J.N. Chaney > Quotes

“To be hated for what she was, and not who. The idea pushed him past anger to sadness. How could someone fight that kind of hatred?”
― J.N. Chaney, Casualties of Consequence

“He sweated like a whore in church.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Last Reaper

“That’s the illusion they preach, the trick you end up believing is real. They tell you true power is dictated by the dictator, because he lives in the ivory tower with his finger on the trigger, but the secret they keep, the part they refuse to tell you during your adolescent indoctrination…is that none of that is true. “Real power,” she said, “isn’t dealt in bullets, darlings, but in words.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“Each and every one of these people was somebody’s adored offspring, a new life they brought into creation. We may despise the things they did, but each was something unique, that has never existed before and never will again. We honor that, celebrating the potential that each realized during their time, and mourning the potential that each did not.”
― J.N. Chaney, Hand of Fate

“Them that wield the most power are usually the same ones who are the most ’fraid of their own shadows,”
― J.N. Chaney, Fractured Consortium

“Every leader who made a difference didn’t do it with a sword or a gun, but with a voice that might have moved a mountain.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“I guess a walk by the water wouldn’t kill me.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Children

“Exploiting situations to gain public favor is politics in a nutshell, darling”
― J.N. Chaney

“Everything is a contest. The price of losing is the only thing that changes.”
― J.N. Chaney, Galactic Shield

“Genocide wasn’t so bad as long as the gods gave it their blessing.”
― J.N. Chaney, Hope Everlasting

“But I wasn’t most men, and optimism, more than not, got men like that killed. I preferred to prepare for the worst and expect the worst. A pessimist all the way.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Descent

“The opening notes of The Ancient’s Call hummed through the room, ponderous and heartbreakingly sad, evoking the last pages of a beloved story where you realized you’d never be able to read them for the first time again.”
― J.N. Chaney, Red Bounty

“Neither fat nor muscular, he gave the impression of someone who frequently yelled at waiters for not getting his food just right.”
― J.N. Chaney, Intrinsic Immortality

“whatever paradise or hell it might take him.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.–Carl Sagan”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“I have two rules in life—I don’t smell laundry to see if it’s clean, and I don’t eat things people shove at me while asking me how bad they taste—”
― J.N. Chaney, Path of Tyrants

“Everyone seems to think power comes from a weapon, from something you can hold in your hands and aim at someone’s skull. A bully picks up a stick in the schoolyard and makes a threat, and see how he is rewarded. The weaker children obey, not out of love, but fear. This practice doesn’t change when we grow older. The only thing that changes is the stick becomes a bomb, and the bully wears a uniform and calls himself a king.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“A dead man ain’t useful to anyone but the grass and the worms.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Earth

“But living an easy life isn’t the same as being fulfilled. It doesn’t mean you’ll be happy.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Star

“sometimes being beautiful was reason enough for a thing to exist,”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Moon

“Anything is easy with enough practice,” said the farmer, smiling. “Every talent is merely repetition, performing the same action ten thousand times until it is perfect…until it is divine. With enough strikes of this sword, anyone can become a master, but there is always a beginning. There is always the first strike.”
― J.N. Chaney, Hope Everlasting

“we can’t just sit around and put our bets on a hope. That’s a life of fear, not freedom.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Children

“That’s the illusion they preach, the trick you end up believing is real. They tell you true power is dictated by the dictator, because he lives in the ivory tower with his finger on the trigger, but the secret they keep, the part they refuse to tell you during your adolescent indoctrination… is that none of that is true. Real power isn’t dealt in bullets, darlings, but in words. Words that stir a man to stand when all the rest have fled… to fight unwinnable wars, all for the sake of a thought. Every leader who made a difference didn’t do it with a sword or a gun, but with a voice that might have moved a mountain. Think of all the revolutions, all the great religions whose followers once numbered in the billions, and understand me when I tell you: they started with a few delusional fools, conspiring in a room.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“I let the anger out, one bullet at a time.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Fifth Column

“It was a theory based on centuries of traditional science. And it failed. Why? Because deep down in the back of our minds, we are fundamentally afraid of change. But Nature operates on change, on adaptability. If we cannot adapt, we cannot progress. And if we cannot progress, we will die. If we can accept this fundamental truth, we can move forward.”
― J.N. Chaney, The Amber Project

“That’s what it means to be human, Siggy. Living with the weight of your past and learning to walk forward with it.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Rising

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for. – William G.T. Shedd”
― J.N. Chaney, The Variant Saga Boxed Set

“Darius Clare once said that the greatest thing a man can do is find a way to be useful, to be someone through which others are made better and kept safe, so that when you leave this world, those who knew you, and indeed the world at large, is made better because you were alive.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Earth

“People were messy, and not just in a shedding-dead-skin-cells sort of way. They were messy emotionally and had mental states that could whipsaw from one extreme to the other, sometimes almost instantly.”
― J.N. Chaney, Backyard Starship

“That was the downside of being a genius. Your brain didn’t know when to stop working.”
― J.N. Chaney, Renegade Dawn