"Theodore is in the ground."--First sentence from The Alienist, by Caleb Carr.

"They shoot the white girl first."--First sentence from Paradise, by Morrison

The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect. And he was right. But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I think worthy of our awe and our loyalty

Sacred, Dennis Lehane

I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!

- Sevro au Barca

Shelby is a s l u t. She is also my wife.

That is the first 2 sentences in -

Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort of) - Will Clarke

It was a pleasure to burn.

"The small boys came early for the hanging. "

-Pillars of the Earth

Jack Torrance thought, 'officious little *****' - opening line of The Shining.

"All right. Have it your way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault." - The Sun Also Rises

Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an 8 ball in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat

Until Gwen, Dennis Lehane

"Nom."

- Thomas Covenant - The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - The One Tree

All from SM Stirling's Emberverse series.

"If someone is far along a journey to destruction, shall you hate them for waking to their situation, and turning about, and taking even a single halting half step back? Will that encourage them to take a second step, and a third? Or will it minister only to the darkness in our own souls?"

"You cannot undo the past by regret; nor can you avoid the painful consequences of your actions through fear. Both these things are equally impossible. Do not dwell on the past or deny it; do not fear the future. You have a task to do now, and virtue consists of doing it. So get to work!"

"The problem with punishing any sign of wavering harshly, is that once a man or his kin have wavered at all, it's in for a penny, in for a pound, and he must see your head nailed over the door of his hall, because neither he nor his can be safe while you live and have power."

"Don't confuse are winning with have won."

"Better to have the problems of victory than those of defeat."

I don't remember which book, but from Louis L'Amour - "A book is less important for what is says than what it makes you think."

When in doubt turn left.

That's for DAMN sure.

quote:

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I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!

- Sevro au Barca

---

Epic

The major problem-one of the major problems, for there are several-one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

"Death chases all men." - Lan Mandoragan

"Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

"Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it."
-Terry Pratchett's "The Night Watch"

"A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools."

-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

That's my inspirational MySpace quote

I can't recall the exact quote, but it's from A Confedracy of Dunces. I've never laughed out loud in a book before, but that whole letter that ignatious wrote to the pants manufacturer was pure gold.

quote:

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It's easy to be facile about law enforcement. The truth is the good guys are understaffed, overworked, underfunded, and out-gunned. Most of the time the bad guys win, or if they do take a fall, it's because a wrecking ball swings into their lives for reasons that have nothing to do with jurisprudence. If you have ever been a victim of violent crime, or if you have been threatened by deviates or sadists-and by the latter I mean wakened by anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night, surveilled by people you've never seen before, forced to take public transportation because you're afraid to start your car in the morning-then you know that what I'm about to say is an absolute fact: You're on your own.

---

Burke, "In The Moon of Red Ponies"

Some of you have no idea what "that isn't famous" means.

"But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways."

From Knut Hamsun's last novel. This book is probably not that well-read given the closeness of its publication to Hamsun's Nazi support. But most agree that his writing stands above and apart from his unfortunate political views. I've always liked the quote and still use it in business settings.

quote:

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I can't recall the exact quote, but it's from A Confedracy of Dunces. I've never laughed out loud in a book before, but that whole letter that ignatious wrote to the pants manufacturer was pure gold.

---

I've probably only read the book start to finish in order twice, but I don't know how many times I've gotten hooked in by looking for one quote like the Levy Pants letter and ended up reading most of the book again.

Read Station Eleven a couple weeks ago, it is full of quotes that stick with you.
"Hell is the absence of the people you long for"

"Survival is insufficient"

"What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you've lost."

"First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered."

"They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin."

"She was a good woman; she knew better than to cut a pie into more than two pieces." -- Some Louis L'Amour novel, I think it was Tucker, but I can't remember.