Dan > Dan's Quotes

“See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event -- it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, while you're dreaming, while you're inline at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore, that your anger has gone away somewhere. And you understand. You've forgiven them. You don't know how or why. It sneaked up on you. It happened in the small spaces between thoughts and in the seconds between ideas and blinks. That's where forgiveness happens. Because anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth. At least, that's what I hope.”
― Barry Lyga, Boy Toy

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. ”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.”
― Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?'
Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.”
― Neal Stephenson, Reamde

“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away…forever."
The Joker”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Facilis descensus Averni:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras.
hoc opus, hic labor est.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house, and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.

Now hear, you blissful powers underground --
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.”
― Aeschylus, The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers and the Furies

“They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon

“And there they ring the walls, the young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.
”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“And so it goes...”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The more people believe in something, the more true that thing becomes. The more reality tips in the favor of that belief.”
― James Tynion IV, The Department of Truth, Vol 1: The End of the World

“Okay, look out at this bar, and this city. This way of people dressing, and the way we talk, and our dumb jobs and our dumb lives.

I think this will end.

It'll end slowly, though. It'll crack apart, systems will break down because they always break down.

America won't last forever because nothing does or ever will.

And we'll think that's the end of the world. Like while it's happening, that's what we'll call it. But then, thousands of years later . . . there will still be people.

They'll just be . . . you know . . . different.”
― James Tynion IV, The Nice House on the Lake, Vol. 1

“Magic is real. It works. It has impact on the world. The human brain is incredibly powerful, and you can rewire it.

You let yourself become a symbol, in a whole fucking history of symbols, knowing that history and all of its meaning, and you open yourself up to a kind of communion . . .

Ecstasy of the body becomes ecstasy of the mind, and you see things from all new angles that recategorize the mundane world around you.”
― James Tynion IV, The Department of Truth, Vol. 3: Free Country

“The world went insane before I did, I'm just adapting to the new reality.”
― Ed Brubaker, Kill or be Killed, Vol. 4