21st Century Quotes

“The gold cross around his neck lay itself upon me.”
― M S M Barkawitz, Feeling Lucky

“With the right combination of Long Island blue heavens swimming in my bloodstream, I could be perfection.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Stalker Stalked

“The two stalkers who had finally found one another. Watching each other all night until we collapsed from exhaustion.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Stalker Stalked

“Talk about delusional. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. His mother’s doctor reported she’d recently been plagued by wild imaginings, too. Make believe ran in his family. He was nuttier than a jar of peanut butter.”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Crossover

“It was a cooler morning than usual, but it was a welcomed difference. The many childhood summers she had spent on the French Riviera were now a simple memory, her younger adult years in the Caribbean now packed away into the past. The cooler New England temperatures helped to mitigate the heat of her present concerns.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“She told herself, finally, that she must face it or die . . . But this was just a whisper in the self, that flutter within which starts as a tiny plea and fights to grow in strength and resonance. So, she stood by it and fought for it, but not before her life and her love took the losses redemption almost always exacts from the redeemed.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Sol sneered. “The Unabomber was a mathematician.”
“What Ted Kaczynski did can barely be called math,” David said.  “Boundary conditions! Totally irrelevant.”
“He had a PhD.”
“From the University of Michigan. I don’t know if that even counts. And don’t think I don’t know that it was his brother who turned him in.”
Sol looked at him closely. “Whose name was David. That’s your name, right?”
“I would never turn you in.”
Sol shrugged. “Of course not,” he said and drove on.”
― Michael Grigsby, Segment of One

“Valdivia had to hold back the familiar mixture of sadness, rage, and revulsion to keep herself from shouting at the world in front of her. Of course, she had seen bad things before. But now, violence against women was a particular anguish, and the pursuit of their killers had become a personal mission.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“David watched Sol finish the can of beans. Sol always ate fast. He overate. Since he was eight.
Sol leaned back in the wooden chair against the wall, under the window. Baby brother. Sol could have been anything he wanted to be. Nothing mathematical, nothing quantitative, of course, but anything else. A beautiful boy, a wonderful brother, they got along well.
Then when Sol turned eight years old, age of a new beginning, their mother obsessed over him, ignoring David.
Obsessed over Sol and his underwear. Over and over, a regeneration, a newness. Changed his clothes constantly, had him on her lap every minute possible. She put him in bed and tucked the covers in every night. She refused to let their father do it, so he always took care of David.
But, of course, David needed no help and Sol always needed Ruth to take care of him.
Sol was still being breast fed even when he finally went to kindergarten. Then Ruth slowly increased regular, solid food. But before bed, Sol had a nightcap, mother’s milk. Their special time. Their unique closeness took a turn from breastfeeding to something else. By the time Sol was in third grade, he was one of the fattest kids in class. Then the brothers became a real team.
Now here he was. David and Sol still together, on a mission given by the Creator. It was perfect.”
― Michael Grigsby, Segment of One

“You can’t just ask strangers to drive you up and down the country. This is the twenty first century. Strangers are more dangerous than ever; we’ve never been more dangerous.”
― Ali Smith, Spring

“Maybe everyone was being watched, and if they were, then an individual should be bold enough to live out the drama of their lives: to strut across the stage like the consummate player whose lines and actions are the upshot of an audience. Let them see what they would.
She texted back: Just tell me where and when . . .”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Ava reached the highway again. Not a soul was in sight. Not a car, not a bird, and certainly no man. Just one woman walking into a new era of her life, into the hope for a future, another dawn, another day, as the morning sun rose above the mountain crest, painting her face with light.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Jeffrey’s arrest a few years back—the dropped charges, the smuttiness of the coverage—ruined the whole enterprise, canceled the club. But he’d gotten off lightly, so they had moved on with life. She’d remained in southern Florida and made out on elderly targets for fun and some liquid cash. Newly minted retirees with more than a little savings love to feel as though they’ve met the right people, the kind of people who will help to establish them as the big shots they’d thought they had been in their heyday. It was an easy con: a simple promise of a private investment and suddenly there was a check.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Ava had to get Maxime’s location soon so she could get out of there. She’d seen enough of this place and its people that she never wanted to come back. She texted the judge: Do you have the information? I need it. I have to leave here soon.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Daily, she went over the story, ramming it through the turnstile in her mind, making sure she hadn’t missed anything major. She did not want to be caught off guard if she was ever questioned. She had to have thought of everything. And what of those things she could not anticipate? She’d simply answer, “I don’t know. I have no knowledge of that. Someone else might be able to tell you.”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“Writing about Kafka in this day and age is just so easy: the world is more bizarre, senseless, surreal than ever—it would mean the student isn’t really exerting themselves; today, Kafka is just too relatable.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Whereas in the twentieth century, there was a distinction between men and women, in the twenty-first century the lines of gender will become more and more blurred.”
― Quentin Crisp, The Last Word: An Autobiography

“Ava was almost twenty-six, on her own, in a decent and mostly stable relationship, eternally grateful to be away from Jeffrey Hoffman’s clutches. Hoffman had held her captive for just over four years until she escaped that life at eighteen. In the first few years of her escape, she’d had as much therapy as she could tolerate, preferring to get on with things. ”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“..it is a deaf age of defiled silence through which pigs grunt as they stampede over the paving stones of memory.”
― Daša Drndić, Belladonna

“In Europe my family left their toes, but to Ellis Island they brought a dream. The old American dream. Work hard, save your money, be decent, and success you're bound to have. A business of your own. A house. Nice food on the table, carpets, curtains. Maybe two weeks in December in Miami Beach. Only if you're my family you swim with your slippers on. Okay. I grew up with that dream. But these artists you're describing, the self-promoting crybabies what are intentionally being scholckmeisters and gonifs, they dream the new American dream. And the new one is to achieve wealth and recognition without having the burden of intelligence, talent, sacrifice, or the human values what are universal.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“In this day and age, it is hard for a saint to trust the cucumber.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“Auto-Zoomar. Talbert knelt in the a tergo posture, his palms touching the wing-like shoulder blades of the young woman. A conceptual flight. At ten-second intervals the Polaroid projected a photograph on to the screen beside the bed. He watched the auto-zoom close in on the union of their thighs and hips. Details of the face and body of the film actress appeared on the screen, mimetized elements of the planetarium they had visited that morning. Soon the parallax would close, establishing the equivalent geometry of the sexual act with the junctions of this wall and ceiling.
‘Not in the Literal Sense.’Conscious of Catherine Austin’s nervous hips as she stood beside him, Dr Nathan studied the photograph of the young woman. ‘Karen Novotny,’ he read off the caption. ‘Dr Austin, may I assure you that the prognosis is hardly favourable for Miss Novotny. As far as Talbert is concerned the young woman is a mere modulus in his union with the film actress.’ With kindly eyes he looked up at Catherine Austin. ‘Surely it’s self-evident - Talbert’s intention is to have intercourse with Miss Taylor, though needless to say not in the literal sense of that term.’
Action Sequence. Hiding among the traffic in the near-side lane, Koester followed the white Pontiac along the highway. When they turned into the studio entrance he left his car among the pines and climbed through the perimeter fence. In the shooting stage Talbert was staring through a series of colour transparencies. Karen Novotny waited passively beside him, her hands held like limp birds. As they grappled he could feel the exploding musculature of Talbert’s shoulders. A flurry of heavy blows beat him to the floor. Vomiting through his bloodied lips, he saw Talbert run after the young woman as she darted towards the car.
The Sex Kit.‘In a sense,’ Dr Nathan explained to Koester, ‘one may regard this as a kit, which Talbert has devised, entitled “Karen Novotny” - it might even be feasible to market it commercially. It contains the following items: (1) Pad of pubic hair, (2) a latex face mask, (3) six detachable mouths, (4) a set of smiles, (5) a pair of breasts, left nipple marked by a small ulcer, (6) a set of non-chafe orifices, (7) photo cut-outs of a number of narrative situations - the girl doing this and that, (8) a list of dialogue samples, of inane chatter, (9) a set of noise levels, (10) descriptive techniques for a variety of sex acts, (11) a torn anal detrusor muscle, (12) a glossary of idioms and catch phrases, (13) an analysis of odour traces (from various vents), mostly purines, etc., (14) a chart of body temperatures (axillary, buccal, rectal), (15) slides of vaginal smears, chiefly Ortho-Gynol jelly, (16) a set of blood pressures, systolic 120, diastolic 70 rising to 200/150 at onset of orgasm . . . ’ Deferring to Koester, Dr Nathan put down the typescript. ‘There are one or two other bits and pieces, but together the inventory is an adequate picture of a woman, who could easily be reconstituted from it. In fact, such a list may well be more stimulating than the real thing. Now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions. Talbert’s library of cheap photo-pornography is in fact a vital literature, a kindling of the few taste buds left in the jaded palates of our so-called sexuality.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“Sitting in the cruiser, staring through this memory, she wondered why it was so hard for a headstrong woman in this world, in this country—why she had to be so alone to be who she was, and not just Valdivia herself, but every woman who is a lone wolf on the slick, icy tundra. ”
― Jonathan Epps, Until Morning Comes

“To give confidence to an adult is fleeting, to give confidence to a child is eternal”
― Michael Lieber

“An inverse relationship exists in contemporary western Europe between an overtly fascist “look” and succeeding at the ballot box. So the leaders of the most successful extreme Right movements and parties have labored to distance themselves from the language and images of fascism.”
― Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism

“Yes, our century is called the 21st century, but some countries are in the 16th century, some leaders in the 9th century, some people in the 4th century! It is an impossible mission to bring the whole world and all people to the same century! People or countries will always live in a different century! While some has left the religion issues behind, some others will still be the slaves of religion! While some is heading for Mars, some others will start building cars!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Sadly, it seems that hyperbole is having another moment in popular discourse.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“.. almost every face and every voice and scrap of language in this world rises up through a screen or wire like something coming to the surface from the bottom of a lake, or on the other side of some mirrored glass where you can’t quite touch it.”
― Susan Neville, The Town of Whispering Dolls: Stories

“In the 21st century where is the justification for war?”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Treating politicians like imaginary friends instead of public servants accountable to their constituents who have to be pressured and browbeaten into doing the right thing is one of the great pathologies of the 21st century

(8/19/2020 on Twitter)”
― Patrick Wyman