Interludes Quotes & Sayings

No man can return to being a boy. But there are interludes in a man's life when, for a time, he can recapture the feeling that the world is a forgiving place and that he is immortal. — Robin Hobb

A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction
besides unexpected interludes
has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. — Yann Martel

Indeed, a parallel history of Europe could be written which viewed family life and regular work as the essential Continental motor of civilization. Then war and revolution would need to be seen by historians as startling, sick departures from that norm of a kind that require serious explanation, rather than viewing periods of gentle introversy as mere tiresome interludes before the next thrill-packed bloodbath. — Simon Winder

That's always attractive to me, to work with music whose form is a big question mark. Even many of my favorite bands growing up, when I was just a kid learning to play drums and guitar and everything, were bands like Pink Floyd, where the arrangement, the number of bars in each section is unconventional and often lopsided, and there will be small little instrumental interludes and that sort of thing. So those odd forms, as well as dark content, are the things that I think are continuous through all the type of projects that I've been attracted to. — Charlie Clouser

War was about yawning chasms of inactivity, punctuated by brief, screaming interludes of action. And in those brief, screaming interludes, events happened both quickly and with dreamlike slowness, every instant burned into memory. — Alastair Reynolds

There are now very few significant interludes of human existence (with the colossal exception of sleep) that have not been penetrated and taken over as work time, consumption time, or marketing time. — Jonathan Crary

The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery. — Mikhail Bakunin

Yet there are some resting-places, / Life's untroubled interludes; / Times when neither past nor future / On the soul's deep calm intrudes. — Jean Ingelow

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that's lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won't be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival. — Jay McInerney

History, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness. — Roberto Bolano

The authors we classified as villains, detractors, and bad role models for our children are part of the educational curriculum. Freethinkers and the gutsy ones who pursued love and went against what society preordained are those we admire. The talented that wrote about these adventurous escapades and secret interludes are part of our literary tradition. — Julia Ann Charpentier

There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance. — Robin McKinley

Dreams are but interludes that fancy makes ...
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. — John Dryden

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/ human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals. - FROM THE TLEILAXU GODBUK — Frank Herbert

The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children's books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she'd been a little girl. There hadn't been such books in the Spivak household on County Line Road, nor would there have been any time for such interludes. — Joyce Carol Oates

I have done it," says my memory. "I cannot have done it," says my pride, refusing to budge. In the end - my memory yields. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, "Fourth Part: Maxims and Interludes — Jodi Picoult

In all these interludes with Sevastyan, I hadn't been Natalie. I'd been Natalya. And that brainless hussy didn't seem to know better. — Kresley Cole

Many believe that they need company at any cost, and certainly if a thing is desired at any cost, it will be obtained at all costs. We need to remember and to teach our children that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone, at times it is positively to be wished for. It is in the interludes between being in company that we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God — Maya Angelou

In the summer,
on fine evenings, I love to drive late and
alone in the scented forests, and when I have
reached a dark part stop, and sit quite still, listening
to the nightingales repeating their little tune over
and over aga^n after interludes of gurgling, or if
there are no nightingales, listening to the marvellous
silence, and letting its blessedness descend into
my very souL The nightingales in the forests
about here all sing the same tune, and in the same
key of (E flat). — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Her feisty interludes turned him on, and he wanted to push her into situations that encouraged the tigress in her to come out more often. The girl shimmered with untapped sexual potential. Her dick of a husband obviously wasn't able to see what he could see ... — Kitty French

My life had no meaning at all. I found only brief interludes of satisfaction. It was like my whole life had been about my whole basketball career. — Pete Maravich

It doesn't change that I still want him, I still want to be with him, I still feel like the fucking air has been sucked out of the room when he walks in and I still think about him all the time. — Santino Hassell

life of a professional spy as one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by interludes of sheer terror. — Daniel Silva

Mother loathed the all-black B movies Hollywood made for the "colored" audience, where the stereotypes were broader and more offensive to her, and where the musical interludes did no justice to real talent, she said, but trivialized it. — Gayle Pemberton

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars. — Jerry Pournelle

Life is a series of boring interludes between meals. — Leni Bogat

The trip here had been rough going - Juliet drove with a focused aggression that made most road-rage incidents seem like brief, contemplative interludes, and she punished the sleek, overpowered sports car as though it had done her some terrible harm - but it didn't seem to have dented her appetite at all. — Mike Carey

J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. The person himself will think of the real reason. You don't need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists at heart, like to think of motives that sound good. So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives. — Dale Carnegie

We are all interludes in history, a drawn breath to make pause in the rush, and when we are gone, those breaths join the chorus of the wind. But who listens to the wind? — Steven Erikson

Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electric display of God the Father. — Eugene O'Neill

It is more raw and unfettered and I'm more likely going into something you could call extreme cartooning. There's a lot of that in the course of 'Holy Terror.' There are interludes where there are pictures - cartoon pictures - of modern figures and they are all wordless. It's up to readers to put the words in. — Frank Miller

And then he has nothing to do. After three weeks-or is it a lifetime?-of ceaseless activity, he has nothing to do. A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction-besides unexpected interludes-has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. For an hour or so, sitting outside on the landing at the top of the stairs, nursing a coffee, tired, a little relieved, a little worried, he contemplates that full stop. What will the next sentence bring? — Yann Martel

Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain. — Christopher Hitchens

I wasn't afraid of you!' Ryan protested. 'I was half intimidated, half infatuated, and I didn't know how to act because of it.'
Sin made a face at Ryan and picked up his chips again. 'How could you be infatuated with me when you didn't even know me?'
Ryan scoffed and pointed his cheese-covered fork at Sin. 'You're gorgeous and tragic - gay boys like that kind of thing. — Santino Hassell

Some observers compare elections in some countries with sports events, where people are but spectators. Moreover, elections must not be mere interludes for pushing a lever and then retreating to passivity, for democracy demands committed participation in the daily workings of society. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

I walked for an hour and then returned by a different route to wait out the weekend. It was one of those empty interludes in travel, an airless unrewarding delay, when nothing occurs except a rising sense of loneliness and uncertainty, a darkening of prospects, the condition of being an outsider with all of a stranger's suspicions. — Paul Theroux

Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time ... When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. — Muriel Barbery

The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending. — Winston Churchill

Raccoons don't need to do poppers in order to come while they're having anonymous same-sex interludes in a highway rest area. — Doug Stanhope

Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes;
When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes. — John Dryden

There followed one of those comical interludes in which the jihadists were confused about what to do next and fell to bitter recriminations. — Neal Stephenson