Kit > Kit's Quotes

“Without wonder, there’s no progress. Nothing gets done, nobody goes anywhere. If you don’t exercise your capacity for wonder…well, use it or lose it. A civilization without wonder is a civilization that’s starting to atrophy and die.”
― Brian Hodge, Whom the Gods Would Destroy

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“We seem to be young, in a very old Galaxy. We're like kids tiptoeing through a ruined mansion.”
― Stephen Baxter, Ark

“Wishes, wishes.
Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“So how'd an academic end up walking a zombie through a palace on a heist job?”
― Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
― Neil Gaiman

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
― Colette

“Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, The Unraveling

“My life is too tight, he wanted to say. My skin is too tight. The walls are too tight.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool

“My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“We are born, we are shadows, we cast shadows of own, and then we are gone. All anyone can hope for is to be remembered two shadows deep.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you. Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L'Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw: Two Novels in One Volume

“Nothing can play havoc with your sense of scale better than looking deeply into the night skies. It can leave you feeling immense and privileged one minute, minuscule and insignificant the next.”
― Brian Hodge, Whom the Gods Would Destroy

“Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of a manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Now keep in mind, memories aren’t historical archives. They’re—improvisations, really. A lot of the stuff you associate with a particular event might be factually wrong, no matter how clearly you remember it. The brain has a funny habit of building composites. Inserting details after the fact. But that’s not to say your memories aren’t true, okay? They’re an honest reflection of how you saw the world, and every one of them went into shaping how you see it. But they’re not photographs. More like impressionist paintings. Okay?”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“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

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“He’d only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he’d always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding why such things were forbidden. Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one’s conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“What's your specialty?"
The wizard squinted. "What would you like my specialty to be?”
― Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job

“...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22