#ask starters

              BOOK STARTERS VOL.45    ANTHEM    AYN RAND

1. ❛ My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. ❜
   
2. ❛ What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? ❜
   
3. ❛ What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? ❜
   
4. ❛ What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? ❜
   
5. ❛ What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? ❜
   
6. ❛ I am done with this creed of corruption. ❜
   
7. ❛ Now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. ❜
   
8. ❛ I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. ❜
   
9. ❛ I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. ❜
   
10. ❛ I am. I think. I will. ❜
    
11. ❛ The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them. ❜
    
12. ❛ I do not grant my love without reason. ❜
    
13. ❛ I honour men with my love. But honour is a thing to be earned. ❜
    
14. ❛ Centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him. ❜
    
15. ❛ Fear walks through the city, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare speak. ❜
    
16. ❛ I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. ❜
    
17. ❛ But what is freedom? Freedom from what? ❜
    
18. ❛ The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through. ❜
    
19. ❛ We must know that we may know. ❜
    
20. ❛ It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. ❜
    
21. ❛ If danger threatens you, I shall face it also. If it be death, I shall die with you. ❜
    
22. ❛ I have followed you and I shall follow you wherever you go. ❜
    
23. ❛ Do as you please with me, but do not send me away from you. ❜
    
24. ❛ It is a sin to say this. ❜
    
25. ❛ I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them. ❜
    
26. ❛ My dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. ❜
    
27. ❛ You are damned, and I wish to share your damnation. ❜
    
28. ❛ There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. ❜
    
29. ❛ For the first time this day, I remembered that I am the damned. I remembered it, and I laughed. ❜
    
30. ❛ May we be forgiven! ❜

           BOOK STARTERS VOL.44     DUBLINERS     JAMES JOYCE 

1. ❛ Yet your name is like a summons to all my foolish blood. ❜
   
2. ❛ Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. ❜
   
3. ❛ You live a short distance from your body. ❜
   
4. ❛ Too excited to be genuinely happy. ❜
   
5. ❛ I want real adventures to happen to myself. ❜
   
6. ❛ Gazing up into the darkness I see myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burn with anguish and anger. ❜
   
7. ❛ In your eyes I will ascent to an angelical stature. ❜
   
8. ❛ We cannot give ourselves: we are our own. ❜
   
9. ❛ No one would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse. ❜
   
10. ❛ Every bond, is a bond to sorrow. ❜
    
11. ❛ There is no doubt about it: if you want to succeed you have to go away. ❜
    
12. ❛ It fills me with fear, and yet I long to be nearer to it.  ❜
    
13. ❛ I wish you and yours every joy in life, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. ❜
    
14. ❛ There’s no friends like the old friends. ❜
    
15. ❛ I feel that I have been outcast from life’s feast. ❜
    
16. ❛ Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name? ❜
    
17. ❛ I remember well your eyes, the touch of your hand and my delirium. ❜
    
18. ❛ My life will be lonely too until I, too, die, cease to exist, become a memory - if anyone remembers me. ❜
    
19. ❛ Drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. ❜
    
20. ❛ In my heart I always despised him a little. ❜
    
21. ❛ All the seas of the world tumble about my heart. You are drawing me into them: you will drown me.  ❜
    
22. ❛ Then I remembered what I had been waiting for.  ❜
    
23. ❛ Every place is immoral. ❜
    
24. ❛ If it’s not your business it’s my business and I mean to see to it. ❜
    
25. ❛ I won’t be fooled. ❜
    
26. ❛ I could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. I listened again: perfectly silent. ❜
    
27. ❛ After three weeks she found a wife’s life irksome and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a mother. ❜
    
28. ❛ There was a heavy odour in the room – the flowers. ❜
    
29. ❛ Real adventures do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad. ❜
    
30. ❛ My body is like a harp and your words and gestures are like fingers running upon the wires. ❜

        MOVIE STARTERS VOL.1    KILL BILL VOL. 1    QUENTIN TARANTINO

1. ❛ Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest, And like a forest it’s easy to lose your way —To get lost. To forget where you came in. ❜
   
2. ❛ Do you find me sadistic? ❜
   
3. ❛ I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic. ❜
   
4. ❛ If on my journey, I should encounter God, God will be cut. ❜
   
5. ❛ It was not my intention to do this in front of you. ❜
   
6. ❛ So I suppose it’s a little late for an apology? ❜
   
7. ❛ I need to know if you’re going to start any more shit. ❜
   
8. ❛ It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality. ❜
   
9. ❛ When do you want to die? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? ❜
   
10. ❛ I have vermin to kill. ❜
    
11. ❛ Will you keep your voice down? ❜
    
12. ❛ When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only does god exist, you’re doing his will. ❜
    
13. ❛ I am going to ask you questions. And every time you don’t give me answers, I’m going to cut something off. ❜
    
14. ❛ Dying in our sleep is a luxury our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you. ❜
    
15. ❛ This is definitely the work of professionals — a sure and steady hand did this. ❜
    
16. ❛ You and I have unfinished business. ❜
    
17. ❛ Shut up! Do you know what would happen if they heard you? ❜
    
18. ❛ You call that begging? You can beg better than that. ❜
    
19. ❛ Take a good look at my face. Look at my eyes. Do I look familiar? ❜
    
20. ❛ I know I don’t deserve your mercy or your forgiveness. ❜
    
21. ❛ Have you gone mad? I will not tolerate this! ❜
    
22. ❛ And what exactly are we celebrating? ❜
    
23. ❛ All I can tell you is that I’m a different person now. ❜
    
24. ❛ What is the meaning of this outburst? ❜
    
25. ❛ Please — Please forgive my betrayal. ❜
    
26. ❛ This is the work of a salty dog. You can tell by the cleanliness of the carnage. ❜
    
27. ❛ I might never have liked you. Point of fact, I despise you. But that doesn’t suggest I don’t respect you. ❜
    
28. ❛ Burn in hell! I’ll tell you nothing! ❜
    
29. ❛ You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you? ❜
    
30. ❛ The price you pay for bringing this up is… I collect your fucking head. ❜

                 QUOTE STARTERS VOL.V      MARGARET ATWOOD

1. ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜
   
2. ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜
   
3. ❛ In the end, we’ll all become stories. ❜
   
4. ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜
   
5. ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you’d be doomed. You’d be ruined as God. ❜
   
6. ❛ If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜
   
7. ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜
   
8. ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been. ❜
   
9. ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜
   
10. ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜
    
11. ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜
    
12. ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜
    
13. ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜
    
14. ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜
    
15. ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜
    
16. ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜
    
17. ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜
    
18. ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜
    
19. ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜
    
20. ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜
    
21. ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜
    
22. ❛ Isn’t the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜
    
23. ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn. ❜
    
24. ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜
    
25. ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜
    
26. ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜
    
27. ❛ But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling. ❜
    
28. ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜
    
29. ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜
    
30. ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜

              QUOTE STARTERS VOL.I       EDGAR ALLAN POE    

1. ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜
   
2. ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜
   
3. ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜
   
4. ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜
   
5. ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜
   
6. ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜
   
7. ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜
   
8. ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜
   
9. ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜
   
10. ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜
    
11. ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜
    
12. ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜
    
13. ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜
    
14. ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜
    
15. ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜
    
16. ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜
    
17. ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜
    
18. ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜
    
19. ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜
    
20. ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜
    
21. ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜
    
22. ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜
    
23. ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜
    
24. ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜
    
25. ❛ Nevermore. ❜
    
26. ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜
    
27. ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜
    
28. ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜
    
29. ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜
    
30. ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜
    

    BOOK STARTERS VOL.6    THE BURIAL AT THEBES    SEAMUS HEANEY   PT.1

1. ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜
   
2. ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜
   
3. ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜
   
4. ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜
   
5. ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜
   
6. ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜
   
7. ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜
   
8. ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜
   
9. ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜
   
10. ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜
    
11. ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜
    
12. ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜
    
13. ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜
    
14. ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜
    
15. ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜
    
16. ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜
    
17. ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜
    
18. ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜
    
19. ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜
    
20. ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜
    
21. ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜
    
22. ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜
    
23. ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜
    
24. ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜
    
25. ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜
    
26. ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜
    
27. ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜
    
28. ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜
    
29. ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜
    
30. ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜

        BOOK STARTERS VOL.43    THE WAVES    VIRGINIA WOOLF

1. ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’. ❜
   
2. ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜
   
3. ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜
   
4. ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜
   
5. ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜
   
6. ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜
   
7. ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜
   
8. ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜
   
9. ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜
   
10. ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe
    that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie
    asleep. ❜
    
11. ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜
    
12. ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜
    
13. ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜
    
14. ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜
    
15. ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜
    
16. ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜
    
17. ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜
    
18. ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜
    
19. ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜
    
20. ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜
    
21. ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜
    
22. ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜
    
23. ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜
    
24. ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜
    
25. ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜
    
26. ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜
    
27. ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜
    
28. ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜
    
29. ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜
    
30. ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜

    MOVIE STARTERS VOL.14    BLADE RUNNER    HAMPTON FANCHER & DAVID PEOPLES

1. ❛ Wake up. Time to die. ❜
   
2. ❛ It’s too bad she won’t live. But then again, who does? ❜
   
3. ❛ I can’t rely on my memories. ❜
   
4. ❛ I want more life. ❜
   
5. ❛ I don’t know how long we’ll have together. Who does? ❜
   
6. ❛ I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. ❜
   
7. ❛ Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? ❜
   
8. ❛ Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent. I thought you were supposed to be good. Aren’t you the “good” one? Show me what you’re made of. ❜
   
9. ❛ I’ve done questionable things. – Extraordinary things. ❜
   
10. ❛ Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled round their shores. ❜
    
11. ❛ If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes! ❜
    
12. ❛ There’s a part of me in you. ❜
    
13. ❛ The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly.  ❜
    
14. ❛ I’m surprised you didn’t come here sooner. ❜
    
15. ❛ Okay, bad joke, I’m sorry… No, really, I made a bad joke. ❜
    
16. ❛ I’d quit because I’d had a belly full of killing. But then I’d rather be a killer than a victim. ❜
    
17. ❛ All I could do is sit there and watch him die. ❜
    
18. ❛ I watched him die all night. It was a long, slow thing… and he fought it all the way. He never whimpered, and he never quit. He took all the time he had, as though he loved life very much. Every second of it… even the pain. Then, he was dead. ❜
    
19. ❛ Talk about beauty and the beast — she’s both. ❜
    
20. ❛ The only way you can hurt me is to kill me. ❜
    
21. ❛ I’m not in the business. I am the business. ❜
    
22. ❛ It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker. ❜
    
23. ❛ We’re stupid, and we’ll die. ❜
    
24. ❛ Death? Well, I’m afraid that’s a little out of my jurisdiction. ❜
    
25. ❛ Gosh, you’ve… really got some nice toys here. ❜
    
26. ❛ Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch. ❜
    
27. ❛ I’ve had people walk out on me before, but not when I was being
    so charming. ❜
    
28. ❛ Shakes? Me too. I get them bad. It’s part of the business. ❜
    
29. ❛ Milk and cookies kept you awake? ❜
    
30. ❛ You’d better get it up, or I’m gonna have to kill you! ❜

      BOOK STARTERS VOL.41     ORYX AND CRAKE     MARGARET ATWOOD

1. ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it’s a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜
   
2. ❛ Then there’s the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜
   
3. ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜
   
4. ❛ After everything that’s happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜
   
5. ❛ There’s something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you’re still alive. ❜
   
6. ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It’s probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜
   
7. ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜
   
8. ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜
   
9. ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜
   
10. ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜
    
11. ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜
    
12. ❛ “I’ll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I’ll make you me.” ❜
    
13. ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜
    
14. ❛ Expectation isn’t the same as desire. ❜
    
15. ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜
    
16. ❛ Maybe there aren’t any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜
    
17. ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜
    
18. ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜
    
19. ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜
    
20. ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It’s not good for you. ❜
    
21. ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜
    
22. ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜
    
23. ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜
    
24. ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜
    
25. ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜
    
26. ❛ Don’t be so fucking sentimental. ❜
    
27. ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜
    
28. ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜
    
29. ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜
    
30. ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜

          BOOK STARTERS VOL.50    SMOKE AND MIRRORS    NEIL GAIMAN

1. ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜
   
2. ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜
   
3. ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜
   
4. ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜
   
5. ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜
   
6. ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there’s nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜
   
7. ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜
   
8. ❛ He died alone. It don’t matter a rat’s ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜
   
9. ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜
   
10. ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜
    
11. ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜
    
12. ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜
    
13. ❛ If not for death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜
    
14. ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜
    
15. ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜
    
16. ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜
    
17. ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜
    
18. ❛ I’d like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜
    
19. ❛ You’ve seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜
    
20. ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜
    
21. ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜
    
22. ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜
    
23. ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜
    
24. ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜
    
25. ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜

           BOOK STARTERS VOL.49      EMMA     JANE AUSTEN

1. ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜
   
2. ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜
   
3. ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜
   
4. ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜
   
5. ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜
   
6. ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜
   
7. ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜
   
8. ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜
   
9. ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜
   
10. ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜
    
11. ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜
    
12. ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜
    
13. ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜
    
14. ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜
    
15. ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜
    
16. ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜
    
17. ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜
    
18. ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜
    
19. ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜
    
20. ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜
    
21. ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜
    
22. ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜
    
23. ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜
    
24. ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜
    
25. ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜
    
26. ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜
    
27. ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜
    
28. ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜
    
29. ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜
    
30. ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜

     BOOK STARTERS VOL.48    NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS    ANGELA CARTER

1. ❛ The child’s laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜
   
2. ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜
   
3. ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜
   
4. ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜
   
5. ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜
   
6. ❛ And, oh, God … how frequently I weep! ❜
   
7. ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜
   
8. ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜
   
9. ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜
   
10. ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜
    
11. ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜
    
12. ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜
    
13. ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜
    
14. ❛ Perhaps…I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜
    
15. ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜
    
16. ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜
    
17. ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜
    
18. ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜
    
19. ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn’t look right. ❜
    
20. ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜
    
21. ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜
    
22. ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜
    
23. ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜
    
24. ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜
    
25. ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜
    
26. ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜
    
27. ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜
    
28. ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜
    
29. ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜
    
30. ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜

         MOVIE STARTERS VOL.16    THE OTHERS    ALEJANDRO AMENÁBAR

1. ❛ I’m beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜
   
2. ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜
   
3. ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜
   
4. ❛ If you see a ghost, you say “hello”. ❜
   
5. ❛ The war is not over. ❜
   
6. ❛ You’re not going. You left us once already. ❜
   
7. ❛ You can’t go! ❜
   
8. ❛ I loved you, but that wasn’t enough, was it? ❜
   
9. ❛ If you’re dead, then leave me in peace. ❜
   
10. ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜
    
11. ❛ I won’t ask for forgiveness for something I didn’t do! ❜
    
12. ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜
    
13. ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜
    
14. ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜
    
15. ❛ They’re everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜
    
16. ❛ You’re always teasing me, and telling lies. I’m sick of it. ❜
    
17. ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we’ll sense them. Other times, we won’t. ❜
    
18. ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you’ve got when you cry. ❜
    
19. ❛ You listen to me. I’ve seen them too. ❜
    
20. ❛ You’ll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be… changes. ❜
    
21. ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn’t you stay like the others did? ❜
    
22. ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜
    
23. ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜
    
24. ❛ I wasn’t expecting you so soon. ❜
    
25. ❛ What’s the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜
    
26. ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜
    
27. ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜
    
28. ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜
    
29. ❛ Whatever you do, don’t open the curtains. ❜
    
30. ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜

           BOOK STARTERS VOL.47    TRAINSPOTTING    IRVINE WELSH

1. ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜
   
2. ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜
   
3. ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜
   
4. ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜
   
5. ❛ Love does not exist, it’s like religion, made to control you. ❜
   
6. ❛ After all, we’re not fucking stupid. At least, we’re not that fucking stupid. ❜
   
7. ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜
   
8. ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜
   
9. ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜
   
10. ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you’re still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜
    
11. ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜
    
12. ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜
    
13. ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜
    
14. ❛ It’s not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜
    
15. ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜
    
16. ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there’s no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜
    
17. ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜
    
18. ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜
    
19. ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜
    
20. ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜
    
21. ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜
    
22. ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜
    
23. ❛ We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜
    
24. ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜
    
25. ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜
    
26. ❛ Life is beautiful. I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m going to have a long life. ❜
    
27. ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜
    
28. ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜
    
29. ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜
    
30. ❛ Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜

     BOOK STARTERS VOL.46    THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD    MARGARET ATWOOD

1. ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜
   
2. ❛ Maybe that’s what love is: it’s being pissed off. ❜
   
3. ❛ You can forget who you are if you’re alone too much. ❜
   
4. ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜
   
5. ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜
   
6. ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there’s nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜
   
7. ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜
   
8. ❛ We shouldn’t have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜
   
9. ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜
   
10. ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜
    
11. ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜
    
12. ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜
    
13. ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜
    
14. ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we’re about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜
    
15. ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜
    
16. ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜
    
17. ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody – a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜
    
18. ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death’s a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜
    
19. ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜
    
20. ❛ I’m fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜
    
21. ❛ Because if you can’t wish, why bother? ❜
    
22. ❛ It’s better to hope than mope! ❜
    
23. ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜
    
24. ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜
    
25. ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜
    
26. ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜
    
27. ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜
    
28. ❛ ‘Why can’t I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜
    
29. ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜
    
30. ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜

      MOVIE STARTERS VOL.15    THE MATRIX    THE WACHOWSKI SISTERS

1. ❛ I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. ❜
   
2. ❛ Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. ❜
   
3. ❛ This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. ❜
   
4. ❛ What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets? ❜
   
5. ❛ I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of me. ❜
   
6. ❛ I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. ❜
   
7. ❛ What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. ❜
   
8. ❛ Sooner or later you’re going to realise just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. ❜
   
9. ❛ I imagine that right now, you’re feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole? ❜
   
10. ❛ I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. ❜
    
11. ❛ I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life. ❜
    
12. ❛ Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. ❜
    
13. ❛ You have to let it all go. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind. ❜
    
14. ❛ To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human. ❜
    
15. ❛ After nine years, you know what I realise? Ignorance is bliss. ❜
    
16. ❛ Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? ❜
    
17. ❛ As a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. ❜
    
18. ❛ You’re cuter than I thought. I can see why she likes you. ❜
    
19. ❛ I’m trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. ❜
    
20. ❛ Never send a human to do a machine’s job. ❜
    
21. ❛ What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. ❜
    
22. ❛ Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me. ❜
    
23. ❛ So what do you need? Besides a miracle. ❜
    
24. ❛ The body cannot live without the mind. ❜
    
25. ❛ Unfortunately, no one can be told what it is. You have to see it for yourself. ❜
    
26. ❛ That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death. ❜
    
27. ❛ You’re looking for it. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. ❜
    
28. ❛ The answer is out there, and it’s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to. ❜
    
29. ❛ Do you think that’s air you’re breathing now? ❜
    
30. ❛ Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger? ❜