baby lin is the owner of the idea

1984, George Orwell (1949)

❝Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me

There lie they, and here lie we

Under the spreading chestnut tree.❞

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1943)

❝Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.❞

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

❝Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.❞

On The Road: The Original Scroll, Jack Kerouac (1957/2007)

❝My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.❞

Candide Ou L'Optimisme, Voltaire (1759)

❝I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?❞

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960)

❝Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.❞

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (1982)

❝There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.❞

Battle Royale, Koushun Takami (1999)

❝We're still on the run. That's for sure.

Right on. This time we're on.

And we won't stop till we win.❞

The King Lear, William Shakespeare (1608)

❝When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.❞

Romeo And Juliet, William Shakespeare (1597)

❝For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.❞

Othello, William Shakespeare (1603)

❝O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.❞

The Stand, Stephen King (1978)

❝Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.❞

A Game Of Thrones, George R. R. Martin (1996)

❝When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.❞

A Dance With Dragons, George R. R. Martin (2011)

❝Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter… but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.❞

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (1939)

❝Ten little soldier boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were Nine.

Nine little soldier boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were Eight.

Eight little soldier boys traveling in Devon; One said he’d stay there and then there were Seven.

Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six.

Six little soldier boys playing with a hive; A bee stung one and then there were Five.

Five little soldier boys going in for law; One got into chancery and then there were Four.

Four little soldier boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three.

Three little soldier boys walking in the Zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were Two.

Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was One.

One little soldier boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself

And then there were None.❞

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1934)

❝The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.❞

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky (1999)

❝So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.❞

As Parceiras, Lya Luft (1980)

❝Então a traidora não era só a morte: era a vida também, a parceira, a outra bruxa soprando velas na noite.❞

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling (1999)

❝You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?❞

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)

❝If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.❞

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, J.K. Rowling (2003)

❝Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.❞

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (2007)

❝'You'll stay with me?'

'Until the very end,' said James❞

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)

❝The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.❞

The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)

❝In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.❞

The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956)

❝'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.'❞

Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)

❝All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.❞

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, Neil Gaiman (2013)

❝Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.❞

The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice (1998)

❝If I am an angel, paint me with black wings.❞

Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice (1976)

❝Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.❞

The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice (1985)

❝Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.❞

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1843)

❝It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.❞

The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver (1997)

❝The human creature is so astonishing, but count on it before anything else to be just that - a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason - a motive that will move the beast towards its desires.❞

O Cortiço, Aluísio Azevedo (1890)

❝E naquela terra encharcada e fumegante, naquela umidade quente e lodosa, começou a minhocar, a esfervilhar, a crescer, um mundo, uma coisa viva, uma geração, que parecia brotar espontânea, ali mesmo, daquele lameiro, e multiplicar-se como larvas no esterco.❞

Dune, Frank Herbert (1965)

❝Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!❞

Das Parfum, Patrick Süskind (1985)

❝For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn't escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who couldn't defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.❞

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1963)

❝I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.❞

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty (2015)

❝Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create❞

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)

❝Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.❞

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak (2005)

❝I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.❞

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom (2003)

❝All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.❞

Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

❝Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.❞

sep 27 2017 ∞
jan 3 2021 +