Christopher Moore

“No. Trust me, you have to leave me now so you won't later. I'll see you again.”

“Joshua, my memory of Maggie isn't about what happened the night before we left. I didn't go to see her thinking that we would make love. A kiss was more than I expected. I think of Maggie because I made a place in my heart for her to live, and it's empty. It always will be. It always was. She loved you.”

“Senti, abbiamo delle specie di regole qui". Indicò il cartello sul bancone. NIENTE CAMICIA O NIENTE SCARPE, NIENTE SERVIZIO.Molly abbassò lo sguardo su di sé. «Oh dio, me le sono scordate».«É tutto a posto».«Ho lasciato le scarpe in macchina. Faccio un salto e me le metto».«Sarebbe stupendo,Molly.Grazie».«Nessun problema».«So che sul cartello non c'è scritto, ma già che ci sei, potresti metterti anche un paio di pantaloni? Sarebbe sottinteso».«Certo» disse Molly con disinvoltura davanti al bancone. Uscì dal negozio e sentì che l'aria si era proprio rinfrescata. E già, i suoi jeans e le mutandine erano sul sedile del passeggero, accanto alle scarpe da tennis.”

“The night was crisp and the stars shone with a cold blue light like loneliness or infinity.”

“Theophilus Crowe wrote bad free-verse poetry and played a jimbai drum while sitting on a rock by the ocean. He could play sixteen chords on the guitar and knew five Bob Dylan songs all the way through, allowing for a dampening buzz any time he had to play a bar chord. He had tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and pottery and had even played a minor part in the Pine Cove Little Theater’s revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. In all of these endeavors, he had experienced a meteoric rise to mediocrity and quit before total embarrassment and self-loathing set in. Theo was cursed with an artist’s soul but no talent. He possessed the angst and the inspiration, but not the means to create.”

“Oh, and a huge Federal Building that looked like it was being molested by a giant steel pterodactyl, but evidently that was just the government trying to get away from their standard bomb shelter architecture to something more aesthetically appealing, especially if you liked Godzilla porn.”

“Liebe - von allen fiesen Streichen, die einem die Ironie des Lebens so spielt, der bei weitem fieseste.”

“Grausam und erbarmungslos rollen sie dahin, die Stahlgürtelreifen des Schicksals”

“Privacy is a wonderful thing. Like love, privacy is most manifest in its absence.”

“One day the good times had to keep on rolling, and all of life's horseshit would turn to circuses.”

“Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.”

“You can't just go around blurting out the truth like a prophet with Tourette's syndrome.”

“If you're going to learn, you need to forget what you know.”

“It's easier to keep a secret if people think you're crazy”

“Get in, get out, and nobody gets hurt, as Uncle Harlan always said, something he picked up in Vietnam.”

“If you are going to learn, you need to forget what you know. - Pokey”

“She laughed. My favorite music.”

“We were seekers. You are that which is sought, Joshua. You are the source. The end is divinity, in the beginning is the word. You are the word.”

“Lucien, women are wondrous, mysterious, and magical creatures, who should be treated not only with respect but with reverence, perhaps even awe. Now go sweep the steps.”

“Unless you can change the past, you’re wasting the present on this guilt”

“Does a broken heart know from a different location?”

“You're the one with almost an MBA," Barry, the short balding one, said to Lash."You should know what to do.""They don't cover what to do with a dead hooker," Lash countered. "That's a wholedifferent program. Political science, I think.”

“La Cadillac Eldorado Brougham del 1957 era l'incarnazione perfetta dell'esibizionismo, tra le macchine d morte. Quasi tre tonnellate di acciaio unite insieme a fare una bestia dalle fauci enormi e dalle code alte, rivestita di tanto metallo cromato che ci si sarebbe potuto costruire un Terminator e conservarne qualche scarto (il metallo era presente soprattutto sotto forma di strisce taglienti che, in caso di impatto, si staccavano, trasformandosi in falci letali che scorticavano i pedoni). Sotto i quattro fanali anteriori sfoggiava due pallottole paraurti cormate, che somigliavano a due siluri inesplosi o a due mortali tette di Madonna. La colonna dello sterzo, non contraibile, in uno scontro di una certa entità avrebbe trafitto il conducente; i finestrini elettrici avrebbero potuto staccare la testa di un bambino; non c'erano cinture di sicurezza, e il motore V8 da 325 cavalli consumava tanto che, quando passava, lo sentivi risucchiare dinosauri liquefatti dal terreno. Faceva al massimo centosettanta chilometri orari, ma le sospensioni molli e simili a scialuppe non le avrebbero mai dato stabilità a quella velocità, e a poco sarebbero serviti i freni di dimensioni ridotte. Le pinne che sporgevano posteriormente erano così alte e aguzze che l'auto rappresentava una minaccia letale per i pedoni anche da parcheggiata; e tutto l'insieme poggiava su grandi pneumatici internamente bianchi, simili a gigantesche ciambelle e dotati della stessa manovrabilità. Detroit non sarebbe riuscita a superare quella letale ostentazione pinnata nemmeno se avesse rivestito di strass un'oraca assassina. Era un'autentico capolavoro.”

“Charlie guardò con più attenzione il roditore che la bimba aveva sbattuto sul vassoio, quasi volesse renderne più tenera la carne. La testolina sembrava fradicia. "In bocca. Se lo è messo in bocca". Afferrò una salvietta di carta dal rotolo che teneva sul piano di lavoro e cominciò a strofinare l'interno dell bocca della bimba. Lei canticchiava mentre cercava di mangiare quel pezzo di carta, pensando fosse parte del gioco."In ogni caso, dov'è la signora Ling?""Lei deve andare a prendere la ricetta, così io guardo Sophie per un poco. E piccoli orsi sono felici, mentre io vado al bagno""Criceti, signora Korjev. Non orsi. Quanto tempo c'è rimasta?""Forse cinque minuti. Penso che ho strappo all'ano, a causa di spinte violente".”

“How do you know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else?You cannot get a grip on blue.Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye, a devil’s tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin’s cloak, a monkey’s ass. It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there’s nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. ‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color.”

“If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes.”

“Tastes like shit!”

“I'm fucked.We're fucked. Together. Like Romeo and Juliet, only we get to be in a sequel.”

“Your puny worm god weapons are useless against my superior Christmas Kung Fu.”

“The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis.”

“This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn't some story out of one of Tommy's books. This isn't something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn't natural. A vampire is magic, not science.”

“No." Tommy turned and headed toward the door. As he reached it he turned and said, "I'm not fucked." The Sartre reader looked up from his book and said, "We all are. We all are.”

“Ten salespeople, all young, all dressed in generic cotton casual, looked up from their conversations, spotted the money in her hand, and simultaneously stopped breathing-their brains shutting down bodily functions and rerouting the needed energy to calculate the projected commissions contained in Jody's cash. One by one they resumed breathing and marched toward her, a look of dazed hunger in their eyes: a pack of zombies from the perky, youthful version of The Night of the Living Dead. "I wear a size four and I've got a date in fifteen minutes," Jody said. "Dress me." They descended on her like an evil khaki wave.”

“She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings like wet velvet.”

“You motherfucking kitties need to step the fuck off!”

“Compassion is the same way,' Joshua said. 'That's what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without though or words. That's what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift.”

“...she is too beautiful, I think, to not be inherently evil.”

“They are between. Not what they used to be, and not what they have become. In those times, they are nothing. And I am invisible, and I am nothing too. That is the true demimonde, Lucien, and the secret is, it is not always desperate and dark. Sometimes it is just nothing. No burden of potential or regret. There are worse things than being nothing, my friend.”

“In the East they taught us that all suffering comes from desire, and that rough beast would stalk me through my life, but on that afternoon, and for a time after, I touched grace.”

“It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husband's graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God's death.”

“He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. That's what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift.”

“Henri was giggling now, barely able to contain himself. "So I'm to shovel coal into my shoes hoping no one notices, while smoke and steam - what of the vapor?" "There's little more smoke than a cigar, and the steam would be barely visible by gas lamp. It vents out the back of your trousers, under the tail of your coat." "Marvelous!" said Henri. "I use a similar port for my own vapors. I want to try them, immediately.”

“He tapped into the Zen of ignorance, the enlightenment of absurdity.”

“She set the course of his life with just a smile.”

“Mankind, I suppose, is designed to run on - to be motivated by - temptation. If progress is a virtue then this is our greatest gift. (For what is curiosity if not intellectual temptation? And what progress is there without curiosity?) On the other hand, can you call such profound weakness a gift,or is it a design flaw? Is temptation itself at fault for man's woes, or it simply the lack of judgment in response to temptation? In other words, who is to blame? Mankind , or a bad designer? Because i can't help but think that if God had never told Adam and Eve to avoid the fruit of the tree of knowledged, that the human race would still be running around naked, dancing, in wonderment and blissfully naming and stuff between snacks, naps, and shags. By the same token, if Balthasar had passed that great ironclad door that first day without a word a warning, I might have never given it a second glance, and once again, much trouble could have been avoided. Am I to blame for what happened, or is it the author of temptation, God Hisownself?”

“He started skipping, but then caught himself and returned to deliberately pacing out his steps with his sheathed sword. People might ignore a tiny Japanese man in an orange porkpie hat and socks, with a sword, but if you went around expressing unrestrained joy, they would have you in a straightjacket before you could belt out a verse of "Zippity Do-Dah.”

“That's it, said Cavuto. You're too much of a nerd to be gay. I'm contacting the committee. They'll revoke your rainbow flag and you will not be permitted anywhere near the parade.”

“Sometimes, a man must muster all of his courage simply to sit still. How much humanity has been spoiled for the confusion of movement with progress, my friend? How much?”

“And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?”

“These dogs are not fighting.""Yes they are. Like the paintings we saw in the Louvre," said Lucien. "Gecko-Roman wrestling Father called it.""Ah, of course," said Pissarro, as if it had become clear. "Yes, Gecko-Roman dog wrestling. Superb! I presume you haven't shown your wrestling dogs to Madame Lessard, then.”