36th Ulster Division Quotes & Sayings

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes. — Joan Didion

Prostitution.' He enunciates the word clearly, gazing directly into her eyes, knowing, God damn it, that he is being cruel. In the back of his mind, a kinder William Rackham watches impotently as his wife is penetrated by that single elongated word, its four slick syllables barbed midway with t's. Agnes's cameo face goes white as she gulps for air. — Michel Faber

Every time a woman has a period, it's a spontaneous abortion because the egg didn't take," I said, undeterred. "Are we going to start having a funeral for every used tampon? — Nick Wilgus

A man who leaves his wife is also a kind of immigrant. He rejects the home he's always known for another. Is it a surprise that Americans have the highest divorce rate in the world? If ditched lovers are also counted, then our rate of betrayal becomes truly stratospheric. To start over and advance or save ourselves, if only in our minds, we're willing to destroy everything. Soaked in a depthless, sampling culture, we're also expert at forgetting. Not only do we have no historical memory, but our personal past can be willfully and instantly erased, with hardly a ripple in its wake, and there's no one around, no community, to remind us of our shames. Extreme narcissists, we cling to bizarre narratives that allow us to make the most preposterous statements without flinching, or indulge in the most perverse and damaging behaviors. — Linh Dinh

When liberty is taken away by force, it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished by default it can never be recovered. — Dorothy Thompson

Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society. — Helen Fielding

Every election, Mickey Mouse looks better and better as President. — Duncan Long

In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth. — Criss Jami