Paul de Bursac: You don't think much of me, Captain Morgan. You're wondering why they have chosen me for this mission. I wonder to...o. As you know, I am not a brave man. On the contrary, I'm always frightened. I wish I could borrow your nature for awhile, Captain. When you meet danger, you never think of anything except how you will circumvent it. The word failure does not even exist for you. While I, I think always, suppose I fail and that I am frightened. Harry Morgan: Yeah, I can easily see how it wouldn't take much courage to get a notorious patriot off Devils' Island. But uh, but just for professional reasons, I'd like to know how you're going to do it. Paul de Bursac: We will find a way. It might fail, and if it does and I'm, I'm still alive, I will try to pass on my information, my mission, to someone else, perhaps to a better man who does not fail. Because there is always someone else. That is the mistake the Germans always make with people they try to destroy. There will be always someone else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Monta...igne.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Giles Lacey: I say, old boy, I'm trying to find exactly what your wife does do. Maxim de Winter: She sketches a little.... Giles Lacey: Sketches. Oh not this modern stuff, I hope. You know, portrait of a lamp shade upside down to represent a soul in torment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mrs. de Winter: Mrs. Danvers must be furious with me. Maxim de Winter: Oh, hang Mrs. Danvers! Why on earth should you be frig...htened of her? You behave more like an upstairs maid or something, not like the mistress of the house at all. Mrs. de Winter: Yes, I know I do. But I feel so uncomfortable. I try my best every day, but it's very difficult with people looking you up and down as if you were a prize cow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind--he had been so for such a long time--but I swear that I d...o not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look,... word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You haf slafed your life away in de bosses' mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with... seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an' vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an' the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over t...he water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do you remember how old Ford was always writing how Conrad suffered so when he wrote? How it was un metier de chien etc. Do you su...ffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »