Squiggling Letter Quotes

The mayor informed General Petronio San Roman of the episode, down to the last literal phrase, in an alarming telegram. General San Roman must have followed his son's wishes to the letter, because he didn't come for him, but sent his wife with their daughters and two other older women who seemed to be her sisters. They came on a cargo boat, locked in mourning up to their necks because of Bayardo San Roman's misfortunes, and with their hair hanging loose in grief. Before stepping onto land, they took off their shoes and went barefoot through the streets up to the hilltop in the burning dust of noon, pulling out strands of hair by the roots and wailing loudly with such high-pitched shrieks that they seemed to be shouts of joy. I watched them pass from Magdalena Oliver's balcony, and I remember thinking that distress like theirs could only be put on in order to hide other, greater shames. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Fear is only a four letter word. ~ Jeff Hardy

Sometimes he feels a pull towards Francesca. She was the reason he came into the group. It was her misery that united them and somehow her personality that kept them together when everyone split. She's the one that writes the letter to kept the world informed. She listens to the news every hour to make sure everyone's safe. So tonight he walks away even though she's moved forward to give him a hug. Because he wants to kiss her, and knows she'll hate him for it and that he'll hate himself. He knows it's for all the wrong reasons and that he'll end up thinking of Tara Finke and her Brazilian peacekeeper and will Trombal and how he doesn't do romance, but it eats the space between him and Francesca every time he's in the room with her. ~ Melina Marchetta

All the plots of hell and commotions on earth have not so much as shaken God's hand to spoil one letter or line he has been drawing. ~ William Gurnall

if a prophet predicted that "next week a dog will bite a mailman" and a historian recorded that during that week "a cur sank its teeth into a letter carrier ~ Joseph Atwill

Dear Tully
I know you won't be able to stand my fucking funeral. You're not the star. I hope you at least had the photos of me airbrushed. There are so many things I should say to you, but in our lifetime we've said them all.
Take care of Johnny and the kids for me, okay? Teach the boys how to be gentlemen and Marah how to be strong. When they're ready, give them my journal and tell them about me when they ask. The truth, too. I want them to know it all.
It's going to be hard on you, now. That's one of the things I regret the most. So, here's what I have to say in my beyond-the-grave letter (very dramatic, don't you think?):
I know you'll be thinking that I left you, but it's not true. All you have to do is remember Firefly Lane, and you'll find me.
There will always be a TullyandKate.
BFF <3
Kate ~ Kristin Hannah

You're not very good at this," Emma said, laughing at the frustration on Sean's face.
He pulled his hand out from under the back of her T-shirt. "You're distracting me."
"How am I distracting you?" She shook the bag at Sean, reminding him to pull two letter tiles to replace the C and the T he'd used to make CAT.
"You look totally hot. And you did it on purpose so I wouldn't be able to concentrate and you'd win."
Emma laughed. Sure, she'd thrown on baggy flannel boxers and an old Red Sox T-shirt after her shower just to seduce him out of triple-word scores. "You not having a shirt on is distracting. And you keep pretending you want to rub my back so you can peek at my tile rack."
"Nothing wrong with checking out your rack." He craned his neck to see better and she shoved him away. It wasn't easy playing Scrabble sitting side by side on the couch, but after a long workday, neither was willing to take the floor. ~ Shannon Stacey

Check the cover letter. In a cover letter, you get actual communication instead of a list of skills, verbs, and years of irrelevance. ~ Jason Fried

When authors write best, or at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master, which will have its own way, putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature; new moulding characters, giving unthought-of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we indeed counteract it?
from a letter to G.H. Lewes, 12 January 1848 ~ Charlotte Bronte

The sun had set in its usual abrupt tropical manner soon after they had made themselves comfortable: night had swept over the sky, showing the eastern stars after the few minutes of twilight, and now on the larboard beam a glowing planet heaved up on the horizon, lying there for a moment like the stern-lantern of some important ship. Martin was a man of peace; Maturin, with certain qualifications, was in principle opposed to violence; yet both had absorbed so much of the man-of-war's and even more the letter of marque's predatory values that they fell silent, staring like tigers at the planet until it rose clear of the sea and betrayed its merely celestial character. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Each and every day, I get
One letter like a bride.
I'm responding to my friend,
Writing late at night:

"On my way into the dark,
I've stopped in white death's den.
My dear, don't leave an evil mark
On another man."

And a brilliant star gleams
Between two trees at night,
Calmly promising that dreams
Will soon be satisfied. ~ Anna Akhmatova

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different from a phone call or fax. It's a different kind of intimacy. That pervaded the entire business of writing and publishing. ~ James Salter

There's another quote on the act of writing letters, have a look: Letter writing is a truly anachronistic genre, a sort of tardy inheritance of the eighteenth century; those who lived at that time believed in the pure truth of the written word. And we? Times have changed; words are lost with ever greater ease; you can see them float on the waters of history; sink, come up again, mixed in by the current with the water hyacinths. ~ Ricardo Piglia

And I refuse to feel guilty about not letter-writing either. There are times when one can, times when one can't. In the times when an enormous amount of living is going on, one can't. ~ May Sarton

It is perhaps fortunate that Sylvia was oblivious to the commotion behind the scenes. Apparently, Henry O. Teltscher had written a letter to Betsy Talbot Blackwell, warning her that one of her guest editors was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. ~ Elizabeth Winder

Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent. ~ Michelangelo Buonarroti

Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God's essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? ~ Reza Aslan

Grief is not very different from illness: in the impetus of its fire it does not recognise lords, it does not fear colleagues, it does not respect or spare anyone, not even itself.
[First letter to Pope Celestine (1193)] ~ Eleanor Of Aquitaine

Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter - leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. (letter 96) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Even toward the middle of the century, there were occasions when the London mailbag for Edinburgh was found to contain only a single letter. ~ Bernard Bailyn

Has it ever occurred to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes." He ran an eye over the hilt, plain cold metal scored with faint grooves for a good grip, glinting in the torchlight. "But a sword... a sword has a voice."

"Eh?"

"Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear." He wrapped his fingers tightly round the grip. "A gentle warning. A word of caution. Do you hear it?"

Logen nodded slowly. "Now," murmured Bayaz, "compare it to the sword half drawn." A foot length of metal hissed out of the sheath, a single silver letter shining near the hilt. The blade itself was dull, but its edge had a cold and frosty glint. "It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?"

Logen nodded again, his eye fastened on that glittering edge. "Now compare it to the sword full drawn." Bayaz whipped the long blade from its sheath with a faint ringing sound, brought it up so that the point hovered inches from Logen's face. "It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?"

"Mmm," said Logen, leaning back and staring slightly crosseyed at the shining point of the sword.

Bayaz let it drop and slid it gently back into its scabbard, something ~ Joe Abercrombie

How can you wish on a turkey wishbone with a man who is capable of correcting a love letter? ~ Bel Kaufman

To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy of the benevolent design of a Masonic institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications, that discover the principles which actuate them, may tend to convince mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race.
[Letter to the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, January 1793] ~ George Washington

Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true. How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing? This evening the moon was half, and Leandro said it's dying away. You can tell because it's shaped like the letter C, not curved forward like D. He says when the moon is D like Dios, it is growing to fill God's sky. When dying away it is C, like Cristo on the cross. So, no good tides again for many days. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Early this morning I read about your autumn, and all the colors you brought into your letter were changed back in my feelings and filled my mind to the brim with strength and radiance.
Yesterday, while I was admiring the dissolving brightness of autumn here, you were walking through that other autumn back home, which is painted on red wood, as this one's painted on silk. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It's like a haunted house we can't leave,' Neil said.
A haunted house we're afraid to leave, Tony thought. ~ Christopher Pike

I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
[Comment on establishing Jefferson's University of Virginia, a secular college, in a letter to Thomas Cooper 7 October 1814] ~ Thomas Jefferson

Never will she be mine; never. I never brought a flush to her cheek, and it is not I who now have made it so chalk-white. And never will she slip across the street in the night, with anxiety in her heart and a letter to me.
Life has passed me by.
[..] I have got new curtains for my study; pure white. When I awoke this morning, I first thought it had been snowing. In my room the light was exactly as it is after the first fall of snow. I even fancied I caught the scent of snow freshly fallen. And soon it will come, the snow. One feels it in the air.
It will be welcome. Let it come. Let it fall. ~ Hjalmar Soderberg

Nathaniel, who has failed as a writer, decides to commit suicide. He loads his revolver, places it at his side on his desk, and starts to write his letter of farewell. The letter lengthens, brightens, breathes, lives. It is the Masterpiece, the yearned-for Masterpiece! In order to publish it, Nathaniel does not commit suicide. ~ Enrique Anderson Imbert

If she dis her letter opener into her brandy, she can stab him in the neck. It will be a race to see whether he dies of the poison or the blood loss. ~ Kendare Blake

The walls are covered -crammed- with writing. No. Not writing. They are covered with a single four-letter word that has been inscribed over and over, on every available surface.
Love. ~ Lauren Oliver

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. ~ Paul Fussell

There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before - blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't someh ~ Mark Twain

We have, then, three Books wholly and one partially written before, and two after, the Preface; and only one of the first four is consistent with it, while the two later are entirely in agreement with it. In the first group, the adventure which fits into the scheme in the Letter is the first of all, which is a significant fact. If Spenser were somewhat hastily reconstructing his scheme he would naturally test its coherence with what he had already written in the first Book and perhaps re-write certain passages. He may have forgotten the details of Books II and III or Raleigh's urgency may have left no time for the adjustment of the details.

These discrepancies are all connected with the twelve days' Feast and Gloriana's appointment of the knights, and this part may well have been suggested by Raleigh. He probably intended the poem not only to make Spenser's fortune at court but also to reinstate himself in the Queen's favour. In the circumstances he would wish to make the reference to the Queen as clear and as flattering as possible. ~ Janet Spens

The poor little thing, she'd saved this student's letter as a treasure and had run to fetch this precious treasure of hers, not wanting me to leave without knowing that she too was the object of sincere, honest love, and that someone exists who had spoken to her respectfully. Probably that letter was fated to lie in her box without results. But that didn't matter; I'm sure that she'll guard it as a treasure her whole life, as her pride and vindication; and now, at a moment like this, she remembered it and brought it out to exult naively before me, to raise her self in my eyes, so that I could see it for myself and could also think well of her."
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain ~ Michael J. McManus

This is why journeys are useful, they enlarge the space that is around us. ~ Henri Matisse

I don't know why people start thank you notes with the word 'just'. Just a quick note to thank you for a wonderful time. Just wanted to say thanks for everything. It reduces expecations right from the start. It says: I understand the importance of saying thank you, but I won't be writing a letter. It says: I'd like to follow the best social conventions, but I won't be spending that much time on it. I've even seen stationery that has "Just a note" printed on the front. If you start there, why write the note at all? Consider the synonyms: merely, barely. Would you write: barely a note to thank you for the visit? Merely a hasty parargaph to acknowledge all you did for me? ~ Jessica Francis Kane

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.
[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839] ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Love is just a four letter word! (laughter) Because that's what it is for me! I don't know what it means... I mean, love didn't work, whatever the hell that is, in my life. Alone I am. I'm not particularly into self-love either. I'm quite prepared to die. And all the objects of my love slowly trail off. ~ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

This Bible of Mine? It is the breath of God spoken into my weary bones. It is the armor I need to walk the roads He has chosen for me, and it's the confirmation of promises that withstand the test of hours and adversity.
It's a love letter, and it has my name on it.
It has your name on it. ~ Angie Smith

What the devil happened to you?" Richard asked with amazement as he led Robert to the bed.
"I was shot," Daniel said.
Richard frowned, but Robert snapped, "It was probably the Fates punishing you."
"Punishing me for what?" he asked with surprise.
"For breaking Suzette's heart," he growled. "She was crushed when she got your letter. ~ Lynsay Sands

To whoever will listen.

I've been thinking about black holes a lot. How their gravity is so strong it bends time and space. How you'd be stretched down to atoms passing the event horizon.

I kind of feel like I'm being stretched to atoms. Like I'm falling apart and becoming so metaphorically thin that I'm transparent. But, as nothing that happens past the event horizon affects the universe outside of it, nothing that I'm feeling is affecting anyone in the outside world, either.

The event horizon is a point of no return. Nothing, not even light, can escape it.

I wonder what will happen when I pass the event horizon and fully submerge myself into the black hole.

There are theories that if you enter a blackhole under a specific angle, you'll survive and hit the bottom of it. The chances are incredibily small.

I doubt I'll survive. ~ Emily Trunko