Mr Penumbra Quotes & Sayings

Within silence all things are contained. What appears to our eyes to be life is but a thin curtain, a gauze penumbra, which stultifies our vision, which prevents us from seeing the truth. — Frederick Lenz

A penumbra of sombre dignity has descended over his reputation. — James Atlas

Meanwhile, in the satisfaction you receive from her way of reading you, from the textual quotations of your physical objectivity, you begin to harbor a doubt: that she is not reading you, single and whole as you are, but using you, using fragments of you detached from the context to construct for herself a ghostly partner, known to her alone, in the penumbra of her semiconsciousness, and what she is deciphering is this apocryphal visitor, not you. — Italo Calvino

Academic envelope serves only to protect everything the story says and does not say, an inner afflatus always on the verge of being dispersed at contact with the air, the echo of a vanished knowledge revealed in the penumbra and in tacit allusions. Torn — Italo Calvino

Let me be candid. If I had to rank book-acquisition experiences in order of comfort, ease, and satisfaction, the list would go like this: 1. The perfect independent bookstore, like Pygmalion in Berkeley. 2. A big, bright Barnes & Noble. I know they're corporate, but let's face it - those stores are nice. Especially the ones with big couches. 3. The book aisle at Walmart. (It's next to the potting soil.) 4. The lending library aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, a nuclear submarine deep beneath the surface of the Pacific. 5. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. — Robin Sloan

Early on May 23, 1997, from 28,500 feet on Everest, I witnessed the incredible shadow of the mountain, the penumbra, forming to the west as the sun rose behind me. The full moon from the night before was still visible. The bluish cast of the atmosphere can also be seen. — Ed Viesturs

In a mask we are faceless and classless, ageless and anonymous. Masks reveal the primal urge to behave like the beast in rut that leaps on the stranger or waits in the penumbra to be leapt upon. — Chloe Thurlow

Or what if he's weeping to himself in a lonely apartment somewhere, where his family never visits him because Grandpa Penumbra is weird and smells like books? — Robin Sloan

The lights of Knoxville quaked in a faint penumbra to the west as must the ruins of many an older city seen by herders in the hills, by barbaric tribesmen shuffling along the roads. — Cormac McCarthy

The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly's wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane. — Victor Hugo

... the warm glazes, the sparkling penumbra of the room itself and, through the little window framed with honeysuckle, in the rustic avenue, the resilient dryness of the sun-parched earth, veiled only by the diaphanous gauze woven of distance and the shade of the trees. — Marcel Proust

Lately, even the Waybacklist borrowers seem to be missing. Have they Been seduced by some other book club on the other side of town? Have they all bought Kindles?
I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! - but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through. My Kindle is a hand-me-down from my dad, one of the original models< ... > There are newer Kindles with bigger screens and subtler industrial design, but this one is like Penumbra's postcards: so uncool it's cool again. — Robin Sloan

When the guy kissed her, Cassidy felt a stab of pain that was close to physical, and therefore within the penumbra of hurts he told himself he could bear. — John L. Parker Jr.

Corvina's got it wrong. Penumbra's schemes didn't fail because he's a hopeless crackpot. If Corvina's right, it means nobody should ever try anything new and risky. Maybe Penumbra's schemes failed because he didn't have enough help. Maybe he didn't have a Mat or a Neel, an Ashley or a Kat - until now. Corvina — Robin Sloan

Then we will do two things," Penumbra says, nodding. "First, I will tell you just a little of our history. Then, to understand, you must see the Reading Room. There, my proposal will become clear, and I dearly hope you will accept it."
Of course we'll accept it. That's what you do on a quest. You listen to the old wizard's problem and then you promise to help him. — Robin Sloan

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration. — Adam Johnson

KUBLAI: I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden.
POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence. — Italo Calvino

POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence, though I continue, without a moment's pause, moving up a river green with crocodiles or counting the barrels of salted fish being lowered into the hold. — Italo Calvino

The smell!" Penumbra repeats. "You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell. — Robin Sloan

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye. — C.S. Lewis

But down below, Penumbra is shouting, "Lean, my boy! Lean!"
And wow, do I ever want this job. — Robin Sloan

They should set a very clear priority for the government. There is such a large penumbra of issues. The party needs to come to grips with the reality that it has to be coherent politically. — Mahesh Rangarajan

Penumbra's cult runs on egregious licensing fees — Robin Sloan

Penumbra [...] produces another e-reader - it's a Nook. Then another one, a Sony. Another one, marked KOBO. Really? Who has a Kobo? — Robin Sloan

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. — Bertrand Russell

If Hemn space is the landscape, and one cosmos is a single geometric point in it, then a given consciousness is a spot of light moving, like a searchlight beam, over that landscape - brightly illuminating a set of points - of cosmi - that are close together, with a penumbra that rapidly feathers away to darkness at the edges. In the bright center of the beam, crosstalk occurs among many variants of the brain. Fewer contributions come in from the half-lit periphery, and none from the shadows beyond. — Neal Stephenson

I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen — Robin Sloan