Iris And Littleberry Quotes

Later, when I walked Littleberry out to his Vespa, he asked if he could kiss me.
'Well, yeah,' I said, my heart thumping. Finally.
'I'm a really good kisser,' he added, as if I still needed him to talk me into it. ~ Steve Watkins

An eternity later, they reached what he thought might be the end, and King Henry waved his turkey leg in the air, loudly proclaiming, "This land shall be mine, henceforth and forevermore!"
And indeed, it seemed that all was lost for the poor, sweet shepherdess and her strangely changeable flock. But just then, there was a mighty roar -
"Is there a lion?" Richard wondered.
- and the unicorn burst onto the scene!
"Die!" the unicorn shrieked. "Die! Die! Die!"
Richard looked to Iris in confusion. The unicorn had not thus demonstrated an ability to speak.
Henry's scream of terror was so chilling, the woman behind Richard murmured, "This is surprisingly well acted."
Richard stole another look at Iris; her mouth was hanging open as Henry leapt over a cow and ran behind the piano, only to trip over the littlest sheep, who was still licking the piano leg.
Henry scrambled for purchase, but the (possibly rabid) unicorn was too fast, and it ran headfirst (and head down) toward the frightened king, plunging its horn into his large, pillowed belly.
Someone screamed, and Henry went down, feathers flying.
"I don't think this was in the script," Iris said in a horrified whisper. ~ Julia Quinn

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points. ~ Iris Johansen

Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage. ~ Iris Murdoch

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--'visions' is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art 'copying from life' and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

We fell in love with that little peep-show projection on the inside of an iris, pictures that amount to nothing more than the thirsty moon over a spot of bloody ground. Those weren't the nothings we restless sleepwalkers knew, no place no home no song. So we heard her and we followed until she went where we couldn't follow.

She went down beyond the mountains and disappeared between the crease of sky and land, like a great eyelid folding shut. No one knows what happened out in the Black Hills, but I imagine she lies buried in a rusty coffin under the stars. And on nights when the desert crickets sing her tune, they say one day she will rise again. On that day, there is no telling the kind of vengeance she'll demand of us. Fair is fair.

They say when she fell from Heaven she wore a crown of jagged stars that slit the skies throat. They say she loved them all, in the secret corners of their shallow sleep. Strangers, at the last. They say a lot of things. They're all lies. Everything is already written. ~ James Curcio

Goodness appears to be both rare and hard to picture. It is perhaps most convincingly met with in simple people - inarticulate, unselfish mothers of large families - but these cases are also the least illuminating. ~ Iris Murdoch

He had never dreamed anyone would ever care enough to venture into the darkness to pull him into the light. He felt bewildered and awkward and filled with a strange sense of wonder. And a stranger sense of grace. ~ Iris Johansen

You have to know yourself and know what you can carry. If you're not comfortable, no matter how well dressed you are, you're not going to look right. I'd rather be happy and feel comfy. ~ Iris Apfel

I accused Hartley of being a 'fantasist', or perhaps that was Titus's word, but what a 'fantasist' I have been myself. I was the dreamer, I the magician. How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality. Hartley had been right when she said of our love that it was not part of the real world. It had no place. ~ Iris Murdoch

Can I have this?" Iris asked in her honeydew voice, holding up one of the novels I'd brought her so that Amy could see the cover.
"Sorry, hot man is all out at the moment. We have some corpulent taxi driver and a slice of crazy cat-lady left, but we ran out of hot man hours ago. ~ Nicole Peeler

And I was upset to find how really reluctant I was to leave my little flat. It was as if I was almost frightened. Spasms of prophetic homesickness pierced me as I rearranged the china and dusted it with my handkerchief, obsessive visions of burglaries and desecrations. ~ Iris Murdoch

You've obviously never been in love."

"I have actually. And awfully. And - always - without hope - I've never had my love reciprocated ever. ~ Iris Murdoch

And oh, when we still used to sleep together, lying awake at night and finding one's only consolation in imagining in detail how one would go downstairs and find a hatchet and smash one's partners head in and mash it into a bloody pudding on the pillow! ~ Iris Murdoch

I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate. ~ Iris Apfel

But jealousy is a dreadful thing, Jessica. It is the most natural to us of the really wicked passions and it goes deep and envenoms the soul. It must be resisted with every honest cunning and with the deliberate thinking of generous thoughts, however abstract and empty these may seem in comparison with that wicked strength... There is no merit, Jessica, in a faithfulness which is poison to you and captivity to him. ~ Iris Murdoch

Technologically, I live in the 17th century; I don't have a computer, I don't have any of that stuff. I don't look at the Internet, although I know people tell me I'm all over it. Somebody told me they Googled me, and they said I was mentioned two million times, some stupid thing ... but who cares? ~ Iris Apfel

Your best friends are in trouble and you say 'of course' and forget them instantly. ~ Iris Murdoch

Controlling for a large number of additional variables, they found that firms with at least one woman among the first hires were more successful and stayed longer in the market than all-male start-ups. ~ Iris Bohnet

I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am empty, cleaned the fuck out. All that's left is a fierce hunger for flight. ~ David Arnold

You can change the look of an outfit so easily by changing the kind of jewellery you wear. If you have a basic outfit on - a black sweater and skirt or a simple black dress - you can go from the office to a cocktail party at night just by changing your jewellery. It helps if you change your shoes as well. ~ Iris Apfel

I have ideas that I think might be amusing, and I try them, and if they look right, I carry them out, and if they don't, I throw them out and try something else. I don't agonize about it. ~ Iris Apfel

Only take someone's hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever. ~ Iris Murdoch

Girls don't want men to be quiet and gentle, I'm told. If you're not panting with impatient lust they think you're not interested. ~ Iris Murdoch

What in your life is calling you, When all the noise is silenced, The meetings adjourned ... The lists laid aside, And the Wild Iris blooms By itself In the dark forest ... What still pulls on your soul? ~ Rumi

...my savior and my torment. ~ Iris Ann Hunter

However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after. ~ Iris Murdoch

Thus the activity of preservation should be distinguished from the nostalgia accompanying fantasies of a lost home from which the subject is separated and to which he seeks to return. Preservation entails remembrance, which is quite different from nostalgia. ~ Iris Marion Young

White magic is black magic. a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards. ~ Iris Murdoch

That was true, Iris would sometimes think, about marriage: it was only a boat, too. A wooden boat, difficult to build, even more difficult to maintain, whose beauty derived at least in part from its unlikelihood. Long ago the pragmatic justifications for both marriage and wooden-boat building had been lost or superseded. Why invest countless hours, years, and dollars in planing and carving, gluing and fastening, caulking and fairing, when a fiberglass boat can be had at a fraction of the cost? Why struggle to maintain love and commitment over decades when there were far easier ways to live, ones that required no effort or attention to prevent corrosion and rot? Why continue to pour your heart into these obsolete arts? Because their beauty, the way they connect you to your history and to the living world, justifies your efforts. A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance. At first your notions of your life with another were no more substantial than a pattern laid down in plywood. Then year by year you constructed the frame around the form, and began layering memories, griefs, and small triumphs like strips of veneer planking bent around the hull of everyday routine. You sanded down the rough edges, patched the misunderstandings, faired the petty betrayals. Sometimes you sprung a leak. You fell apart in rough weather or were smashed on devouring rocks. But then, as now, in the teeth of a storm, ~ Ayelet Waldman

I suppose. I do hope Charlotte thinks to give her an extra day
off this week." Lady Winstead gave a little nod, as if agreeing with
herself. "I believe I will go find her right now and make that
suggestion. It is the least we can do. Miss Wynter truly saved the
day."
Honoria and Iris watched her leave, then Iris said, "I suppose it
depends upon your definition of the word 'saved. ~ Julia Quinn

I find that if I get up and push myself, I get lost in what I'm doing, and I forget about everything else until I stop doing it. ~ Iris Apfel

There is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are. ~ Iris Murdoch

One knows what being in love is like and it is a very terrible thing. ~ Iris Murdoch

Find Nardik, and we'll find Hu Chang." "It will be okay, Catherine," he said quietly. "I know you're ~ Iris Johansen