Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Think of yourselves as a hand. Each of you is a finger, and without the others you're useless. Alone, a finger can't grasp, or control, or form a fist. You are nothing on your own, and everything together.”
― Karen Traviss

“I burst out crying because I realized something right then and there: death was going to take her someday. Because she'd grow old and wrinkly, you see, and fill up with pain until it extinguished her, and it just ... seemed intolerable. Shouldn't it? I mean, even a diamond is forever, and a diamond can't grip your finger.”
― Wil McCarthy, The Collapsium

“Love is sublime, truly, a precious gift. But also, alas, one of God's little pranks. It's naive of you to confuse love with happiness, as if they were somehow the samae thing. In fact love, once found, is more akin to gravity: too strong, too close, and it will crush you. Unless you're careful, always.”
― Wil McCarthy

“Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions. ”
― Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe

“Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”
― Cory Doctorow

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'
'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

“Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“We do this thing. We open our hearts to the world around us. And the more we do that, the more we allow ourselves to love, the more we are bound to find ourselves one day - like Dave, and Morley, and Sam, and Stephanie - standing in the kitchen of our live, surrounded by the ones we love, and feeling empty, and alone, and sad, and lost for words, because one of our loved ones, who should be there, is missing. Mother or father, brother or sister, wife or husband, or a dog or cat. It doesn't really matter. After a while, each death feels like all the deaths, and you stand there like eveyone else has stood there before you, while the big wind of sadness blows around and through you.
"He was a great dog," said Dave.
"Yes," said Morley. "He was a great dog.”
― Stuart McLean

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat.”
― Will Ferguson

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.'

'Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how they may endure.'

-Bergon and Cazaril talking over the past”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“I tell you what I won't put up with. You chose how to behave.”
― Tanya Huff

“It could be surprisingly hard to counter Plain Stupid. Even by heroic measures.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“When is the answer ever less cheese?”
― Rob Thomas, Mr. Kiss and Tell

“Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas.”
― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate

“Happiness annihilates time.”
― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

“There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.”
― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“Cease your weeping!" he said. "It is I, Loki, here to rescue you!"
Idunn glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. "It is you who are the source of my troubles." she said.
"Well, perhaps. But that was so long ago. That was yesterday's Loki. Today's Loki is here to save you and take you home.”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods