Roy > Roy's Quotes

“...the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.”
― Roger Zelazny, Prince of Chaos

“The helpful thought for which you look
Is written somewhere in a book.”
― Edward Gorey

“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
― John Le Carre

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

“There is nothing as content on this earth as a dog doing what he was bred to do.”
― Atticus

“Hemingway is my favourite writer, I'm just not the hugest fan of his writing.”
― Atticus

“You're a tall drink of half drunk whiskey, my pigeon toed gypsy.”
― Atticus

“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”
― C.P. Snow

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.”
― C.P. Snow

“If every day is first day of your life, maybe you are being perpetually infantile.”
― Trixie Koontz, Bliss to You: Trixie's Guide to a Happy Life

“I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk.”
― Atticus

“I feel in every girl there is a spirit,
a wild pixie,
that if let go,
would run and dance in grassy fields
until the end of the world.

And then that girl grows up,
that pixie hides,
but it's always there,
peeking out behind old eyes
and reading glasses,
laughing, waiting,
to one day dance again.”
― Atticus

“Conspiracies existed, to be sure; many of them, and many were dark indeed. But fiendish? Fiendishness required brains. Nine times out of ten, conspirators behaved like buffoons and wound up exposing themselves out of sheer, bumbling incompetence.”
― Eric Flint, 1636: The Saxon Uprising

“Strength grows from building other strength, not from trampling on weakness.”
― Eric Flint

“It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?”
― Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories

“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
― Petronius Arbiter

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”
― Connie Willis, Passage

“One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn't look - in spite of the crown of thorns - like someone making a sacrifice. Or even like someone determined to "do his bit". He looked instead like Marjorie had looked telling Polly she'd joined the Nursing Service, like Mr Humphreys had looked filling buckets with water and sand to save Saint Paul's, like Miss Laburnum had looked that day she came to Townsend Brothers with the coats. He looked like Captain Faulknor must have looked, lashing the ships together. Like Ernest Shackleton, setting out in that tiny boat across icy seas. Like Colin helping Mr Dunworthy across the wreckage.

He looked ... contented. As if he was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do.

Like Eileen had looked, telling Polly she'd decided to stay. Like Mike must have looked in Kent, composing engagement announcements and letters to the editor. Like I must have looked there in the rubble with Sir Godfrey, my hand pressed against his heart. Exalted. Happy.

To do something for someone or something you loved - England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history - wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.”
― Connie Willis, All Clear

“Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“My basic political principle: If something, whether right- or left-wing, is driven by love and solidarity, it is right; if it is driven by hate and fear it is wrong. Simple as that.”
― Neel Burton

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
― Socrates