Quotes from Vera Nazarian

Thoughts are slippery fish in a cold shallow stream. If you are intent on capturing a worthwhile one, you need to stand very still, focus very hard on somewhere outside yourself, and then simply ignore it until it gets so close that it tickles your ankles. Then, pounce.

The weight of the world is a trifle, if we all put our two fingers under it and try to lift together.

It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer. . . . Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other.

In any case, age is nothing more than the acquisition of Temporal Perspective! Oh, and rheumatism too, I must add.

What is blood but the wine of life?

Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!

It started to rain overhead, big sloppy droplets, but only in their immediate vicinity of about five feet. However, this being England, no one was particularly flummoxed even by such a particularly localized, extraordinarily specific example of maudlin weather.

For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam's front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters? And God looked upon the Creation in all its delightful multiplicity, and saw that, all in all, it was quite Amiable.

Since when do you check out other girls, girlfriend?" Dawn shrugs. There's a little shy smile on her face. "Since always." Laronda gives a loud snort-laugh and puts her hand to her mouth. "Wait, are you—

Common sense was not as common as the Deity might wish for. Indeed, not even the angelic choirs were entirely free of a certain vice known as silliness.

You can lose your freedom, your health, your honor, everything you love and care about. And yet, if you still have your purpose, you have lost nothing

The dreaded November 18, 2048, at around 2:47 PM Eastern Time, plus or minus a few minutes, is when we go Boom.

Then you already know what it's like to think in a different way about the same thing. Because that's all a new language is—a slightly different way of thinking and looking at the same world. It's like putting on multi-colored sunglasses. It enriches your thought processes and blows up your imagination like a balloon. And it gives you the mysterious power to express yourself to others who normally might not be able to understand you.

Fear is a cold bastard. The only way to overcome it is to act—to take the first step and just move forward.

In the absence of Death, In the presence of Death, Only one thing remains, It is Love.

Thing is," Grial said in a conspiratorial voice, "let me tell you a little secret, girlie. That road- those roads, all roads and paths in fact- they never end. You might think they do. You might think they just narrow and fade and disappear in the hoary depths of the forest? Not so, not at all! They merely go into hiding, and you just have to search a bit harder to see them.

There is only Love -- and Stories. All else is but a shadow dream.

Know, child, that the One God—He is so vast that He cannot be moved, else the Universe falls. Nor can He answer, for the very act of opening His Mouth is Movement, indeed the greatest Act of all, for it is the Word. And this is precisely why He has made an infinity of lesser gods, creating them in His own image, so that we can do the lesser things on His behalf. We are His hands and arms and feet and mouths. We are His answers to your prayers, enacted along the great Framework of Being.

I rise back up to the surface with a kind of solemn quiet peace that comes when you know it's all over.

We spend the next half an hour doing horrible things with our bodies. We line up and climb the first level of the scaffolding, holding on for dear life, and then we stand there on a three-foot narrow strip that is the ledge that hugs the wall, many of us shaking from a combination of terror and the abuse of previously unused muscle groups.

I do not accept this.

Few things are impossible if you know what needs to be done,

my well of self has run dry.

Roadkill with horseradish!