Ian Caldwell > Quotes

“Hope,... which whispered from Pandora's box after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion... It's a law of motion, a fact of physics..., no different from the stages of white dwarves and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Never invest yourself in anything so deeply that its failure could cost you your happiness.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“The adventure of our first days together gradually blossomed into something else: a feeling I'd never had, which I can only compare to the sensation of returning home, of joining a balance that needs no adjusting, as if the scales of my life had been waiting for her all along.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“...a good friend stands in harm's way for you the second you ask--but a great friend does it without being asked at all.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“I'd begun to realize that there was an unspoken predjudice among book-learned people, a secret conviction they all seemed to share, that life as we know it is an imperfect vision of reality, and that only art, like a pair of reading glasses can correct it.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“...we both saw something we liked, a willingness to have no walls, or maybe just an unwillingness to keep them standing.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Inde fernut, titidem qui vivere debeat annos, corpre de patrio parvum phenica renasci' It's from Ovid. It means, 'A little phoenix is born anew from the father's body, fated to live the same number of years.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yard-stick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Never mix books and bed. In the spectrum of excitement, sex & thought were on opposite ends. Both to be enjoyed, but never at the same time.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Time passed, worlds diverged.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“The only things people can ever know about you are the ones that you let them see”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“...Because every desire has its proper object...people spend their lives wanting things the shouldn't. The world confuses them into taking heir love and aiming it where it doesn't belong...All it takes to be happy is to love the right things, in the right amounts. Not money. Not books. People. Adults who don't understand that never feel fulfilled...”
― Ian Caldwell

“So ended the formative period in [his] life, the single year that set in motion all the clockwork of his future identity. Thinking back on it, I wonder if it isn't the same for all of us. Adulthood is a glacier encroaching quietly on youth. When it arrives, the stamp of childhood suddenly freezes, capturing us for good in the image of our last act, the pose we struck when the ice of age set in.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“That was the recipe of our relationship, I think. We gave each other what we never expected to find.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“Love lost is a special kind of failure, I think. It's a reminder that some consummations, no matter how devoutly wished for, never come; that some apes will never be men, not in all the world's ages.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“With that in mind, I try to imagine the greatest gift I could've given my father. And as sleep descends on me, the answer seems strangely clear: my faith in his idols. That was what he wanted all along - to feel that we were united by something permanent, to know that as long as he and I believed in the same thing, we would never be apart.”
― Ian Caldwell

“Leanoardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas wit a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite, starting with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. But Paul, who knows Leonardo so well you'd thing the old man slept on the bottom bun, understands the value of starting with the shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see.”
― Ian Caldwell

“Hope...which is whispered from PAndora's box only after all the other plauges and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is onl time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“A son is a promise that time makes to a man,the guarantee every father receives that whatever he holds dear will someday be considered foolish, and that person he loves best in the world will misunderstand him.”
― Ian Caldwell, The Rule of Four

“They could never quite reconcile themselves to the idea that our lives don't follow the dramatic arc that a good author gives to a great literary character. Only in accidents of pure perfection does the world actually become a stage." (Rule of Four, 54-55)”
― Ian Caldwell

“The worst thief is a bad book”
― Ian Caldwell

“Hope, Paul said to me once, which whispered from Pandora's box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion...Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.”
― Ian Caldwell