quotation debate, part II

[Hyakujo's Fox]

Sometimes I'm so sweet even I can't stand it.

~ Julie Andrews

[trisherina]

align yourself
resign yourself
if you don't know who you are you can remind yourself

-- Bottle Rockets

[12"razormix]

well, i know who you are
and what league you played in

bob dylan

[zero]

it wasn't him, charley, it was you. remember that night in the garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, "kid, this ain't your night. we're going for the price on wilson." you remember that? "this ain't your night"! my night! i coulda taken wilson apart! so what happens? he gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do i get? a one-way ticket to palookaville! you was my brother, charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. you shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so i wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money ... you don't understand, i coulda had class. i coulda been a contender. i coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what i am, let's face it. it was you, charley.

marlon brando - on the waterfront

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

... Games and sports aren’t about taking part or even about winning. Games and sports’re really about humiliating your enemies...

... About a third of the Runners got captured and turned into Bulldogs for the next pass. I hate that about British Bulldogs. It forces you to be a traitor...

... I just lay there and let them convert me into a Bulldog. In my heart I’d always be a Runner...

David Mitchell: Black Swan Green

[Veruki]

Who are you really? And what were you before? And what did you do? And what did you think?
~Rick Blaine-Casablanca

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

The weekend stretched ahead of him, one football game the extent of his plans. His living room was wreathed in shadows and cigarette smoke. He kept thinking of selling the flat, finding somewhere with fewer ghosts. Then again, they were the only company he had: dead colleagues, victims, expired relationships. He reached again for the bottle, but it was empty. Stood up and watched the floor sway beneath him. He thought he had a fresh bottle in the carrier bag beneath the window, but the bag was empty and crumpled. He looked out of his window, catching his reflection and its puzzled frown. Had he left a bottle in the car? Had he brought home two bottles or just one? He thought of a dozen places where he could get a drink. The city – his city – was out there waiting for him, waiting to show its dark, shrivelled heart.

Ian Rankin: Set in Darkness

[Hyakujo's Fox]

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

~ Charles Dickens

[Marcus Bales]

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
--Raymond Chandler

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

And there would be the part she most enjoyed, the team get-together at the end of the day when AD, herself and Benton-Smith would ponder over the evidence, picking up, discarding or clicking the clues into place as they might the pieces of a jigsaw. But she knew the root of the small sprig of shame. Although they had never spoken of it she suspected that AD felt the same. With this jigsaw the pieces were the broken lives of men and women.

P.D. James: The Lighthouse

[Marcus Bales]

Be as decent as you can. Don't believe without evidence. Treat things divine with marked respect -- don't have anything to do with them. Do not trust humanity without collateral security; it will play you some scurvy trick. Remember that it hurts no one to be treated as an enemy entitled to respect until he shall prove himself a friend worthy of affection. Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths. And, finally, most important of all, endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.

-- Ambrose Bierce

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

We always stand on an island,’ she said, ‘the cold place of not knowing, and not being able to care.

William Brodrick: the gardens of the dead

[12"razormix]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, 'Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know.' He stared telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: 'This story isn't too long.' But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, 'Uh-oh, this story is getting long.' But then the story was over, and I said to myself: 'You know, that story wasn't too long after all.' I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though."

Jack Handey

[Marcus Bales]

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
– HL Mencken

[12"razormix]

why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

nonny jalal ad-din rumi