Marie's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 57)

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time"
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

149 people liked it

"Sometimes we do that to ourselves -- we pit our desires against one another. We insist unnecessarily on seeing one aspect of our personality as being at odds with the rest of ourselves. "
— Julia Serano

3 people liked it

"Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

tags: death, life
331 people liked it

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman

749 people liked it

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

tags: books, bookstore, towns
326 people liked it

"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. "
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

231 people liked it

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You)

tags: imagination
226 people liked it

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

tags: humor, open-mind, thinking
2,905 people liked it

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

tags: humor, proverb
1,984 people liked it

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

tags: humor
1,740 people liked it

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life."
— Terry Pratchett (The Last Continent)

tags: death, humor, life
848 people liked it

"In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this."
— Terry Pratchett

491 people liked it

"A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

tags: bookshop, bookstore, discworld, read, reading
217 people liked it

"His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.'"
— Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)

134 people liked it

"Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide."
— Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

tags: humor
102 people liked it

"Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

90 people liked it

"Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?"
— Terry Pratchett (Going Postal)

68 people liked it

"Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on."
— Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)

59 people liked it

"A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true."
— Terry Pratchett

tags: observational
54 people liked it

"Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness."
— Terry Pratchett (Men at Arms)

48 people liked it

"The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

tags: crowds, intelligence
42 people liked it

"The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight."
— Terry Pratchett (Eric)

34 people liked it

"What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa."
— Michael Moorcock

7 people liked it

"Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will change that. Today you are alive and here and honored and blessed with good fortune. Look at this suset, it's beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village. "
— James Clavell

tags: how, live
7 people liked it

"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style."
— Steven Brust

tags: taltos, vlad
18 people liked it

"True heroics must be carefully planned - and strenuously avoided."
— Steven Brust

tags: humor, taltos, vlad
4 people liked it

"I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence."
— Steven Brust (Issola)

tags: humor
3 people liked it

"Staring into the dragon's maw, one quickly learns wisdom."
— Steven Brust

tags: humor
7 people liked it

"If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore. A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf."
— Armistead Maupin

13 people liked it

"Oh, Mona, we're all damned fools! Some of us just have more fun with it than others. Loosen up, dear! Don't be so afraid to cry . . . or laugh, for that matter. Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!"
— Armistead Maupin (More Tales of the City)

tags: madrigal, mrs-
4 people liked it

""Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on."
The older woman poured herself a glass of sangria. "Screw that"she said quietly.
"What?"
"Screw that. Wash your mouth out. Who taught you that half-assed existential drivel?""
— Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City)

2 people liked it

"Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you really want something, try to want it a little less."
— Joel Rosenberg

2 people liked it

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
— Anne Lamott

160 people liked it

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."
— Anne Lamott

82 people liked it

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

tags: life, perfectionism, writing
69 people liked it

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."
— Anne Lamott

61 people liked it

"And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore."
— Anne Lamott (Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year)

tags: depression, healing
43 people liked it

"It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

tags: life
43 people liked it

"If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

21 people liked it

"Joy is the best makeup."
— Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

13 people liked it

"Expectations are resentments under construction."
— Anne Lamott

10 people liked it

"Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back."
— Anne Lamott

10 people liked it

"Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun. "
— Larry Niven

tags: fun, nature, science
14 people liked it

"The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools."
— Larry Niven (Ringworld)

tags: commentary, fiction, science, social
22 people liked it

"Never fire a laser at a mirror. "
— Larry Niven

tags: science
7 people liked it

"Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless."
— Larry Niven (N-Space)

tags: esp, magic, psi
1 person liked it

"1a) Never throw shit at an armed man.
1b) Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."
— Larry Niven (N-Space)

tags: common, sense
1 person liked it

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

tags: be-yourself, confidence, individuality, those-who-matter
17,729 people liked it