01UndatedAnd the matron sighed over the destiny of ladies in good society, whose moral judgement led them to love unabashedly and whose depravity led them to pay for it.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
02UndatedWomen always think in the catastrophic, and when there is a calamity to rectify that might require a unmarried granddaughter, there older women will always act. Their powers of foresight and vigilance might make any disheveled or nubile young haggage ready for the altar in five minutes.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
03UndatedThe greatest ugliness in the world is seeing so beautiful a creature spoil themselves on stupidity.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
04UndatedThe skies gave way to the full ascendence of morning and clouds skittered across the expanse, the variations on a nebulous theme woven on a celestial loom.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
05UndatedA demigod who reaches his apotheosis never mourns for himself.It is the business of his many adulators to mourn for him. He cannot feel sadness to be so great, leaving all the rest of us to champion in trembling misery.I, surprisingly, have very few words to offer, only because this year has taken so many sensational performers from us. There comes a time when the agony of loss is too great, when we feel it too much-- there is nothing left but painful astonishment. My grievances lie more with the Gods for taking him away from us than they do with his parting. I suppose I shall reach the stage of unconscionable sorrow at some point; now I am half confusion and half indignation. It should be impossible for people to be so deeply affected by someone whom we have never formally met, but this is existence: it is a bold measure we take, this stake in sufferance; we must all go through everything together, another proof of the mask of division. We all feel the same things, and Prince's passing is felt no less by anybody. Between him and Bowie, there is now a musical chasm in the world, a place where Gods once dwelt that is now abandoned, and in the Age of Pseudolotry, where what is nonsensical reigns over what is intelligent, we are likely never to see one of his kind again.Goodnight, sweet Prince. We shall go on trundling through this 'thing called life' with hearts defrauded of our greatest love.--On the death of PrinceMichelle Franklin / quote ↗
06UndatedAttracting musicians is rather like inviting flies over to tea: they are tolerable for half an hour, but when they begin to touch the food, you either wish they would go home or die.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
07UndatedThe dust of thirty years hung lifeless in shafts of morning light, the gilding of perfectly prim pages shone incanescent, the shriek of rolling ladders mourned in perennial soliloquy.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
08UndatedFantasy for the most part is really just reality reflected through a storybook lens.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
09UndatedDo what is right and what is good." -- Bryeison to Alasdair before going to his death on the battlefield.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
10UndatedThe unconscious fabric of human destiny had done with her, unraveling all her grievances and reweaving them as joyous circumstance.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
11UndatedThere are two gradations of cold that are always acceptable: Mild Frost, which is preferable for reading and writing and any other activity done indoors, and Absolute Zero, which is the only temperature suitable for sleep. There is nothing more delicious than being swathed in a cocoon of blankets and awaking with a nose frosted over with rime, and once I do achieve vampiric heights and fall asleep with the mastery of a corpse lately dead, I am best left alone until I wake up at my usual time. I do tend to bite when rattled out of my flocculent coffin, and everyone in my building knows never to disturb me during the early morning hours. Authors, being crepuscular creatures, should never be roused before 11am: the creative mind is never turned off; it only dies momentarily and its revived by the scent of coffee at the proper time.Bacon is also an acceptable restorative.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
12UndatedMy doctor has given me as strong an antihistamine as she is allowed to prescribe, but even that does nothing for the itching and swelling. The moment a grain of pollen enters the keep, I begin to tomato, and after two minutes of being exposed to the Ejaculateum Arboratoeaea, I am lying on the ground with my tongue lolling out of the side of my mouth.I am heartily glad that the trees and plants are still interested in copulatory activities; I only wish they would be so good as to keep their sperm away from my face. Do not pretend that pollen is anything else; it transfers haploid male genetic material and sullies the bedclothes unmercifully.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
13UndatedRegrettable was the gallantry of great men who risked themselves for others.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
14UndatedThe absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.On the death of Ted, beloved catMichelle Franklin / quote ↗
15UndatedThe captain’s eyes betrayed what his countenance must conceal: the anguish of an ancient being who must honour his birthright by living beyond those whom he would have given much to keep.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
16UndatedI am never one to judge others; I am so eccentric myself that I have no right to cast aspersions. A person may or may not like a thing, and I have little to say other than I love it too or how could you dare not like it please die promptly, but I leave everyone to find their own niches in time. We are all avid about certain things; I happen to rave over many subjects, all of which have a place in the Kingdom of Nerdonia, and whenever I hear someone unjustly disparage a thing I consider sacred, I lay it down that the person is either mistaken or a dunderwhelp, the latter being the likeliest of the two. There is a great difference between knowledge accompanied by bias and ignorance accompanied by gallantry, and while all tastes may be what they are, there are bare necessities that will immediately define a character and relationship, these things usually being how many Monty Python lines one knows and whether or not they know what Iocaine is.The strength of lasting friendships rests on whether one can sing the theme to Neverending Story.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
17UndatedIf the sale of flesh could be made as easily as the sale of spiritual exemption, the prescience of a dedicated businessman might be well preserved.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
18UndatedWhat will I do when you're gone?" said Alasdair, with a faltering voice.Bryeison placed a hand on his shoulder and said, with raging tranquility, "Do what is good and what is right.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
19UndatedThe past is behind us," said Boudicca,"but the difficulty there is we keep looking over our shoulders.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
20UndatedBut the world hinges on good fathers and those who would be the merchants of confidence.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
21UndatedAbuse really is its own alphabet. Those who have not gone through it cannot understand it fully. The echos of violence hang in subconscious long after the threat is gone.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
22UndatedNever underestimate the audacity of the small minded and slightly crapulous.A rather bleezed young neighbour decided to have a grammar battle with me. It lasted all of two seconds.I said something slightly amicable, and he responded with, “You sure that's how you use that word?”I put down my laundry basket and turned to him slowly and deliberately.“Do you really want to have this discussion with me, son, or do you want to go home and rethink your life?”He grumbled and vanished.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
23UndatedA scientist does not have hope, sir. Hope is what a man has in the absence of answers, and once he does empirical experimentation, he replaces hope with knowledge and disappointment.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗
24UndatedThe most obnoxious thing in the world is to listen to others drone on about how much they love the heat.I leaned over to one woman at the café, who was professing how at home she was in the sweltering rot of hell, and said, “If you enjoy the heat so much, marry it, honeymoon with it, and throw it off a cliff, to spare the rest of us the agony of having to listen to the joy of your wretched matrimony.”She laughed.I was completely serious.Michelle Franklin / quote ↗