Book Review: The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister by George R.R. Martin

I have to begin by saying that I’m a huge fan of Mr. Martin and his work and that Tyrion Lannister is one of my all time favorite literary heroes. In fact I’d dare add that I didn’t enjoy A Feast for Crows as much as I should for the simple reason that Tyrion was nowhere to be found.

However, having said that I just have to point out that in my opinion this book came out a few years too early. Since dear Tyrion is still alive and kicking I’m certain that he’d be able to grace us with many more of his witty remarks. Oh well, there’s no use complaining about something that’s already done.

Did this book make me smile? Yes it did, since it reminded me once again what is it that I like about this character. I should also say that the beautiful drawings also capture some of his persona as depicted in the TV series. But, yet again, there’s not enough material in here to keep the fans happy.

Perhaps the next book published in this vein should be The Transformations of Arya Stark, who’s not a lady but a wolf.

Quotes from The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

“When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place”

“All my life I cherished the possibility of escape”

“Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more”

“If you are always angry, always yelling at people, ultimately that just means you depend on them”

“… (Mom) you were like a blossom softly unfurling its petals on a cliff somewhere…”

“This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender…”

“I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling”

“When you’re in a state of homogeneity, it means you’ve lost yourself”

“You see things through the filter of your own sensibility”

“Who says that you can’t warm your frozen limbs in the faint heat of a flicker of hope?”

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Hitomi Kanehara – Autofiction Quotes

Autofiction

What is hysteria, after all? It’s a disease of the pussy.

I live with the sole purpose of making my boring life even more boring by providing a boring commentary for my everyday boring life through a boring voice in my head.

I need to stay calm. Restrain myself. I have this tendency to think I’m right and make others feel bad. I need to remember that even I’m wrong sometimes.

There is really no point in basing one illusion on another.

Nobody has a time or place where they are free from the danger of death. People forget that, People live their lives with the basic assumption that they will still be alive the day after. I can’t live like that.

To love is to die.

Anger is similar to maggots. It multiplies in no time at all and quickly reaches an uncontrollable state.

I’ve chosen a life in which there is no place for excuses.

I’m living my life as a kite that has no home to go to.

Endurance is what my life is all about… I basically need to endure every moment of my life…

Perhaps hell is a fun place and even fun places can be hell, or perhaps hell is turning into a fun place day after day.

Yoko Tawada – Where Europe Begins Quotes

Sometimes other people’s skulls look transparent. At such moments I fall in love.

They say hair is the part of the skin that has died and hardened. Part of my body is already a corpse.

I was trying to preserve my body from death by burning it onto paper.

People’s mouths fell open like trash bags, and garbage spilled out. I had to chew the garbage, swallow it, and spit it back out in different words. Some of the words stank of nicotine. Some smelled like hair tonic.

No work is more exhausting than sleep.

…My mother asked, “Why don’t you cut your hair? They say the god of death can grab hold of long hair.”

I am a transparent coffin.

The moon no one sees belongs to yesterday.

Something no one sees can’t be wrong.

Perhaps some books do scream when they’re torn apart.

When a person smells different, it’s as if she’s altogether a stranger, and one becomes a little shy.

It’s strange the way the expression of a foreigner’s face is often compared to a mask. Does this comparison conceal a wish to discover a familiar face behind the strange one?

Sometimes two people sat down next to each other in a café, and thus, briefly, formed a word. Then they separated, in order to go off and form other words.

I wish I were made of raisins. In the language of raisins I say: do not call me by a place name. Do not give me women’s shoes.

The claim that a person who writes is not truly living can only be made by someone who sees a person and his life as subject and object. He might say the most important thing is to live one’s life. I would say: I live and my life lives as well. Even my writing lives.

There are people, though, who assume that everyone is given an original text at birth. They call the place where these texts are stored a soul.

In a book about Indians I once read that the soul cannot fly as fast as an airplane. Therefore one always loses one’s soul on an airplane journey and arrives at one’s destination in a soulless state… In any case, this is the reason why travelers most often lack souls. And so tales of long journeys are always written without souls.

To cut off a person from the world, you must first destroy not his mouth but his ear.

How strange! In order to read, I have to look at the text. But to avoid stumbling, I have to pretend the letters don’t exist. This is the secret of the alphabet: the letters aren’t there any longer, and at the same time they haven’t yet vanished.

The books can never forget their readers, though the readers have no doubt forgotten all about the books’ contents.

I had always found it unpleasant to have guests in my apartment. They filled up my rooms with strange sentences I would never have formulated in such a way.

For me, my apartment had the function of a skin. No one could observe it from the inside.

Buy the book: Where Europe Begins (New Directions Paperbook)

Anton Chekhov - Quotes

Flies purify the air, and plays -- the morals.

In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.

Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an imancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.

It's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem paltry and ridiculous. Did not the discoveries of Copernicus or Columbus, let us say, seem useless and ridiculous at first, while the nonsensical writings of some wiseacre seemed true?

When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.

Brevity is the sister of talent.

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Quotes About Humor

A joke is a very serious thing.
Winston Churchill

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Henry Ward Beecher

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
Mignon McLaughlin

A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Paul Fadiman

A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.
Hugh Sidey

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
Jessamyn West

A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
William A. Ward

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it. E. B. White

For more look at the source
Image taken from here

Hitomi Kanehara – Snakes and Earrings Quotes

Search Amazon.com for Hitomi Kanehara “Think about it. God has to be a sadist to give people life.”
“So I guess you’re saying Mary was a masochist?”
“Yeah. Guess so.”

I wanted to live recklessly and leave nothing behind but ashes in this dark, dull world.

All I wanted was to be part of an underground world where the sun doesn’t shine, there are no serenades, and the sound of children’s laughter is never, ever heard.

I flipped through brain-dead variety shows and comatose documentaries for a while before turning the TV off.

I often like to think that if sunlight reached into everywhere on the entire planet, I’d find a way to turn myself into a shadow.

With Ama’s words, the atmosphere quickly returned to normal. Well, at least as normal as it could be considering I was sitting between a guy who’d beat someone beyond recognition for me and another who wanted to kill me.

…there’s no point in me waiting for a solution when I don’t even have a problem in the first place. Life just seemed so empty, that’s all.

…whenever a tiny seed of hope took root in me and began to grow, it was always crashed by a heavy downpour of self-loathing.

I wondered which would be better-to work as a prostitute to live, or to die rather than work as one? I’d say the latter answer would be the one chosen by the healthy mind, but then again, there’s not really anything healthy about being dead.

What does go through someone’s mind when they kill someone anyway? Do they think about the future? The people they care about? Their life all the way up to that moment? And how could I even begin to guess? I was a person who could see no future for myself; a person who cared about no one.

All I could do was escape from reality, but every time I tried to escape from the pain, that same pain told me that I had probably been falling in love with him.

Screw you. Go to hell, you fuckers. I wish I had a great vocabulary to fully express the extent of my pain and hatred. But I don’t. I’m just pathetic. That’s all I am.

Buy the book: Snakes and Earrings

Banana Yoshimoto – Hardboiled & Hard Luck Quotes

Her life was like a pale shadow of life, given form by innumerable layers of anguish.

People tend to think they break up because they get tired of the person they’ve been with – that it’s someone’s decision, either yours or theirs. But this isn’t really true. Periods in our lives end the way seasons change. That’s all there is to it.

…And when you take a spill, you can always rise up from it with something good in your hand.

I always focus on the present, so why does the passage of time make me so sad?

…None of this mattered for my sister who was dying. This was a sacred time set aside for us survivors to think about issues we didn’t usually consider. To focus on the unbearable only marred what was sacred.

In the world we now lived in, the good times were a hundred times better.

…I lived in a world of overwhelming sensations; it was like I had just fallen out of love.

These songs had seen my sister through the last September of her life. They weren’t selected for that role, it just happened that way.

Buy the book: Hardboiled and Hard Luck

Ami Sakurai – Innocent World Quotes

Every so often the world and I drifted far, far apart this way.

According to the world, the sex was terribly abnormal.

I saw having sex with complete strangers as being no different from masturbating. Never in my dreams did I fear it would change me in any way.

If I were labeled “The Erotic Corpse” and left at an art museum, I would have been a major attraction.

My heart was like the after-image of a dream, and even that trace seemed to disappear. It was scary.

Getting into bed with him was harder to picture than having sex with a Minotaur in the labyrinths of hell.

Masaki’s confession ushered in a kind of intimacy that didn’t have anything to do with sex. It was like friendship, just more lonesome and poignant.

Didn’t bringing a new life into the world atone for my being?

The amnesty was cancelled and I was going back to the prison of pointless life.

Why do people try to patch up their own wounds with the ugly decomposed flesh and blood of others? Knowing they’ll crumble and collapse.

Don’t ever rely on parents, relatives, boyfriends, buddies, anyone like that. If you take that advice to heart, you’ll never have to despair whatever happens to you in life.

Buy the book: Innocent World

Banana Yoshimoto – Goodbye Tsugumi Quotes

People here (in Tokyo) are always getting angry about the smallest things-because it’s raining, for instance, or because some class has been cancelled, or because their dog took a leak in the wrong place.

She was malicious, she was rude, she had a foul mouth, she was selfish, she was horribly spoiled, and to top it all off she was brilliantly sneaky.

…she knew a lot. And of course one has to be fairly intelligent to start with, to think up so many different ways of being mean.

…acting as though she were having fun she managed to keep her suffering down to a minimum.

It’s a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent.

He was The Dad Who Came Late.

Life is a performance, I thought. Perhaps the word “illusion” would have meant more or less the same thing, but to me “performance” seemed closer to the truth.

“Maria babe, I can die in the mountains just as well as I can die by the sea.”

“You know, Tsugumi, I get the feeling that you’ve started speaking more like a human being lately,” I said.
“Maybe my time is running out.” Tsugumi laughed.

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.

The singing of flutes, the waving of the fans, the passing breath of a salty breeze-all this projected itself slowly into the night, flowing on and on like paper lanterns adrift on a river.

…love is a battle, and you can’t ever let your lover see your weaknesses, not even when you arrive at the very end.

Buy the book: Goodbye Tsugumi

Banana Yoshimoto - Lizard Quotes

“It would be like dying.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you lost your memory.”

“Memories are energy, and if they aren’t diffused they remain to haunt you.”

At some moment, it struck me that the village and my parents reeked of defeat, and that I did too. A village full of losers.

Something emanated from his being that seemed very familiar to me. I felt instantly repelled by him, but then, just as forcefully, irresistibly drawn to him.

He and I fit together so well, like the swirl on the yin/yang symbol – his tough resilience and my resilient toughness.

“Sounds great,” I agreed. I would go out with Akira and forget, for a brief while, the sorrow that clings to life. I would pretend for a moment that my sadness might someday disappear.

The only times that I had ever experienced such a circle of energy in a gathering of people –although it may seem irreverent to compare the two occasion- were the orgies with my favorite friends.

Somehow, I could never feel at ease. I felt so blue all the time, always distracted and thinking about someplace else, far away.

“It’s a blessing to have a spark in your soul, something wild.”

Sometimes that’s what happens with relationships that are too perfect. The only thing to do is to end them.

I would live and die, hopelessly ensconced in the cynical ways of the city.

No one can survive childhood without being wounded.

For the first time, I was able to step away from my imagined position in the center of the universe and see myself as part of something larger.

The river possesses the force to guide fate. I think that nature, buildings, and mountain ranges have some effect on our lives. Everything is intertwined and linked together…

Buy the book: Lizard

George Bernard Shaw Quotes

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder,always in the name of right and honor and peace,until the gods are tired of bloodand create a race that can understand.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die anymore than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Source: WritersMugs 

Book Choice: George Bernard Shaw's Plays (Norton Critical Editions)

George Bernard Shaw Quotes

For this fine summer morning here are a few quotes by that great master of old, Mr. George Bernard Shaw:

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language."

"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

Source: Quoteland

Mark Twain Quotes

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
Source: Quotations Page

Book Choice: How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (Dodo Press)

Quotes

"At the core of us is a writer. Not a human being" - Anais Nin

"Pain is weakness leaving the body" - Michael Connelly

Oscar Wilde - Quotes

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

All art is quite useless.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Stolen from Brainy Quote