Favorite Quotes

Some words, sentences, phrases or even paragraphs stand out more than others. Here are some of those that, while reading, made me pause in admiration:

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Young Jose Arcadio
"Then he gave himself over to that hand, and in a terrible state of exhaustion he let himself be led to a shapeless place where his clothes were taken off and he was heaved about like a sack of potatoes and thrown from one side to the other in a bottomless darkness in which his arms were useless, where it no longer smelled of a woman but of ammonia, and where he tried to remember her face and found before him the face of Ursula, confusedly aware that he was doing something that for a very long time he had wanted to do but that he had imagined could really never be done, not knowing what he was doing because he did not know where his feet were or where his head was, or whose feet or whose head, and feeling that he could no longer resist the glacial rumbling of his kidneys and the air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude" (27). 

Building Stories - Chris Ware
...How many albums, dresser drawers, and shoeboxes must I inhabit all over the world, anyway? Just by virtue of being in a certain place at a certain time, I'm stitched forever into the background of some stranger's life tapestry...A painted prop, part of the 'local color'... Somewhere, in somebody's scrapbook, I'm nothing more than one of the universal casting call for the crowd scene...but...what if I was supposed to have a bigger role? I mean, when people's 'paths cross,' is there some higher plan to it all? Do all of these frozen moments just represent accidents, or genuine missed opportunities?

A Fighting Chance - Elizabeth Warren
So what is it about finance that makes women so scarce in the corner offices? ... I do have a thought about why I had ended up in this position: I was an outsider. I had never inhabited the cozy world of high finance, never played golf with a foursome of CEOs, never smoked cigars at the club.
Some people argue that if you're never in the club, you simply can't understand it. But in this case, I think not being in the club means never drinking the club's Kool-Aid. I had studied the banking system from the outside, so none of it was sacred to me.

Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
When we left the restaurant, the sky was a brilliant splash of colors. The kind of air that felt like if you breathed it in, your lungs would be dyed the same shade of blue.

V for Vendetta - Alan Moore
"First, you must discover whose face lies behind this mask, but you must never know my face.” - V