Literary Quote I Like

The fat old correspondent was running out of indignation and energy. “I broadcast for four years from Berlin, McMahon,” he grated. “Goebbels himself never dared to tamper with my scripts like this. Not once! The British administration of Singapore does dare. How is that?”

“My dear fellow, the Germans only talk about being the master race,” Elsa McMahon’s husband said drily. “You’re on in ten minutes.”
--Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance

Literary Quote I Like

Balty praised his host's admirable wall and asked if it kept out the savages.

Stuyvesant smiled. "But the wall is not for keeping out Indians. It's for keeping out English!"

"Oh," Balty said, unsure how to respond. "Has it... worked?"

Stuyvesant chortled. "It seems not. After all, here are you." He added diplomatically, "But you are welcome in New Amsterdam."

"Too kind."

"People now are saying we must have a bigger wall."

"Not on our account, I hope."

Stuyvesant shrugged. "If to this it comes, maybe I will ask your King Charles to pay for it."

"A most amusing idea. Is it not, Huncks?"

"Sartainly, his majesty would find it so."
--Christopher Buckley, The Judge Hunter

Literary Quote I Like

I wonder why the Americans got rid of the Mexicans in the first place when they now spend their leisure trying to make themselves look indistinguishable from them!
--Michael Moorcock, Jerusalem Commands

Literary Quote I Like

"Men who can read and figure can deal with the world," said Jason Russell from his place at the side of the room. "If you are going to make your way, you must know how to read and write and figure. If you cannot do these things, you will be entirely at the mercy of those who do, and you will be deaf and mute to all those you seek to reach."
--Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, The Law in Charity

Literary Quote I Like

I said, "I am a scribe. I do not prettify the world. I only describe it."
--Gary Jennings, Aztec

Literary Quote I Like

You are all liars, you English.
--Lispeth in Rudyard Kipling’s “Lispeth”

Literary Quote I Like

Some called Smith’s the “greatest generation,” but he did not agree with that assessment. The very idea that one generation was greater than another automatically diminished the accomplishments of all others not in some venerated fraternity. Smith understood that in every generation there was potential for greatness, and he did not view the blood spilled at Normandy and Iwo Jima as any more precious than that which soaked the sands of Kabul or Tikrit.
--Warren Murphy and James Mullaney, The New Destroyer #1: Guardian Angel

Literary Quote I Like

Yesterday's sin becomes tomorrow's virtue.
--Judith in H. A. Keller's Yesterday's Sin

Literary Quote I Like

“It used to be the fashion,” I said, “to ridicule the Roman Church for its confessionals, but the world seems to be coming back to the practice. It’s a need of the race, I fear, and people will seek it -- whether in psychoanalysis or in the Oxford Group. The Catholics may be wiser than a good materialistic agnostic like myself cares to admit.”
--Rufus Bottomley in Anthony Boucher's The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars