Archenland Quotes

And there lay the essential differences between reading and rereading, acts that Henry and I were preforming simultaneously. The former had more velocity; the latter had more depth. The former shut out the world in order to focus on the story; the latter dragged in the world in order to assess the story. The former was more fun; the latter was more cynical. But what was remarkable about the latter was that it contained the former: even while, as with the upper half of a set of bifocals, I saw the book through the complicating lens of adulthood, I also saw it through the memory of the first time I'd read it, when it had seemed as swift and pure as the Winding Arrow, the river that divides Calormen from Archenland. ~ Anne Fadiman

A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left. ~ William O. Douglas

What she really craved was a connection. That feeling you got when you knew you were supposed to be with someone. ~ J. Sterling

I was 22 when I came to prison and of course I have changed tremendously over the years. But I had always had a strong sense of myself and in the last few years I felt that I was losing my identity. There was a deadness in my body that eluded me, as though I could not exactly locate its site….And since encountering you, I feel life strength flowing back into that spot. My step, the tread of my stride, which was becoming tentative and uncertain, had begun to recover and take on a new definiteness, a confidence, a boldness which makes me want to kick over a few tables. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur--I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Sold my soul to the devil, made a profit. ~ Kevin Rudolf

and you want us to love one another
you can shape me from my ashes
from the debris of my guffawing
from my leftover tedium
you can gorgeous
you can seize me by the hair of forgetting
embrace my night in an empty shirt
kiss my echo
well you dont know how to love ~ Vasko Popa