#sm

Do…you…have…a…hard…time…finding…Steve’s dick?” she enunciated, enjoying Mary’s extreme discomfort. “He’s big as a fuckin’ house so I imagine it might be a bit of a problem.” The New Jersey accent that was still there after more than fifteen years in the south, resurfaced in her aggravation. ↗

— A.T. Hicks

#humor #sarcasm #satire #imagination

There is a vast expanse of time before the Norman Conquest in 1066, from which fragments of literary texts remain, although these fragments make quite a substantial body of work. If we consider that the same expanse of time has passed between Shakespeare's time and now as passed between the earliest extant text and 1066, we can begin to imagine just how much literary expression there must have been. But these centuries remain largely dark to us, apart from a few illuminating flashes and fragments, since almost all of it was never written down, and since most of what was preserved in writing was destroyed later, particularly during the 1530s. ↗

— Ronald Carter

#imagination

I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t. ↗

— Colum McCann

#imagination

I see. I imagined that he was cast out of all decent society". "If society were really decent, he would have been ↗

— George R. Gissing

#victorian-era #women-s-issues #imagination

I have every luxury imaginable, I own acres of land, and have enough money to buy the moon were it for sale. Though people think I have everything, it sometimes feels like my possessions own me; towering over me and reducing me into a small bundle of insignificance. ↗

— J. Matthew Nespoli

#depression #money #possessions #wealth #imagination

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#narcissism #paranoia #self-centeredness #imagination

But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it? ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#homeless-people #life #people #smells #imagination

It is said that God has created man in his own image. But it may be that humankind has created God in the image of humankind. ↗

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

#god #inspirational #inspirational

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#capitalism #inevitability #inspirational #marxism #resistance

We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition. ↗

— William Gibson

#inspirational #life-lessons #inspirational