Android FBreader screen grabs

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading nowadays. Every now and then I happen upon good writing. These resonate with me, so instead of taking a screen capture, I’m re-posting here instead where someone, someday might perhaps admire (and go read the book).

Brooks, Terry

A Knight of the Word

• I was just in the neighborhood, and decided to stop by, share a few laughs, maybe see if you’re in the market for a boyfriend.
• The horror of what had happened enveloped and consumed him. It haunted his sleep and destroyed his peace of mind. He could not function. He sat paralyzed in small rooms far away from San Sobel, trying to regain his sense of purpose. He had experienced failure before, but nothing with consequences that were so dramatic and so personal. He had thought he could handle anything, but he wasn’t prepared for this.
• He cried often, and he ached deep inside. He replayed the events over and over in his head, trying to decide what it was he had done wrong.
• We are homeless in the streets and we are homeless in our hearts as well. We have no purpose in the world. We have no center. Our way of life was changed for us long ago, and it will never return.
• We are a people under siege, walled away from each other and the world, trying to fend a safe path through the debris of hate and rage that collects around us. We drive our cars as if they were weapons. We use our children and friends as if their love and trust were expendable and meaningless. We think of ourselves first and others second. We lie and cheat and steal in little ways, thinking it unimportant, justifying it by telling ourselves that others do it, too. We have no patience with the mistake of others. We have no empathy for their despair. We have no compassion for their misery.
• What we have in life we can count our own is who we are, and where we come from, she thought absently.

Running with the Demon

• Doubts set in. Had he dreamed it all? Had he imagined her? Or worse, had he mistaken her intent? What if the great purpose he had envisioned, the purpose for which he had searched so long, was a lie? Doubts turned to mistrust. What if he had been deceived? He was beset by nightmares that woke him shaking and chilly on the hottest nights, sweaty and fiery on the coldest nights.

The Elfstones of Shannara

• Give thought to the purpose for those questions. Give thought to their source. Hurt gives way to bitterness, bitterness to anger. Travel too far that road, and the way is lost.

The Elves of Cintra

• Her presence comforted him as nobody else could, and he was grateful for her beyond anything worlds could express.

The First King of Shannara

• Time stole away commitments and loosened ties. Friendship were reduced to tales of the past and vague promises for the future, neither strong enough to recover what was lost. But that was what life did - it took you down separate roads until one day you found yourself alone.
• That’s how it is with parents and children. Each disappoints the other n ways that neither recognizes nor intends, and it takes time to overcome that disappointment.
• But it marked you. For a time, but not in any lasting way. Perhaps it even helped toughen me. I don’t pretend to know. We grow as best we can under the circumstances given us. What good does it do to second-guess ourselves years after the fact? Better that we simply try to understand why we are as we are and then better ourselves by learning from that.

The Gypsy Morph

• He says nothing in response, but words are not necessary when she feels the gentle squeeze of his hand over hers. He understands. He is happy, too. They walk for a long time, content just to be with each other, like father and daughter, like family. She thinks of them this way, of herself as his daughter, him as her father. There is more to family than shared blood. There is trust and friendship and commitment. She is only eight years old, but she already knows this.

Card, Orson Scott

Ender’s Game

• The story of Ender’s Game is not this book though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you. remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.
• I didn’t want to see you. They told me. I was afraid I’d still love you. I hoped that you would. My fear, your wish – both granted.
• I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

Gaiman, Neil

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• An admission about myself: as a very small boy, perhaps three or four years old, I could be a monster. “You were a momzer,” several aunts told me, on different occasions, once I had safely reached adulthood and my dreadful infant deeds could be recalled with wry amusement. But I don’t actually remember being a monster. I just remember wanting my own way.

Galbraith, Robert

The Cuckoo’s Calling

• A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.

Hamm, Trent

Ten Pieces of Inspiration #158

• Some of the biggest mistakes in my life have come from giving up on relationships because they happened to not be easy at the moment.