Kersh Quotes & Sayings

The family is the essential presence, the thing that never leaves you, even if you find you have to leave it. — Bill Buford

My hope for this country is that we remain a people who value freedom, who have the courage to face the realities with faithful hearts instead of anxious ones. — Taya Kyle

I like the early chill. It's like waking up to see a friend's face, or the first strong taste of turska kava. — Jack Kersh

Now, you mummy's darlings, get a rift on them boots. Definitely shine em, my little curly-headed lambs, for in our mob, war or no war, you die with clean boots on. — Gerald Kersh

When Irish eyes are smiling, watch your step. — Gerald Kersh

But books, when you want to buy them, are costly and, when you need to sell them, valueless. — Gerald Kersh

In proper men there is hidden a light which darkness makes visible. I believe that the hope of mankind is in this buried glory; the spirit which makes true men hang on to the throats of their enemies at the very rim of the grave. — Gerald Kersh

He opened the door and led me through a corridor into a dark green lounge curiously paneled with pale green glass behind which, at cunningly measured distances, lay exquisitely painted panoramas of strange seas and beautiful landfalls. Standing in the center of the room, and slowly turning, a man might imagine that Satan had taken him to the top of a high mountain, and was showing him all the kingdoms of the earth... until he put out his hand to touch the middle distance, and felt a window, and saw through it to the heart of the illusion. — Gerald Kersh

The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine ...
And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote: ... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment. — Harlan Ellison

Screw the Silent Brothers."
"No thanks. There's strong and silent, and then there's just freaky."
"Isabelle! — Cassandra Clare

Different influences at different times in my career, and some have stayed with me more, some less. Chester Himes. Ralph Dennis, who wrote a series called Hardman which is a big influence on the Hap and Leonard novels. Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, Fredrick Brown, Robert Bloch, and I'm just getting started. I read constantly. As for the epic Western, that's Paradise Sky. — Joe R. Lansdale

He was one of those men who can both get money and keep it. He must have been a millionaire. He kept accounts. He introduced a post-office atmosphere into his shady dealings. Not a stamp, not a pen-nib escaped him, and he would stay up half the night to figure out what had happened to a mislaid farthing. You cannot conceive the caution and the meanness of that man! He would have made a Syrian pawn-broker appear like Diamond Jim Brady. But he had brains, and also nerve. At the same time, he was as smooth as glycerine. He looked like an octopus - he had a dirtyish pallor, no shape, evil eyes, and a beak. In shaking hands with him, you felt that six or seven other hands were investigating your pockets while a dozen eyes watched you. He was feared. He made money out of everything. But he was still unknown to the police. — Gerald Kersh

Is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude. And stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks. And nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh unto the other ... And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon ... — Edgar Allan Poe

I can't believe in the God of my Fathers. If there is one Mind which understands all things, it will comprehend me in my unbelief. I don't know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space. — Gerald Kersh

Christmas is not just a day, an event to be observed and speedily forgotten. It is a spirit which should permeate every part of our lives. — William Parks

Some Things Never Change. They just Become Different. — Joshua Caleb

Now Mrs. Greensleeve, who knew that she was going to die, thought of death in the same way a nightbound wanderer in the rain looks forward to a soft bed. — Gerald Kersh

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things Virgil, Georgics, Book 2 — Robert Galbraith

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle. — Wayne Dyer