"I have never been able to write the story. I reach a certain point and cannot go on. The death of kings can be recited, but not of one’s child."

James Salter Military See all quotes by James Salter →

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“As his prick goes into her, he discovers the world. He knows the source of numbers, the path of the stars.”

“He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived. He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights.”

“France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can love her.”

“A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.”

“The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.”

“...she is simply the living portion of the meal.”

Resonant Thoughts

"In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death…"

— Cormac McCarthy

Literature1933–2023

#death

"Fun seems to be a three-letter word these days, although with directors like Tim Burton and George Lucas, it's fun, fun, fun while working yourself to death. But if you compare those Hammer movies to …"

— Christopher Lee

Literature1941–2021

#time

"When we understand that privileged people derive material benefits from the exploitation of oppressed people, and that this means we benefit from the violence used to keep them down, we cannot sincere…"

— Peter Gelderloos

Social Activism1982

#knowledge

"In 1990, I broke the story that, instead of being worth billions, as he'd claimed, Trump actually had a negative net worth and escaped a chaotic collapse into personal bankruptcy only when the governm…"

— David Cay Johnston

Economics1948

#philosophy