Richard > Richard's Quotes

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“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.”
― Stephen King , The Stand

“Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain.”
― George P. Pelecanos, The Night Gardener

“The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it just the same.”
― George Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

“the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would some day come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“I sit on the bench in front of Bell's Market and think about Homer Buckland and about the beautiful girl who leaned over to open his door when he come down that path with the full red gasoline can in his right hand - she looked like a girl of no more than sixteen, a girl on her learner's permit, and her beauty was terrible, but I believe it would no longer kill the man it turned itself on; for a moment her eyes lit on me, I was not killed, although a part of me died at her feet." (from the short story Mrs. Todd's Shortcut)”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Your first family is your blood family and you always be true to that. That means something. But there's another family and that's the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they're as much blood as your first family. Maybe more so, because they don't have to look out for you and they don't have to love you. They choose to.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Mouse was the truest friend I ever had. And if there is such a thing as true evil, he was that too.”
― Walter Mosley, A Red Death

“You already been a punk. Least you can do is go out like a man." Then a dull popping sound and a quiet splash.”
― George P. Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

“We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.”
― George P. Pelecanos, Soul Circus

“Mrs. Turner gripped my baby finger.

It's amazing how a man can feel sex anywhere on his body.”
― Walter Mosley, A Little Yellow Dog

“Grief, I swear to God, doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the senses. And sometimes, all I want to do is cut off my nose so I can't smell her, hack my fingers off at the joint.”
― Dennis Lehane, Sacred

“He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor! what care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.”
― William Shakespeare

“Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and all Montagues.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“He hath disgrac'd me and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones