tossed QUOTES

161 " I was remarkably calm. Calm and fatigued. There would be no violence. It was like a storm coming up. The café chairs are carried inside, the awnings are rolled up, but nothing happens. The storm passes over. And, at the same time, that’s too bad. After all, we would all rather see the roofs ripped from the houses, the trees uprooted and tossed through the air. "

― Herman Koch , The Dinner

163 " First, we must see that our negative actions arise due to prejudice and erroneous judgments. The discrimination that labels some as 'friends' and others as 'enemies' must be perceived as the root of our problems. We need to see that we label people and things in terms of our own desires, our own wishes. These wishes are transitory. The labeled objects are, themselves, impermanent. Such labeling is therefore very confused and false, yet it persists, and we continue to create suffering for ourselves. To avoid this, we need to develop equanimity for all beings suffering in samsara, tossed to and fro by their fleeting delusions, just like ourselves. "

― , Chöd in the Ganden Tradition: The Oral Instructions of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche

165 " She shrugged, looking as baffled by it as he felt. " I don't know. I wonder sometimes if people even know what love is anymore. Some days, when I'm watching my friends change lovers as unperturbedly as they change shoes, I think the world just got filled with too many people, and all our technological advances made things so easy that it cheapened our most basic, essential value somehow," she told him. " It's like spouses are commodities nowadays: disposable, constantly getting tossed back out for trade on the market and everyone's trying to trade up, up--like there is a 'trading up' in love." She rolled her eyes. " No way. That's not for me. I'm having one husband. I'm getting married once. When you know going in that you're staying for life, it makes you think harder about it, go slower, choose really well. "

167 " Even the water, grey and listless as it tossed against the harbour wall, seemed fixed in time; as if peering hard enough into its depths would reveal the tips of Peter’s fingers, himself still swaying underwater, cradled in the sea’s mouth. "

― Ava Bloomfield , Honest

169 " Your Eve was wise, John. She knew that Paradise would make her mad, if she were to live forever with Adam and know no other thing but strawberries and tigers and rivers of milk. She knew they would tire of these things, and each other. They would grow to hate every fruit, every stone, every creature they touched. Yet where could they go to find any new thing? It takes strength to live in Paradise and not collapse under the weight of it. It is every day a trial. And so Eve gave her lover the gift of time, time to the timeless, so that they could grasp at happiness.
...
And this is what Queen Abir gave to us, her apple in the garden, her wisdom--without which we might all have leapt into the Rimal in a century. The rite bears her name still. For she knew the alchemy of demarcation far better than any clock, and decreed that every third century husbands and wives should separate, customs should shift and parchmenters become architects, architects farmers of geese and monkeys, Kings should become fishermen, and fishermen become players of scenes. Mothers and fathers should leave their children and go forth to get other sons and daughters, or to get none if that was their wish. On the roads of Pentexore folk might meet who were once famous lovers, or a mother and child of uncommon devotion--and they would laugh, and remember, but call each other by new names, and begin again as friends, or sisters, or lovers, or enemies. And some time hence all things would be tossed up into the air once more and land in some other pattern. If not for this, how fastened, how frozen we would be, bound to one self, forever a mother, forever a child. We anticipate this refurbishing of the world like children at a holiday. We never know what we will be, who we will love in our new, brave life, how deeply we will wish and yearn and hope for who knows what impossible thing!
Well, we anticipate it. There is fear too, and grief. There is shaking, and a worry deep in the bone.
Only the Oinokha remains herself for all time--that is her sacrifice for us.
There is sadness in all this, of course--and poets with long elegant noses have sung ballads full of tears that break at one blow the hearts of a flock of passing crows! But even the most ardent lover or doting father has only two hundred years to wait until he may try again at the wheel of the world, and perhaps the wheel will return his wife or his son to him. Perhaps not. Wheels, and worlds, are cruel.
Time to the timeless, apples to those who live without hunger. There is nothing so sweet and so bitter, nothing so fine and so sharp. "

― Catherynne M. Valente , The Habitation of the Blessed (A Dirge for Prester John, #1)

171 " Still, everyone at the party tried it because no one wants to admit that gazpacho tastes like partially melted tomato ice cream. The problem was that by the time they swallowed their spoonful of soupsicle the waiter was gone, causing all of them to stand in their elegant attire while awkwardly holding a dirty spoon like a terrible, unwanted accessory. Some people laid their empty spoons on windowsills or on the ground when they though no one was looking, but most just looked with quiet desperation for a waiter who might never return and were forced to hold the spoons at their sides, seemingly pretending that the spoons were cigarettes or small fancy dogs. I saw one woman look around expectantly for a minute and when she realized no one was coming back for the spoon she just shrugged and tossed it in the pool. It seemed slightly bitchy, but you have to respect that level of I-have-no-fucks-left-to-give-about-silverware-that-doesn't-even-belong-to-me. With that one spoon drop she told everyone at the party, " If you aren't going to take care of your shit them I'm sure as hell not going to take responsibility for it. "

173 " A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare's comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter of Elizabethan England. The low dark arches, the low strong pillars upon which Shakespeare's temple rests we can all explore and handle. We can all get into his mere tragedy; we can all explore his dungeon and penetrate into his coal-cellar, but we stretch our hands and crane our necks in vain towards that height where the tall turrets of his levity are tossed towards the sky. Perhaps it is right that this should be so; properly understood, comedy is an even grander thing than tragedy. "

― G.K. Chesterton