greg iles

“Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.”

“Люди наделяются физической красотой в результате игры слепого случая. Это дар, который дается не за какие-то заслуги, а просто так. Тут абсолютно нечем гордиться.”

“The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing. Life is simple.You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren't. You are alive or you are dead. I am alive.”

“I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.”

“When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy.”

“Any person who wants to govern the world is by definition the wrong person to do it.”

“I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it.”

“He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire.”

“Her touch was as knowing and confident as her eyes, and as she focused all her attention upon me, I remembered that there is nothing so thrilling as a woman of words when she decides that the time for words is past.”

“Thought like that showed me the needless ambiguity of words like space-time. The average person heard a word like that and figured he'd never understand it. But it was so simple. Every place you ever saw was linked to a specific time ... the school you visited twenty years after you graduated, the football field you played on, the track you ran -- none of them was the same. If they were, you would collide with the generations that had run on them before and after you. The lover you kissed was not the same person he or she was sixty seconds before. In that minute, a million skin cells had died and been replaced by new ones. The smallest slices of space-time separated thought from action Life from death.”

“My favorite book is The Mysterious Island. I order my books from a flimsy catalog the teacher hands out to every student in the class. Emil and the Detectives. White Fang. Like that. Money is tight for us, but when it comes to books my mother is a spendthrift; I can order as many as I like. I sit here day after day, waiting for my books to arrive. My books. It takes a month or more, but when they finally do, when the teacher opens the big box and passes out the orders to the kids, checking the books against a form taken from her desk, I glow with happiness. I've never had the newest dress, or the prettiest, but I always have the tallest stack of books. Little paperbacks that smell of wet ink. I lay my cheek against their cool covers, anticipating the stories inside, knowing all the other girls wonder what I could possibly want with those books.”

“Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.”

“Because I expected so little, Gaines's painting is startlingly powerul. A lank-haired blond woman with a hard face sits at akitchen table in the harsh light of a bare bulb. She's surrounded by dirty cereal bowls and fast-food bags, and her shirt is open to the waist, revealing small sagging breasts. Her hollow eyes look out from the canvas with the sullen resignation of an animal that has helped build its own cage.”

“Wingate sighs thoughtfully. "Hard to say. He's not static. He began with almost pure Impressionism, which is dead. Anyone can do it. But the vision was there. Between the fifth and twelfth paintings, he began to evolve something much more fascinating. Are you familiar with the Nabis?"The what?"Nabis. It means 'prophets.' Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard?"What I know about art wouldn't fill a postcard."Don't blame yourself. That's the American educational system. They simply don't teach it. Not unless you beg for it. Not even in university.”

“As I turned toward it, a premonitory wave of heat flashed across my neck and shoulders, and I felt the dry itch of the past rubbing against the present.”

“The mills of the gods grind slowly....but they grind to dust. ”