Drabkin Oliver Quotes

Some things are unchangeably wild, others are stolidly tame. The tiger is wild, and the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are tame. There are wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in both worlds. ~ Mary Oliver

The Negro loves America enough to criticize her fundamentally. Most white Americans simply can't be bothered. ~ John Oliver Killens

I've been drinking. Now I'm going to drink some more. ~ Oliver Reed

Free will? Either you follow the word of God, or you'll be punished with eternal hellfire. That's the same kind of "choice" an abuse boyfriend gives you: 'Either you do exactly what I say, or I'll beat the shit out of you. ~ Oliver Gaspirtz

The Snow Cricket

Just beyond the leaves and the white faces
Of the lilies,
I saw the wings
Of the green snow cricket
As it went flying
From vine to vine,
Searching, then finding a shadowed place in which
To sing and sing…
One repeated
Rippling phrase
Built of loneliness
And its consequences: longing
And hope…
It was trembling
With the force of its crying out,
And in truth I couldn't wait to see if another would come to it
For fear that it wouldn't,
And I wouldn't be able to bear it
I wished it good luck, with all my heart,
And went back over the lawn, to where the lilies were standing
On their calm, cob feet,
Each in the ease
Of a single, waxy body
Breathing contentedly in the chill night air;
And I swear I pitied them, as I looked down
into the theater of their perfect faces-
That frozen, bottomless glare. ~ Mary Oliver

And, of course, we kiss. We kiss so much that when we're not kissing it feels weird, like I get used to breathing through his lips and into his mouth. ~ Lauren Oliver

I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Don't deny that you have feelings for this girl! We've seen it!" Andrew said.
"Hush, you're annoying," Oliver muttered. "I assure you that my relationship with Sophie doesn't overstep the boundaries of friendship, not that it's any of your business. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to ask her politely and cordially to come and sleep in my bed. ~ Zeinab Alayan

In truth, nothing was the same. She forgot about the stars ... and taking notice of the sea. She was no longer filled with all the curiosities of the world and didn't take much notice of anything ... other than how heavy ... and awkward the bottle had become. ~ Oliver Jeffers

Memory is as thick as mud. It rises up, it overwhelms. It sucks you down and freezes you where you stand. Thrash and kick and gnash your teeth. There's no escaping it. ~ Lauren Oliver

But the guilt goes even deeper than that. It, too, is dust: Layers and layers of it have accumulated. Because if it weren't for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all.
I told on them.
I was jealous.
God forgive me, for I have sinned. ~ Lauren Oliver

Stupid, stupid-to be so careless with our time, to believe we had so much of it left. ~ Lauren Oliver

A free world is also a world of fracture ~ Lauren Oliver

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. ~ Oliver Cromwell

It is ever the case in war that beauty is destroyed in the stampede for victory." His ~ Oliver J. Tooley

If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on. ~ Oliver Stone

And in my books it is my desire to tell of the lives of the wild things which I know as they are actually lived. It is not my desire to humanize them. If we are to love wild animals so much that we do not want to kill them we MUST KNOW THEM AS THEY ACTUALLY LIVE. And in their lives, in the facts of their lives, there is so much of real and honest romance and tragedy, so much that makes them akin to ourselves that the animal biographer need not step aside from the paths of actuality to hold one's interest. ~ James Oliver Curwood

I am an expert swordsman. And I am skilled in the business of death. I take no pleasure in my skill. Simply, I am good at it. ~ Oliver Bowden

I don't trust people who don't use profanity. ~ Mark Oliver Everett

Premonitions of becomings, of joy and apotheosis bore me laughing through my days. ~ Edgar Oliver

She was a journeyman trapper and caretaker of Denver Beck's heart. Even Hell knew her name.
Blackthorne's daughter would never settle for "okay" ever again.
From now on, it's awesome or nothing. ~ Jana Oliver

Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. ~ Lauren Oliver

The wasp sits on the porch of her paper castle. ~ Mary Oliver

To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air. ~ Mary Oliver

...Admiring is easy, but affinity,
that does take some time. ~ Mary Oliver

Everything ends, people move on, they don't look back. It's how they should be. ~ Lauren Oliver

What makes a good book? An author who knows how to leave out all the unnecessary bulk and delivers a lean story where not a single word is fluff. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Because my life without you would be
a place of parched and broken trees ... ~ Mary Oliver

Whether we deserve this or not, whether these turn out to be the darkest days of our lives or the brightest happiness, we've been guided by love. How can we go wrong when we're guided by love, Olivia. ~ Morgan Parker

Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement. ~ Oliver Sacks

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention ... ~ Mary Oliver

But the feeling of a limb as a sensory and motor part of oneself seems to be innate, built-in, hardwired - and this supposition is supported by the fact that people born without limbs may nonetheless have vivid phantoms in their place.4 ~ Oliver Sacks

Why Mr. Dickens, in his biography of that particular moment, preferred to focus on the adventures of the orphan parish child, Oliver Twist, remains a matter of speculation and mystery to all subsequent scribes of those long-departed times: of a London nearly two centuries gone, back when it was a pox-infested, grimy, depressing, fog-bound, class-favoring, sprawling, noxious, odorous, and overall distasteful place in which to live and breathe and sicken and die - as opposed to modern times, wherein the pox has been largely attended to; so that's progress of a sort. ~ Peter David

Speaking of shooting, my lady," Mr. Pinter said as he came around the table, "I looked over your pistol as you requested. Everything seems to be in order."
Removing it from his coat pocket, he handed it to her, a hint of humor in his gaze. As several pair of male eyes fixed on her, she colored. To hide her embarrassment, she made a great show of examining her gun. He'd cleaned it thoroughly, which she grudgingly admitted was rather nice of him.
"What a cunning little weapon," the viscount said and reached for it. "May I?"
She handed him the pistol.
"How tiny it is," he exclaimed.
"It's a lady's pocket pistol," she told him as he examined it.
Oliver frowned at her. "When did you acquire a pocket pistol, Celia?"
"A little while ago," she said blithely.
Gabe grinned. "You may not know this, Basto, but my sister is something of a sharpshooter. I daresay she has a bigger collection of guns than Oliver."
"Not bigger," she said. "Finer perhaps, but I'm choosy about my firearms."
"She has beaten us all at some time or another at target shooting," the duke said dryly. "The lady could probably hit a fly at fifty paces."
"Don't be silly," she said with a grin. "A beetle perhaps, but not a fly." The minute the words were out of her mouth, she could have kicked herself. Females did not boast of their shooting-not if they wanted to snag husbands.
"You should come shooting with us," Oliver said. "Why not?"
The last thing she n ~ Sabrina Jeffries

I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

I am firmly convinced that you shouldn't necessarily emphasize hedonism, especially at the beginning of a career, but should instead focus entirely on performance. ~ Oliver Kahn

There are more fish taken out of a stream than ever were in it. ~ Oliver Herford

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old - or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give. ~ Mary Oliver

I walk in the world to love it. ~ Mary Oliver

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, ~ Charles Dickens

Education occurs when students set out to educate themselves ... the student will only learn, can only learn, what he chooses to learn ... (An) advantage of not pushing is an innate sense (his) education is (his) responsibility and reward. ~ Oliver DeMille