Een vriend zei me eens: “Ik blader graag door iemand zijn boekenrek. Het toont me met wie ik te maken heb.”
Eén van mijn hobby’s is Engelstalige lectuur lezen. Na enkele jaren vergaarde ik in mijn notaboekje een hele reeks fragmenten uit de boeken die ik gelezen had. Stukjes die blijven hangen omdat ze aangrijpend zijn, of komisch, of gewoon omdat ze de bal helemaal raak slaan. Uit dat notaboekje heb ik voor mijn trouwe bloglezers nu nog eens een bloemlezing gemaakt (opgedeeld in 4 blogposts).
Geniet van dit stukje blootgelegde ziel!
Uit: The Confession (John Grisham)
You burn a man’s pickup, and he’s ready for war.
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Uit: The Long Walk (Slavomir Rawicz)
I looked back at him once and he waved. I felt suddenly bereft of friends, bereft of everything, as desolate and lonely as a man could be.
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Uit: All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
We’re no longer young men. We’ve lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We’ve been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don’t believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.
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Continuous fire, defensive fire, curtain fire, trench mortars, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades – words, words, but they embrace all the horrors of the world.
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So at the moment we’ve got the two things any soldier needs to keep him happy: good food and rest. It isn’t much, when you think about it.
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Uit: The Jefferson Key: A Novel (Steve Berry)
Greed was what compelled every business to serve its customers. It’s what guaranteed the best product at the best price.
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Uit: Red Plenty (Francis Spufford)
‘If you want to get to where you’re going, it’s important to show you’re not just a passenger.’
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make a connection, build a relationship. Chekuskin’s First Law, my friend. Everything Is Personal. Everything – is – personal. Have another glass. And repeat after me. Everything … is … personal.’
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Uit: The Jefferson Key: A Novel (Steve Berry)
Follow your heart. It rarely leads you astray. It’s thinking that gets us into trouble.”
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That was the key to women, his father had always said. Make them think you care.