Brick > Brick's Quotes

“Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than 5 million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, "what a lazy, good-for-nothing animal," they are, in fact, working very, very hard.”
― Kate Atkinson

“You know the difference between an asshole and an anus?” He spoke from the side of his mouth. “What’s that?” “An anus can’t say ‘that went well.”
― Craig Johnson, The Dark Horse

“I’m not okay; you’re not okay. It’s okay.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Interesting fact: Though the Calm Act was unprecedented in stripping U.S. citizens of their basic Constitutional freedoms, it was surprisingly well-received in most areas of the country. In particular, its Internet censorship managed to kill off spam and trolling on the social networks. The sharing of cat videos continued undisturbed. For”
― Ginger Booth, Dust of Kansas

“krumping like a madman. Arm jabs, stomps, and chest”
― A.C. Fuller, Open Primary

“I read it somewhere once.” She laughed. “You did not.” “I did. Okay, I wrote it down first. Then I read it. But still.”
― Barry Eisler, The Killer Collective

“swearing made things hurt less. It validated what she herself had known for years. Swearing was good for you.”
― Nick Petrie, Light It Up

“Basically, he thought, fuck a bunch of maps.”
― John Sandford, Bloody Genius

“God really wants to talk to us. He tried Scripture, he tries the still small voice, but we’re all unbelievers now, so he mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents.”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“Who can free himself from achievementAnd from fame,Descend and be lostAmid the masses of men?He will flow like the Tao, unseen.Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“The gods have no hands but ours, they say.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos

“Do not deny the gods. And they will not deny you.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos

“Joy is a mark of Them, you see.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos

“And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos

“Karl Rahner said, ‘I don’t believe in miracles, but they sustain me.”
― Michael Gruber, The Long Con

“What if it were the U.S. or Japan or Germany that was the importer of the coal and iron ore and the source of the students and tourists? Would I be hearing the same story?”
― Clyde Prestowitz, The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership

“the mind evolved to support our ability to act effectively.”
― Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

“Alive, alive, I am alive.”
― Nick Petrie, The Breaker

“But still he objected. He was an old man. A cranky old man. I raised two of them already. A celestial voice said, Well then, do it again.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“When one of tal Kyrte misses steppe and sky, she longs not just for their beauty but also their cruelty. For among the free people the foreawareness of one’s death, and heaven’s indifference to it, is the keenest and most brilliant pleasure, rendering all precious. This is the supreme mystery, the fact of existence itself, before which mortals may only stand in silence.”
― Steven Pressfield, Last of the Amazons: A Novel

“Among the elite, Stuarts had given way to Smiths, Sirs to Misters, and family names were no longer of help for guessing social standing. But the foundations of inequity remained intact, since the primal urges that have always led humans to seek ascendancy over their kind run deeper than the ebb and flow of social tide. But for as long as people failed to grasp this simple truth they applauded the power of pigheaded toil and lucky foresight to make moguls out of yokels, and found comfort in the belief that social imbalance was only pernicious if it derived from things other than skill, which was seen as a fair gauge of merit, much like swordsmanship had been regarded as a fair measure of worth in the days when disputes were settled by duels.”
― Jacques St-Malo, Cognition

“In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of our opponents’ arguments to change our opponents’ minds. Such a belief is analogous to believing that forcing a dog’s tail to wag by moving it with your hand should make the dog happy. ―J. Haidt, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail”
― Jacques St-Malo, Cognition

“If you dance with the devil, sooner or later you dance to the devil’s tune.”
― Andrew Kaplan, Blue Madagascar

“Your vast well of ignorance is finally paying off.”
― Louise Penny, The Madness of Crowds

“Thousands of people sleep secure in their beds each night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― Stephen Hunter, Targeted

“but their faces were all hidden behind blue and white masks whose function seemed to be to make the waitresses breathe their own carbon dioxide, while allowing any COVID-19 virus that happened to be around free passage.”
― Blake Banner, Quantum Kill

“Who art thou, then?” “Part of that Power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” Goethe—Faust”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“The three spinners see our future. The gift of the gods to humankind is that we cannot see where the threads will go.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land

“Otherwise, he was just spreading gossip and sowing division, like an old washerwoman leaning over the back fence.”
― Jack Mars, Primary Threat