Home > Topic > the old lady
1 " Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. "
― Mark Twain
2 " The waitress scuttles away, and I make a shooing motion at the old couple who’re still glaring. “Don’t you have something to better to work on?” I hiss. “Like golfing or eating prunes or dying?” The old lady looks shocked. “Okay, sorry, not dying. But seriously, prunes are good for you. "
― Sara Wolf , Love Me Never (Lovely Vicious, #1)
3 " …[S]uddenly your eye, which was already preparing itself for larger dimensions, goes about willingly with little, hesitating, hearkening steps over the many overgrown paths of a long dead experience and stands still by all its landmarks reverently and respectfully. And has forgotten the world, and has no world but a face. I know exactly everything you said then. The figure of the old lady who speaks rarely and reservedly, who hides her hands when a gesture of tenderness would move them, and who only with rare caresses builds bridges to a few people, bridges that no longer exist when she draws back her arm and lies again like an island fantastically repeated on all sides in the mirror of motionless waters. My eyes too were already caught up in the radiance and bound to great and deep beauties.”―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf bei Berlin (October 18, 1900) "
4 " If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or æsthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else—mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful. "
― G.K. Chesterton , All Things Considered
5 " We're all traitors now.” “Ha!” the old lady said. “Only if we lose. "
― James S.A. Corey , Caliban's War (The Expanse, #2)
6 " There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: as the people you call when there's a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler's head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror. "
― Christopher L. Hayes , A Colony in a Nation
7 " Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender…Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere. "
― Nikki Ferguson- Maimed
8 " I push my thigh against his. “Well, thank God.”“Thank God what?” he asks. His hand slowly rubs up and down the place where my shoulder meets my arm. It makes me good shiver.“That I don’t have a neck brace. It’s hard to rock a neck brace, especially if we’re still going to that dance.”He leans in and kisses my nose. “If anyone could do it, you could.”I tilt my head so our lips meet.“Hormonal ones, I am right here. Me. The old lady otherwise known as your grandmother,” Betty says.“Sorry. He’s just irresistible,” I say, settling back against him.“Well, try to resist the irresistible,” Betty says knowingly as the truck bumps over a pothole. "
― Carrie Jones , Captivate (Need, #2)
9 " So you’re the little smart ass from Poleglass.”I wanted to point out he sounded like Dr. Seuss but bit my lip and remembered the warning the old lady gave me. "
― David Louden , Bone Idol [bohn ahydl]