Iona > Iona's Quotes

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.”
― Herbert Hoover

“You often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“It's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“But I could never have done it,' he objected, 'without everyone else's help.'
'That may be true,' said Reason gravely, 'but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a question of what you will do.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki

“But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care. ”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“That’s what the mother of the gardener’s boy said,” remarked Teresa; “she wanted me to have it destroyed, but I pointed out to her that she had eleven children and I had only one elk. ”
― Saki, The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways of drugstores and restaurants--and the famous electric signs of Broadway had come to life with glittering fish, dancing figures, and leaping fountains, all flashing like fire. Everything was beautiful. Up in the deepening sky above the city the first stars appeared white and rare as diamonds.”
― Elizabeth Enright, The Saturdays

“And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart—knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. ”
― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“If I’d stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”
― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“Playing it safe might not have hurt anyone, but it wouldn’t have inspired many, either.”
― Alex Staniforth, Icefall: The True Story of a Teenager on a Mission to the Top of the World

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”
― Henry Scott Holland, Death is Nothing at All

“Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder'.”
― Geoffrey Willans, Whizz for Atomms

“You have caught me, sir, like a treen in a disabled space ship”
― Geoffrey Willians

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut