Doug > Doug's Quotes

“When your friend is decomposing, surely you owe it to them to inhale their death. To do otherwise seems impossible prim.”
― Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker

“... there are as holy persons outside orders as ever there are in, and not to trifle with truth, as good men out of the Christian church as most I've met within it. In the Holy Land I've known Saracens I’d trust before the common run of the crusaders, men honourable, generous and courteous, who would have scorned to haggle and jostle for place and trade as some of our allies did. Meet every man as you find him, for we’re all made the same under habit or robe or rags. Some better made than others, and some better cared for, but on the same pattern all.”
― Ellis Peters, A Morbid Taste for Bones

“Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“I thought about Maggie and how passion was a difficult thing to sustain, but that friendship had a pace that could go on forever.”
― Craig Johnson, Death Without Company

“A dream is a wish your heart makes”
― Ethan Rutherford, The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

“The compasses are disappointingly true, pointing north over and over, when all he wants is for one to dissent, to demur, to show him the new direction he cannot find on his own.”
― Matt Bell, How They Were Found

“That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Joe, you did fine,” Mercer says. “You were great. But there is no question that we are in the shit. We are in the savage jungle. For some reason, which I do not yet apprehend, there are titans stirring in the deeps and shadows on the stairwell. As my youngest cousin Lawrence would say, we are up to our necks in podu. This, incidentally, is Reggie, who is one of my occasional thugs,” indicating the gnarled youth on his left. “Now retiring to become a vet, would you believe, but for the next ten minutes you can trust him with your life, only don’t, trust me instead. Anyway … good evening, and what the fuck is going on, and try the lamb, it’s excellent.”
― Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker

“Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“He looked at me. “If I were a creek, I would be where the ground slopes.”

“Right.” Sometimes it was good to have an Indian scout.”
― Craig Johnson, Death Without Company

“the smooth, steady movement of my actions raised a sliver of panic in the rational man who was abandoning me.”
― Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished

“This was a young man who had killed, but never before been in imminent danger of being killed. I felt oddly qualified to introduce him to the sensation.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“We have it on good authority that they might disguise it as a double entendre in a bedroom farce and deliver it up the rear entrance at Comedy.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

“And the earth sat upon his broken chest.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“You don’t trust people because they’re a sure bet or even a good risk. You trust them because the risk that you’ll lose them is worse than the risk that they’ll hurt you.”
― Chris Moriarty, Spin State

“Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground

“I don’t like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground

“For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it’s been put and doesn’t go wandering off all over the board.”
― K.J. Parker, The Belly of the Bow

“One of these days I’d really like to win a battle, rather than just stand quiet while they lose it at me. You know, just to be able say I’d done it. But I’m not complaining. I mean, it works.”
― K.J. Parker, The Belly of the Bow

“Most wars start because someone makes a mistake, and most battles are lost by the losing side rather than won by the victors. I'm not sure if that makes things better or worse. I suppose it depends on which you disapprove of more, malice or stupidity.”
― K.J. Parker, The Belly of the Bow

“When you get to my age, you’ll find it’s fatally easy to forget to hate all your enemies all the time; and once you’ve slipped up and not hated one of them, it makes it almost impossibly hard to hate the rest of them.”
― K.J. Parker, The Proof House

“Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning.

The End is Nigh is about the match.”
― John Joseph Adams, The End is Nigh

“I can get a table at the Inn Uendo. The maîtred’ is missing a space, and I promised to give her one.”
― Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“About ten degrees upslope of Fiction, I could see our nearest neighbor: Artistic Criticism. It was an exceptionally beautiful island, yet deeply troubled, confused and suffused with a blanketing layer of almost impenetrable bullshit.”
― Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“... you may whisper a word or two to God on my behalf at Matins and Lauds, if you’ll be so kind. If he turns a deaf ear to you, small use the rest of us wearing out our knee-bones.”
― Ellis Peters, One Corpse Too Many

“Ambitions are incompatible with consciences, you know. The two strangle one another straightaway and leave an awful mess behind them.”
― Jim Butcher, Academ's Fury

“I hesitated. Truth shot a sly glance at expediency, expediency waggled its eyebrows significantly, truth made a little noise at the back of its throat, and expediency jumped straight on in there.”
― Kate Griffin, The Minority Council

“Because at night there is a comfort in moving darkly. In slipping through, shadow to shadow. Can’t say why. Maybe because we were hunters, all of us. The way a cat moves in the shadows. Or a wolf. The instinctive safety in that.”
― Peter Heller, The Painter

“I think there should be tribunals for social cruelty as there are for physical assault. Calculated cuts in the first degree. Snobicide or its reverse.”
― Peter Heller, The Painter