Paul Weimer > Paul's Quotes

“To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is pleasure beyond compare.”
― Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

“I see story ideas. All the time. They're everywhere. Just walking around like normal ideas. They don't know they're stories.”
― Jennifer Brozek

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“there is no worse hell than that provided by the regrets for wasted opportunities.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“how to think in the right genre?” “We already do it, every day. We tell ourselves what kind of story we’re in, and we’re often wrong, because life is mostly every genre, sometimes at once.”
― Michael R. Underwood, The Cupid Reconciliation

“And don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that things you didn’t intend or plan don’t matter. It’s a big, disorganised multiverse out there – an accident of stars. Almost nothing ever works out like we want it to, and when it does, there’s guaranteed to be unexpected consequences. Randomness is what separates life from entropy, but it’s also what makes it fun.”
― Foz Meadows, An Accident of Stars

“Most things are possible, if one decides they are.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“There are no chances.” He favored her again with that unreadable look. “You succeed or you fail. Battles are not won by men who refuse to take risks.” It”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“But you will die in any case, Ilyakoria. What good is everlasting fame to a man if he dies unloved?”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“I don’t know,” said Diana. “I gave up a long time ago trying to decide whether we’re ever ourselves or are only playing roles. And who could tell which the role was, the passionate kisser or the ruthless conqueror? Maybe they both are roles. Or maybe they’re both true. Can’t two contradictory things exist inside one person?”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Was it not Democritus of your own country who said, ‘Well-ordered behavior consists in obedience to the law, the ruler, and the woman wiser than oneself’? Although in the text I read the words were written as, ‘the man wiser,’ but I can only suppose the scribe wrote the word wrong or meant it to be ‘Elder.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“You’re not afraid to take risks.” “Neither are you, Diana. Don’t ever lose that quality. Once a person stops pushing and growing, she is as dead in the spirit as if she were dead in the flesh.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“If we stay as we have been, then we will die, just as a pool dries up in the summer if there is no rain. We must change if we want to live. But we must also remain who we are and who the gods gifted us to be.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“He, who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go; More nor less to others paying Than by self offenses weighing. Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking!”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“I meant that in politics there may be times when it’s expedient to leave someone in power who’s become incompetent, because in a web like that, there are ways to circumvent the damage that person might do. But”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Coming onstage for her first entrance, Diana felt transported to some ancient scene. They could have been any group of itinerant actors out making their way along the Silk Road, the famous Earth trade route that ran across the mountains and deserts and steppes of Asia, stopping in this medieval oriental city made glorious by its marble colonnades and gentle silk banners. Even”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“And once you saw the world from three, or five, different roads, the view was never the same. The map changed and altered, and its details became more accurate. The landmarks receded or grew, depending on the angle from which you observed them, and at once, there might be an escarpment from which the astonished traveler would rendezvous with her selves and could suddenly comprehend the land as it truly was.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“When acquaintances embrace, one can read the gap between them. When friends, when siblings embrace, no matter how close, there is still an infinitesimal distance, like a layer of molecules, separating them. When a mother hugs her child, they meet. But when lovers embrace, they don’t just meet but join. Tess”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“The problem with meddling,” said Charles under his breath, “is that for every problem you solve, you create two more.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Sometimes, when you wished too hard for something, you paid a bitter price.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Why is it that you and I suppose that if we want something, it must come to pass?” Charles’s lips quirked up into a smile so colored by grief that it felt almost as if other people had been brought by that tiny expression into the hushed solitude of the chamber. “There’s an old saying: ‘be careful what you wish for; you might get it.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“There’s an old saying: ‘be careful what you wish for; you might get it.’” “Oh, gods.” A quaver shook Ilya’s voice. “The bargains we make with the gods never fall out as we think they will.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“When by the power of the heavens the whole world from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun shall be at one in peace, then so shall we all be at peace. You may believe that your country is far away, but not so far away that we cannot ride there. You may believe that your mountains are high beyond measure, but not so high that we cannot cross them. You may believe that the seas are vast, but not so broad that our ships cannot sail them. The gods who live in the heavens will make what was difficult easy, and what was far away, near.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“But aren’t all of us like a fine weaving? The pattern the world sees often hides the threads.” Tess”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“First and foremost, any great empire thrives on movement: stable lines of supply, of trade, of information. This movement must be unobstructed for officials on imperial business, and monitored and restricted for others on a scale that varied depending on the necessity of these functions to imperial strength and the likelihood of such restrictions causing dangerous levels of dissent.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Ilya, what do you want?” His smile vanished. When he contemplated his vision, his gaze narrowed until Tess could almost imagine it as a single beam, piercing to the heart of the universe, capable of vaporizing any object that stood in its path. “The world.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Yana,” he said gravely, “you must learn the basic lesson that those who have power will use it, and those who don’t must learn to control those who do. You”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“But in life, every moment can be said to be critical; all is revealed and concealed, created, maintained, and destroyed in the great dance of time.”
― Kate Elliott, The Novels of the Jaran

“Bel sipped her tea. “It’s trouble if you cross a wizard, trouble if you help a wizard, and trouble if you don’t have a wizard, for things like dragons and hurricanes.” She put down the cup. “That’s altogether too much trouble.”
― Rosemary Kirstein, The Steerswoman

“People need truth! They need it to be happy, to know what to do, to live!” Rowan”
― Rosemary Kirstein, The Steerswoman