Polaris et autres nouvelles - H.P. Lovecraft

"Tu me montreras comment voyager et je t'écouterai chanter le soir, quand les étoiles, une à une, sèment des rêves dans l'esprit des rêveurs."

La Quête d'Iranon - H.P. Lovecraft

Tokyo Zodiac Murders - Soji Shimada

""C'est quoi un 'excellent élève', hein? Qu'est-ce que ça a de si génial de plus qu'un mauvais élève, qu'est-ce que ça a accompli de plus merveilleux dans sa vie? Les efforts qui ne visent qu'à attirer la considération des autres, je n'ai jamais rien trouvé de plus inutile, et c'est pas près de changer!
-Mitarai."
Il était maintenant près de la fenêtre, silencieux."
"Mitarai.
-......
-Allez, quoi."
Il consentit finalement à ouvrir la bouche:"Je sais ce que tu veux dire. Mais ce n'est pas moi qui suis bizarre, ce sont les autres, tellement que je n'arrive pas à comprendre comment ils font. Même quand j'ai une vie normale, un vie de tous les jours, j'ai quand même l'impression d'être un martien. Les gens sont tellement différents de moi, ça me donne le vertige."
Je me demandai alors si ce n'était pas là l'origine de ses dépressions."

"Les Anglais actuels vivent dans des maisons qui sont presque les mêmes que celles de l'époque de Sherlock Holmes, avec presque le même mobilier, Au Japon, tout a évolué extrêmement vite depuis Meiji, si bien qu'aucun style ne peut être étiqueté "traditionnel"."

"Notre interlocutrice sourit, et je pus enfin voir son visage correctement pour la première fois. Je n'oublierai jamais ce sourire; c'était la première fois que je voyais une femme de cinquante ans sourire de la sorte: un sourire un peu gêné et en même temps très pur et vrai. Je crus d'abord qu'il s'agissait d'un charme adulte, puis revins sur mon erreur: c'était le charme de l'enfance."

Tokyo Zodiac Murders - Soji Shimada

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

« When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art : there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, ‘You’ve got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on !’ The skull snickers and moves even closer, but that doesn’t surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. »

« I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it. »

« I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. »

« It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names. Witness Simon who is called Peter, Matthew also known as Levi, Nathaniel who is Bartholomew, Judas, not Iscariot, who took the name Thaddeus, Simeon who went by Niger, Saul who became Paul. »

« Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans. »

« And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge. »

« It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap. »

« To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. »

« All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving ; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. »

« If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It was enough to make me go raving mad. I have never known a worse physical hell than this putrid taste and pasty feeling in the mouth, this unbearable pressure at the back of the throat, this sensation that my blood was turning to a thick syrup that barely flowed. Truly, by comparison, a tiger was nothing. »

« It seems orange – such a nice Hindu colour – is the colour of survival because the whole inside of the boat and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every other significant object aboard was orange. Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange. »

« How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true. »

« I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. »

« Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. »

« Something in me died then that has never come back to life. »

« Don’t you bully me with your politeness ! Love is hard to believe, as any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, as any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe ? »

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outisde, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs

Bu Iste Bir Yalnizlik Var - Tuna Kiremitçi

God Help the Child - Toni Morrison

"I mad little mistakes deliberately, but she had ways to punish me without touching the skin she hated."

"Black sells. It's the hottest commodity in the civilized world. White girls, even brown girls have to strip naked to get that kind of attention."

"Taught me a lesson I should have known all along. What you do to children matters. And they might never forget."

"Every girl I know introduces her boyfriend as a lawyer or artist or club owner or broker or whatever. The job, not the guy, is what the girlfriend adores."

"As a teacher I thought I was well read although in college, as an education major, I was not required to read any literature. Until I was in prison I'd never read The Odyssey or Jane Austen. None of it taught me much, but concentating on escapes, deceits, and who would marry whom was a welcome distraction."

"I don't think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get. Quiet makes some folks fidget or feel too lonely. After fifteen years of noise I was hungry for silence more than food."

"When I woke up I reminded myself that freedom is never free. You have to fight for it. Work for it and make sure you are able to handle it. Now I think of it, that black girl did do me a favor. Not the foolish one she had in mind, not the money she offered, but the gift that neither of us planned: the relase of tears unshed for fifteen years. No more bottling up, No more filth. Now I am clean and able."

"The reason for this tracking was not love, she knew; it was more hurt than anger that made her drive into unknown territory to locate the one person she once trusted, who made her feel safe, colonized somehow. Without him the world was more than confusing - shallow, cold, deliberately hostile."

"'Why is her skin so black?'
'For the same reason yours is so white.'"

"Just because he had two college degrees he thaught he could tell everybody what to do. They rolled their eyes at his arrogance."

"Simply dumbstruck by her beauty Booker stared open-mouthed at a young blue-black woman standing at the curb laughing. He clothes were white, her hair like a million black butterflies asleep on her head."

"Booker had no words to describe his feelings. What he did know was that the rain-soaked air smelled like lilac when he played while remembering her."

"A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, rape, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath. So they believe."

"Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how is works and how it changes when you are a parent. Good luck and God help the child."

God Help the Child - Toni Morrison