Brabin And Fitz Quotes

What is the use of the colon? What is a colon? Generally it opens onto an explanation, but it is always done with the help of an interruption. It can be said that the colon is not the period, it is the period of the period, the canceling of the period. It is a moment mute and marked; it is the most delicate tattoo of the text. It is also in place of, instead of, everything that would be causal. For example, when we read: "It's simply that: secret." "Secret," is a sentence, it is the shortest sentence perhaps. But it is a sentence in one word. It is a sentence that is secret and that at the same time says its name. One could invert and say: "Secret: it is simply that." This is secret, the secret is the secret of this, it is a word which makes infinite sense all by itself, it is a sentence which performs the secret itself [Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, trans Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, Foreword by Hélène Cixous trans Verena Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989] ~ Helene Cixous

I'll always remember that's you found me and brought me to the Lost Cities and showed me where I really belong. And that you came when I called for help and saved me from fading away. And you left everything behind to go with me when I joined the Black Swan. Need me to keep going? Because I can."

His smile was a beautiful thing.

But it didn't last. ~ Shannon Messenger

Dear Miz Fitz,
My boyfriend is superhot so a lot of girls think up reasons to talk to him. It drives me ...
... Out of my Mind
Miz Fitz sez:
Maybe he is too hot for you. Send me his photo, name, and phone number. I will check him out and get back to you. ~ Pete Hautman

Soft, the snow falling/Steam spiraling from coffee/The slain cold and still ~ Garth Nix

What we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait
Till the want has burned out of our brains,
Every means shall be present to state;
While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late-too late. ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Bout time you got here," Keefe called as they crested a hill and entered a grassy meadow peppered with tiny blue flowers. "I was getting tired of stomping Fitz to a pulp in bramble."

"Only because you cheat!" Fitz shouted, tossing a red tri-pointed ball at Keefe.

Keefe caught it and whipped it back so fast Fitz had to dive to avoid being smacked in the face. Then the strange ball curved back like a boomerang and Keefe caught it one-handed. "Only losers play fair. Which is why I call Foster for my team today."

"Hey - why do you get her?" Fitz asked, ~ Shannon Messenger

Porter Rockwell was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

The acne-pitted kid manning the controls flips the switch, and the carousel begins to wheeze to a stop. Sophie leans forward, caressing the plaster mane. Fitz and Delia appear again, standing up in the stirrups for a last stretch at the brass ring. They're batting at each other's hands and laughing. There's an S-curved steel bar at the top of the carousel that makes one of their horses rise as the other falls. It looks like they're moving separately, but they're not. ~ Jodi Picoult

Keefe marched through the doors to the Healing Center and declared, "Wow, it's like walking into a cloud of sulk in here."

He fanned the air away from his face as he made his way over. "I mean, I figured you be feeling a little lost about your Cognate buddy, but trust me: Fitzy isn't worth this much angst."

"I'm not pouting about Fitz, "Sophie informed him.

"Ah, so you admit you are pouting? "He countered, plopping on to the side of her cot with enough oomph to make the mattress bounce. ~ Shannon Messenger

We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread. ~ Robin Hobb

He shook his head pityingly. "This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft."
"Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him.
"Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?"
"This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things."
"No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day? ~ Robin Hobb

Winston was an odd mix, Fitz thought: aristocrat and man of the people, a brilliant administrator who could never resist meddling in other people's departments, a charmer who was disliked by most of his political colleagues. ~ Ken Follett

I could almost see the resignation on the old man's face. I knew he would draw a breath and sigh that I insisted on stacking all my pain in one pile, facing it all at once."
p. 480 Fitz about Chade ~ Robin Hobb

What I was still out of it, I heard your voice in my head- I think it's why I woke up."

Her face tried its best to burst into flames. "Sorry, I-"

"Don't be," he interrupted. "I'm glad I'm awake."

"So am I," she admitted. "But... you have to be super careful, okay?"

"I will if you will," he made her promise.

He waited for her to meet his eyes, and when she did, he gave her the sweetest smile she'd ever seen.

"By the way," he murmured, pressing Mr. Snuggles against his heart. "I missed you too. ~ Shannon Messenger

I'd rather I was a stray pup,' I made bold to say. And then all my fears broke my voice as I added, "You wouldn't let them do this to a stray pup, changing everything all at once. When they gave the bloodhound puppy to Lord Grimsby, you sent your old shirt with it, so it would have something that smelled of home until it settle in.'
'Well,' he said, "I didn't ... come here, fitz. Come here, boy.'
And puppy-like, I went to him, the only master I had, and he thumped me lightly on the back and rumbled up my hair, very much as if I had been a hound. ~ Robin Hobb

You should have asked me! You should have asked me!" I hated the tears that suddenly flooded my eyes and how my throat closed and choked me. I didn't want to be sad. I wanted to be angry. Angry hurt less."
p. 501 Bee to Fitz ~ Robin Hobb

Are you kidding?" Sophie and Fitz asked, once again in perfect unison.

Elwin chuckled. "I'm sure if Keefe were here, he'd have a lot to say about how in sync you two are getting."

"Just more proof that Fitzphie's the best," Fitz told him, with a wink that shouldn't have made Sophie's heart flutter. But hearts could be foolish things. ~ Shannon Messenger

Take my memories of my mother, and the feelings that went with them. I do not want to know them at all. Take the ache in my throat when I think of Molly, take all the sharp-edged, bright-colored days I recall with her. Take their brilliance and leave me but the shadows of what I saw and felt. Let me recall them without cutting myself on their sharpness. Take my days and nights in Regal's dungeons. It is enough to know what was done to me. Take it to keep, and let me stop feeling my face against that stone floor, hearing the sound of my nose breaking, smelling and tasting my own blood. Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone. Take my - Fitz. Stop. You give her too much, there will be nothing left of you. ~ Robin Hobb

Here, my man, just hold it this way, while I look into it a bit," he said one day to Fitz G., putting a wounded arm into the keeping of a sound one, and proceeding to poke about among bits of bone and visible muscles, in a red and black chasm made by some infernal machine of the shot or shell description. Poor Fitz held on like a grim Death, ashamed to show fear before a woman, till it grew more than he could bear in silence; and, after a few smothered groans,he looked at me imploringly, as if he said, "I wouldn't, ma'am, if I could help it," and fainted quietly away.

Dr. P. looked up, gave a compassionate sort of cluck, and poked away more busily than ever, with a nod at me and a brief - "Never mind; be so good as to hold this till I finish."

I obeyed, cherishing the while a strong desire to insinuate a few of his own disagreeable knives and scissors into him, and see how he liked it. A very disrespectful and ridiculous fancy of course; for he was doing all that could be done, and the arm prospered finely in his hands. But the human mind is prone to prejudice; and though a personable man, speaking French like a born "Parley voo," and whipping off legs like an animated guillotine, I must confess to a sense of relief when he was ordered elsewhere; and suspect that several of the men would have faced a rebel battery with less trepidation than they did Dr. P., when he came briskly in on his morning round. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The only book Papa had ever read, apart from the Bible, was Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He believed that the even greater British Empire would go the same way unless noblemen fought to preserve its institutions, especially the Royal Navy, the Church of England, and the Conservative Party. He was right, Fitz had no doubt. ~ Ken Follett

Ugh, they've been at it all day," Fitz grumbled. "It's been hours of 'Look - I'm invisible. Now I'm not! Now I am!'" Biana rolled her eyes as she reappeared. "Like you were any less annoying with your 'I can tell you what you're thinking right now! And now! And now! ~ Shannon Messenger

And thou art terrible
the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine. ~ Fitz-Greene Halleck

Why would she pick tunics you don't like?"

"Because they had to ruin them," she said, running her hand over her bare shoulder.

Fitz cleared his throat. "I... wouldn't call that ruined."

He didn't say what he would call it, though, and it made her with her Polyglot ability worked for translating Cute Boy so she could figure out if that was suppose to be a compliment.

It kinda felt like one. ~ Shannon Messenger

Hasheesh is indeed an accursed drug, and the soul at last pays a most bitter price for all its ecstasies; moreover, the use of it is not the proper means of gaining any insight, yet who shall say that at that season of exaltation I did not know things as they are more truly than ever in the ordinary state? Let us not assert that the half-careless and uninterested way in which we generally look on nature is the normal mode of the soul's power of vision. There is a fathomless meaning, an intensity of delight in all our surroundings, which our eyes must be unsealed to see. ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

I always knew Fitz would wind up writing; although I figured he'd be a poet or a storyteller. He would play with language the way other children played with stones and twigs, building structures for the rest of us to decorate with our imagination. ~ Jodi Picoult

He turned away and his hands grabbed something. A tiny purple Albertosaurus, and the note she'd given him with it. If she could've felt her chest, her heart would've skipped a beat. ~ Shannon Messenger

You're bleeding," Fitz interrupted, lifting Sophie's hand and examining her palm. Thin streams of red dripped down her skin. "These look bad, Sophie. You should get them treated."

"I'm fine," she said, trying not to think about the blood, or the fact that Fitz was technically holding her hand, since both things made her head spin way too fast. "Really. It's not a big deal. We don't need to call Elwin. ~ Shannon Messenger

Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked literary gifts, written a series of papers called "The Recluse of Eagle Range," enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a link piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where Charity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in his grave than she did in his library. ~ Edith Wharton

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude. ~ Franny Billingsley

Teenagers travel in droves, packs, swarms ... To the librarian, they're a gaggle of geese. To the cook, they're a scourge of locusts. To department stores, they're a big beautiful exaltation of larks ... all lovely and loose and jingly. ~ Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Let us drink deep brothers,' he cried, leaving off his strange anointment for a while, to lift a great glass, filled with sparkling liquor, to his lips. 'Let us drink to our approaching triumph. Let us drink to the great poison, Macousha. Subtle seed of Death, - swift hurricane that sweeps away Life, - vast hammer that crushes brain and heart and artery with its resistless weight, -I drink to it.'

'It is a noble concoction, Duke Balthazar,' said Madame Filomel, nodding in her chair as she swallowed her wine in great gulps. 'Where did you obtain it?'

'It is made,' said the Wondersmith, swallowing another great draught of wine ere he replied, 'in the wild woods of Guiana, in silence and in mystery. Only one tribe of Indians, the Macoushi Indians, know the secret. It is simmered over fires built of strange woods, and the maker of it dies in the making. The place, for a mile around the spot where it is fabricated, is shunned as accursed. Devils hover over the pot in which it stews; and the birds of the air, scenting the smallest breath of its vapour from far away, drop to earth with paralysed wings, cold and dead.'

'It kills, then, fast?' asked Kerplonne, the artificial-eye maker, - his own eyes gleaming, under the influence of the wine, with a sinister lustre, as if they had been fresh from the factory, and were yet untarnished by use.

'Kills?' echoed the Wondersmith, derisively; 'it is swifter than thunderbolts, stronger than lightni ~ Fitz-James O'Brien

Strike-for your altars and your fires;
Strike-for the green graves of your sires;
God-and your native land! ~ Fitz-Greene Halleck

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
("The Wondersmith") ~ Fitz-James O'Brien