center of the room, a girl. A woman. She sits at the klavier with eyes closed, playing their song. Their story.
Elisabeth.
Her image flickers, wavers, a reflection seen on the edges of a candle flame. The shadows wriggle and writhe with curiosity, and with tremendous effort, the monster holds them back.
Please, he whispers. Please, let me have this one thing.
As he plays, the darkness recedes. From his skin, from his hair, the weight of the rams' horns on his head lightening. Color returns to the world and to his eyes, a mismatched blue and green as the monster remembers what it is to be a man.
Elisabeth.
He sits down on the bench beside her, begging her- beseeching her- to open her eyes and see him. Be with him. But she keeps her eyes closed, hands trembling on the keyboard.
Elisabeth.
She stirs. He sucks in a sharp breath and lifts his hand to stroke her cheek with fingers that are still mangled, broken, strange. His touch passes through her like a knife through smoke, yet she shivers as if she can feel the brush of his fingers in the dark places of her soul, her body, her heart. She is as insubstantial as mist, but he cannot resist the urge, the itch, to kiss. He closes his eyes and leans in close, imagining the silk of her skin against his lips.
They are met.
A gasp. His eyes fly open but hers are still closed. Her hand lifts to her mouth, as though the tingle of their unexpected caress still lingered there.
S. Jae-Jones

The honky-tonk bartender, who doubled as bouncer, waiter, and cashier, was in no mood to compromise. Mercy was not in him. He came out around the open end of the long counter, waddled threatening across the floor in a sullen, red-faced fury and began to shake the inanimate figure lying across the table with its head bedded on its arms. "Hey, you! Do your sleeping in the gutter!"

If you gave these bums an inch; they took a yard. And this one was a particularly glaring example of the genus bar-fly. He was in here all the time like this, inhaling smoke and then doing a sunset across the table. He'd been in here since four this afternoon. The boss and he, who were partners in the joint - the bartender called it jernt - would have been the last ones to claim they were running a Rainbow Room, but at least they were trying to give the place a little class, keep it above the level of a Bowery smoke-house; they even paid a guy to pound the piano and a canary to warble three times a week. And then bums like this had to show up and give the place a bad look!

He shook the recumbent figure again, more roughly than the first time. Shook him so violently that the whole reedy table under him rattled and threatened to collapse. "Come on, clear out, I said! Pay me for what you had and get outa here!" ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ~ Cornell Woolrich

EARLY ONE DARK April morning a few years ago I was sitting in my living room in central Copenhagen, wrapped in a blanket and yearning for spring, when I opened that day's newspaper to discover that my adopted countrymen had been anointed the happiest of their species in something called the Satisfaction with Life Index, compiled by the Department of Psychology at the University of Leicester.

I checked the date on the newspaper: it wasn't 1 April. ~ Michael Booth

One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about. ~ Michael Ende

Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself. His heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through, - to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never unheeded again. His heart throbbed loud and quick Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place. One moment, he glowed with impatience at the thought that she might do this, the next, he feared a passionate rejection, the very idea of which withered up his future with so deadly a blight that he refused to think of it. He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so gently, that he had never heard her; the street noises had been more distinct to his inattentive ear than her slow movements, in her soft muslin gown. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

When the rain had hit the beach and Zane had turned to retreat to their room, Ty grabbed him instead and started a waltz in the downpour. When they finished the dance, people applauded from their balconies. It had been the first taste of what life with Ty might be like when they came out. It had also been one of the most romantic moments of his life. ~ Abigail Roux

To summarize what I have said: Aim for the highest; never enter a bar-room; do not touch liquor, or if at all only at meals; never speculate; never indorse beyond your surplus cash fund; make the firm's interest yours; break orders always to save owners; concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket; expenditure always within revenue; lastly, be not impatient, for, as Emerson says, "no one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourselves." I congratulate poor young men upon being born to that ancient and honourable degree which renders it necessary that they should devote themselves to hard work. A basketful of bonds is the heaviest basket a young man ever had to carry. He generally gets to staggering under it. We have in this city creditable instances of such young men, who have pressed to the front rank of our best and most useful citizens. These deserve great credit. But the vast majority of the sons of rich men are unable to resist the temptations to which wealth subjects them, and sink to unworthy lives. I would almost as soon leave a young man a curse, as burden him with the almighty dollar. It is not from this class you have rivalry to fear. The partner's sons will not trouble you much, but look out that some boys poorer, much poorer than yourselves, whose parents cannot afford to give them the advantages of a course in this institute, advantages which should give you a decided lead in the race–look out that such boys do not challenge you at t ~ Andrew Carnegie

Look, cat, you and I are never going to be friends. She's going to
call you Max, but I'm going to call you Shit Head. And if you think for
one second - " The cat lies down in a tight little ball of nastiness and
falls asleep. "Oh, please. Make yourself at home by sleeping on my
scrotum." I peek out into the sitting room area that connects to the
four bedrooms, and then glance back at the kitten. Releasing a sigh of
discontent, I pet Shit Head with one finger. He purrs extra hard, and
I find myself wondering if I could train him to do things. Every hero
needs a sidekick, and I'm nothing if not a Grade-A Hero.
- Dante Walker ~ Victoria Scott

It is often said that if you have a room with a view, you will feel peaceful and relaxed, but if the room is a caravan hurtling down a steep and twisted road, and the view is an eerie mountain range racing backward away from you, while chilly mountain winds sting your face and toss dust into your eyes, then you will not feel one bit of peace and relaxation. ~ Lemony Snicket

Farts come from no
one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong
to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the
room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is
denial. ~ Paul Auster

A dachshund came out of the bushes. Ruzena's father extended his pole toward him, but the dog alertly evaded it and ran over to the boy, who lifted him up and hugged him. Other old men rushed over to help Ruzena's father and tear the dachshund out of the boy's arms. The boy was crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the old men had to twist his arms and put a hand over his mouth because his cries were attracting too much attention from the passersby, who were turning to look but not daring to intervene. [...] Jakub was leading the dog by the collar toward the hotel steps when one of the old men shouted: "Release that dog at once!"
And the other old man: "In the name of the law!"
Jakub pretended not to notice the old men and kept going, but behind him a pole slowly descended alongside his body and the wire loop wavered clumsily over the boxer's head.
Jakub grabbed the end of the pole and brusquely pushed it aside.
A third old man ran up and shouted: "Its an attack on law and order! I'm going to call the police!"
And the high-pitched voice of another old man complained: "He ran on the grass! He ran in the playground, where it's prohibited! He pissed in the kids' sandbox! Do you like dogs more than children?"
The boxer scampered around the room curiously, unaware that he had just escaped danger. Jakub stretched out on the daybed, wondering what to do with him. He liked the lively, good-natured dog. The insouciance with which, in a f ~ Milan Kundera

A man like Kappler might become angriest, most detached, even sickest at those times his psychiatrist edges closest to the truths about his life. The rage and even the psychosis has to be seen for what it is: the flamethrower of a fortress under siege. Pleasantries, humor, and easy exchanges might be clues that no real work is being done.
There can be no retreat on the psychiatrist's part. One patient with a psychotic illness has written: "the doctor has to feel sure he has the right to break into the illness, just as a parent knows he has the right to walk into a baby's room, no matter what the baby feels about it. The doctor has to know he's doing the right thing ... some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them." (95, The Strange Case of Dr. Kappler) ~ Keith Ablow

Within a decade or two, all Holocaust survivors will likely have passed away so a ticking clock is in effect in this battle between the truth and lies. Keep in mind even those survivors born in a concentration camp during WW2 would be at least 71 years-of-age when this book (the one you are reading now) was released. Those survivors old enough to clearly recall the events of that nightmare will, of course, be older and have much less time left. As the memory of the Holocaust begins to fade away, it will become easier to deny the genocide even occurred unless those of us who are truthseekers are able to embrace the memory of the genocide and educate others do the same. What's needed in this propaganda war is for the true stories of Holocaust survivors – as well as those of the Nazi perpetrators, their associates and others who witnessed the genocide – to be told loudly and clearly so that there will never, ever be room for doubt in generations to come. After all, nothing is more powerful, credible or damning than eyewitness accounts. ~ James Morcan

A budget?"
He'd expected an explosion.Even, perversely,hoped for one.Margo's tantrums were always so..stimulating.It didn't appear that he was going to be disappointed.
"A budget?" she repeated,storming to him. "Of all the unbelievable,bloody nerve.You arrogant son of a bitch. Do you think I'm going to stand here and let you treat me like some sort of brainless bimbo who needs to be told how much she can spend on face powder?"
"Face powder." Deliberately, he scanned the papers,took a pen out of his pocket,and made a quick note. "That would come under 'Miscellaneous Luxuries.' I think I've been very generous there. Now,as to your clothing allowance-"
"Allowance!" She used both hands to shove him back a step. "Just let me tell you what you can do with your fucking allowance."
"Careful,duchess." He brushed the front of his shirt. "Turnbill and Asser."
The strangled sound in her throat was the best she could do.If there had been anything at all to throw,she'd have heaved it at his head. "I'd rather be picked apart,alive, by vultures than let you handle the money."
"You don't have any money," he began, but she barreled on as she whirled around the room. Watching her, he all but salivated.
"I'd rather be gang-raped by midgets, staked naked to a wasp nest,be force-fed garden slugs."
"Go three weeks without a manicure?" he put in and watched her hands curl into claws. "You go after my face with those, I'll have to hurt you."
"Oh,I hat ~ Nora Roberts

Bay's room was the first one at the top of the staircase. It was painted a dove gray that turned peacock blue after dark, as if the room absorbed the warmth of daylight and radiated with it at night. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

There appears no assurance that in the times of our own grandchildren the world will contain viable populations of wild African Lions, Tigers, Polar Bears, Emperor Penguins, gorillas, or coral reefs. These are the animals expectant parents pain on nursery room walls. Their implied wish: to welcome precious new life in to a world endowed with the magnificence and delight and fright of companions we have traveled with since the beginning. Some people debate the "rights of the unborn" as though a human life begins at conception but we don't need to concern ourselves with its prospects after birth. Raging over the divine sanctity of anyone else's pregnancy is a little overwrought and a little too easy when nature itself terminates one out of four by the sixth week. There are much bigger, more compassionate pro-life fish to fry. Passing along a world that can allow real children to flourish and the cavalcade of generations to unfold, and the least to live in modest dignity would be the biggest pro-life enterprise we could undertake. ~ Carl Safina

For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousand ... and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own ... so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when Mrs. Jones is not there ... and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all. ~ Virginia Woolf

She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public was a beloved child. She'd parade me into town, smiling and teasing me, tickling me as she spoke with people on the sidewalks. When we got home, she'd trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door, and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I had done to displease her.

I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends come over for afternoon drinks. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was suppose to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching.

My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how, wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother. ~ Gillian Flynn

Before she could rethink her actions, she slugged Mara as hard as she could in her perfect face. And even that was a light punishment for everything she'd done to Syn. Mara fell to the ground, sobbing. But she took no pity on her. "Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I'm not. I'm not only ashamed to call you human, I'm completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you're the one who doesn't deserve to breathe our air. Decent's got nothing to do with birthright. It's all about actions, and trust me, you're the lowest form I've ever met and I've taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I'd rather sit at the table with them than you any day." She ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One German officer lived in the house opposite ours. He had a room with the Kahn family. They said he was a charming man - calm, likable, polite, and sympathetic. Three days after he moved in he brought Madame Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists rejoiced. ~ Elie Wiesel

Just as I was about to close my eyes I saw a faint line connecting the shadows, like string you take into a forest so you don't lose your way. Everything in the room was joined by one line; the frame to the curtain, the coil to the crack, the belt to the shoe. I closed my eyes and in the vision behind the skin of my lids I saw the line stretch way out to sea, like cobweb blown by the wind, further and further; it crossed the Pacific until the Pacific became the Indian and it found Robby in his ship. It touched his shoulder and moved across the sleeve of his shirt and up to his eyes and across the top of his head and then the line went to all the other men on the ship; then all the way back to me. Everyone was joined. ~ Sofie Laguna

As in Lahore, a road in this town is named after Goethe. There is a Park Street here as in Calcutta, a Malabar Holl as in Bombay, and a Naag Tolla Hill as in Dhaka. Because it was difficult to pronounce the English names, the men who arrived in this town in the 1950s had rechristened everything they saw before them. They had come from across the Subcontinent, lived together ten to a room, and the name that one of them happened to give to a street or landmark was taken up by the others, regardless of where they themselves were from. But over the decades, as more and more people came, the various nationalities of the Subcontinent have changed the names according to the specific country they themselves are from – Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan. Only one name has been accepted by every group, remaining unchanged. It's the name of the town itself. Dasht-e-Tanhaii.
The Wilderness of Solitude.
The Desert of Loneliness. ~ Nadeem Aslam