Michael Williams > Michael's Quotes

“The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
― Bram Stoker

“Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”
― Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“Any person, viewed from the appropriate angle, can be described as the sum of every fear they've tried to escape over their life.”
― Michael G. Williams, Attempted Immortality

“Where science is a dignified waltz in three-quarter time, magic is an improvised saxophone solo: all gut checks and synchronicities.”
― Michael G. Williams, Wrapped In White: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits

“...the dead, being wiser than the living, know freedom is always better than revenge.”
― Michael G. Williams, Wrapped In White: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits

“...every god serves a purpose and every faith fills a need.”
― Michael G. Williams, Wrapped In White: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits

“She didn't tear him a whole new one for having fucked up the scene by walking all over it so much as she pointed out where, exactly, the new one would be torn if he messed it up again.”
― Michael G. Williams, Tooth & Nail

“Guilt rarely listens to reason ...”
― Michael G. Williams, Perishables

“Driving through them, most places look about the same as most others. Walking around is how you get the sense of a place's character. Walking keeps you slow enough to notice the little things.”
― Michael G. Williams, Deal with the Devil

“There are stories that are true, in which each individual’s tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it too deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others’ pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Mrs Smiling's character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not. Christian Science is perhaps a larger organization, but seldom so successful.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

“The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm