Aleksandra Wojtyla > Aleksandra's Quotes

“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
― Brent weeks

“A ja myślę, że całe zło tego świata bierze się z myślenia. Zwłaszcza w wykonaniu ludzi całkiem ku temu nie mających predyspozycji. ”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Narrenturm

“The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“Any man can do what he likes. Right, Splitfoot?’
‘Right, Chief.’
‘Just as long as it’s exactly what I fucking tell ’em to do.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“Is that vodka?" Margarita asked weakly.
The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation.
"I beg pardon, my queen," he rasped, "Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

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

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

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Właśnie, że będę przez całe życie robiła, co mi się podoba, i koniec! I poniosę konsekwencje własnych czynów.”
― Joanna Chmielewska

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“Świat się zmienia, słońce zachodzi, a wódka się kończy.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag.
'What's this?'
'Lock of my hair, ' she said. 'Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life. '
'Thank you, love, ' he said.
'Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, "You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour. "'
'And that's supposed to make them stop?'
'Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm.

It's really funny.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!