Justine > Justine's Quotes

“He would have told her - he would have said, it matters not if you are here or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are - you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“What was a book? Not just ink and fiber and stitchery: a series of processes. To a wizard, it was not a static object--but a human thought caught and bound, made concrete through sacred technology. Magic, then, and a deep form of it.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Shattered Pillars

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”
― Rachel Hartman

“However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“Memory is a double-edged sword, Uthas. It can keep you strong through dark times, but it can also cripple you, keep you locked in a moment that no longer exists.”
― John Gwynne, Valor

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far.

It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Your actions are your own. Your choices are your own. Each of us carries a burden of guilt for decisions made or not made. You can let that rule your whole life or you can put it behind you and move on. Only a madman lets jealousy determine the course of his existence. Only a weak man blames others for his own errors.”
― Juliet Marillier, Son of the Shadows

“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“But now we know there has been no one great disaster—only the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property.”
― Annalee Newitz, Autonomous

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“It was a low-stress group, they didn’t argue much or antagonize each other for fun, and were fairly restful to be around, as long as they didn’t try to talk or interact with me in any way.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I think “majority” is one of my least favorite words. It’s so often used to justify bad decisions.”
― Emma Newman, Planetfall

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“A soldier serves not to take, they don't strive to have something, but rather they strive so that others might one day have something. And a blade isn't a happy friend to a soldier, but a burden, a heavy one, to be used scrupulously and carefully. A good soldier does everything they can so they do not have to kill. That's what training is for. But if we have to, we will. And when we do that we give up some part of ourselves, as we're asked to do.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades

“Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You can't undo yesterday's journey.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Earth wants to be comfortable. The more comfortable someone is, a society is, the less likely they are to seek change, even positive change.”
― Marina J. Lostetter, Noumenon

“A good story cannot function like a legal brief, which attempts to persuade and lead the reader down a narrow path suspended above the abyss of unreason. Rather, it must be more like an empty house, an open garden, a deserted beach by the ocean. The reader moves in with their own burdensome baggage and long-cherished possessions, seeds of doubt and shears of understanding, maps of human nature and baskets of sustaining faith. The reader then inhabits the story, explores its nooks and crannies, rearranges the furniture to suit their taste, covers the walls with sketches of their inner life, and thereby makes the story their home.”
― Ken Liu, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

“She still held sorrows, but she was not made of them. Her life was not a tragedy. It was a history, and it was hers.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“When had men not been mystified by women? They were the magic that men dreamed of, and sometimes their dreams were nightmares.”
― Stephen King, Sleeping Beauties

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft