Interludes Quotes

A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at bottom comes up."

―Epigrams and Interludes, Section 79 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction
besides unexpected interludes
has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. ~ Yann Martel

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that's lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won't be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival. ~ Jay McInerney

No man can return to being a boy. But there are interludes in a man's life when, for a time, he can recapture the feeling that the world is a forgiving place and that he is immortal. ~ Robin Hobb

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars. ~ Jerry Pournelle

Raccoons don't need to do poppers in order to come while they're having anonymous same-sex interludes in a highway rest area. ~ Doug Stanhope

Her feisty interludes turned him on, and he wanted to push her into situations that encouraged the tigress in her to come out more often. The girl shimmered with untapped sexual potential. Her dick of a husband obviously wasn't able to see what he could see ... ~ Kitty French

War was about yawning chasms of inactivity, punctuated by brief, screaming interludes of action. And in those brief, screaming interludes, events happened both quickly and with dreamlike slowness, every instant burned into memory. ~ Alastair Reynolds

My life had no meaning at all. I found only brief interludes of satisfaction. It was like my whole life had been about my whole basketball career. ~ Pete Maravich

There followed one of those comical interludes in which the jihadists were confused about what to do next and fell to bitter recriminations. ~ Neal Stephenson

life of a professional spy as one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by interludes of sheer terror. ~ Daniel Silva

History, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness. ~ Roberto Bolano

I loved wandering around the bookshelves, scanning the spines until something happened to catch my eye. Those visits were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived. It wasn't like going to a store with my mom, which guaranteed a tug-of-war between what I wanted and what my mother was willing to buy me; in the library I could have anything I wanted. ~ Susan Orlean

Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Don't you sometimes find daily life almost unbearably poetic? Minute curiosity is a requirement of the travel writer – as it is of the biographer, novelist and poet. The significance of the trivial is what makes a piece of travel writing human, not the stuntish business of being the first person to paddle the Congo. Out there on the road, I have often found that the most aimless and boring interludes yield, in the long run, the most fertile material. ~ Sara Wheeler

I wasn't afraid of you!' Ryan protested. 'I was half intimidated, half infatuated, and I didn't know how to act because of it.'
Sin made a face at Ryan and picked up his chips again. 'How could you be infatuated with me when you didn't even know me?'
Ryan scoffed and pointed his cheese-covered fork at Sin. 'You're gorgeous and tragic - gay boys like that kind of thing. ~ Santino Hassell

It doesn't change that I still want him, I still want to be with him, I still feel like the fucking air has been sucked out of the room when he walks in and I still think about him all the time. ~ Santino Hassell

Many believe that they need company at any cost, and certainly if a thing is desired at any cost, it will be obtained at all costs. We need to remember and to teach our children that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone, at times it is positively to be wished for. It is in the interludes between being in company that we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God ~ Maya Angelou

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending. ~ Winston Churchill

Mother loathed the all-black B movies Hollywood made for the "colored" audience, where the stereotypes were broader and more offensive to her, and where the musical interludes did no justice to real talent, she said, but trivialized it. ~ Gayle Pemberton

Perhaps some wine will wash things clean,' suggested Bugg.
'Won't hurt. Pour us some, please. You, guard, come and join us - standing there doing nothing must be a dreadful bore. No need to gape like that, I assure you. Doff that helm and relax - there's another guard just like you on the other side of that door, after all. Let him bear the added burden of diligence. Tell us about yourself. Family, friends, hobbies, scandals - '
'Sire,' warned Bugg.
'Or just join us in a drink and feel under no pressure to say anything at all. This shall be one of those interludes swiftly glossed over in the portentous histories of great and mediocre kings. We sit in the desultory aftermath, oblivious to omens and whatever storm waits behind yonder horizon. Ah, thank you, Bugg - my Queen, accept that goblet and come sit on my knee - oh, don't make that kind of face, we need to compose the proper scene. I insist and since I'm King I can do that, or so I read somewhere. Now, let's see . . . yes, Bugg, stand right over there - oh, massaging your brow is the perfect pose. And you, dearest guard - how did you manage to hide all that hair? And how come I never knew you were a woman? Never mind, you're an unexpected delight - ow, calm down, wife - oh, that's me who needs to calm down. Sorry. Women in uniforms and all that. Guard, that dangling helm is exquisite by the way, take a mouthful and do pass judgement on the vintage, yes, like that, oh, most perfect!
'Now, it's just occu ~ Steven Erikson

The authors we classified as villains, detractors, and bad role models for our children are part of the educational curriculum. Freethinkers and the gutsy ones who pursued love and went against what society preordained are those we admire. The talented that wrote about these adventurous escapades and secret interludes are part of our literary tradition. ~ Julia Ann Charpentier

The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children's books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she'd been a little girl. There hadn't been such books in the Spivak household on County Line Road, nor would there have been any time for such interludes. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/ human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals. - FROM THE TLEILAXU GODBUK ~ Frank Herbert

We are all interludes in history, a drawn breath to make pause in the rush, and when we are gone, those breaths join the chorus of the wind. But who listens to the wind? ~ Steven Erikson

J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. The person himself will think of the real reason. You don't need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists at heart, like to think of motives that sound good. So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives. ~ Dale Carnegie

Some observers compare elections in some countries with sports events, where people are but spectators. Moreover, elections must not be mere interludes for pushing a lever and then retreating to passivity, for democracy demands committed participation in the daily workings of society. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

That's always attractive to me, to work with music whose form is a big question mark. Even many of my favorite bands growing up, when I was just a kid learning to play drums and guitar and everything, were bands like Pink Floyd, where the arrangement, the number of bars in each section is unconventional and often lopsided, and there will be small little instrumental interludes and that sort of thing. So those odd forms, as well as dark content, are the things that I think are continuous through all the type of projects that I've been attracted to. ~ Charlie Clouser

After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf sister--and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the gallery.

The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine; a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of the balcony was critical. It occasionally showed grudging admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.

But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the stage to see the actors' faces and catch the subtler byplay. It can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

And then he has nothing to do. After three weeks-or is it a lifetime?-of ceaseless activity, he has nothing to do. A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction-besides unexpected interludes-has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. For an hour or so, sitting outside on the landing at the top of the stairs, nursing a coffee, tired, a little relieved, a little worried, he contemplates that full stop. What will the next sentence bring? ~ Yann Martel