Charles > Charles's Quotes

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”
― Ann Druyan

“They remained on the defensive. And, while several of the men in Kaladin’s team took wounds, none of them fell. Their squad was too intimidating for the smaller groups, and larger enemy units retreated after a few exchanges, seeking easier foes.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“She bent down, looking at his hand from different angles, like a child expecting to find a hidden piece of candy. “What is it?” Her voice was like a whisper. “You can show me. I won’t tell anyone. Is it a treasure? Have you cut off a piece of the night’s cloak and tucked it away? Is it the heart of a beetle, so tiny yet powerful?”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“He could see the black eyes of the Parshendi on the other side, could make out the features of their lean marbled faces. All around him, bridgemen were screaming in pain, arrows cutting them out from underneath their bridges. There was a crashing sound as another bridge dropped, its bridgemen slaughtered.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Creationspren were of medium size, as tall as one of her fingers, and they glowed with a faint silvery light. They transformed perpetually, taking new shapes. Usually the shapes were things they had seen recently. An urn, a person, a table, a wheel, a nail. Always of the same silvery color, always the same diminutive height. They imitated shapes exactly, but moved them in strange ways. A table would roll like a wheel, an urn would shatter and repair itself.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“The body needs many different foods to remain healthy. And the mind needs many different ideas to remain sharp. Wouldn’t you agree? And so if I were to read only these silly romances you presume that my ambition can handle, my mind would grow sick as surely as your sister-in-law’s stomach. Yes, I should think that the metaphor is a solid one. You are quite clever, Master Artmyrn.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“you can tell much about a person by what they carry with them. If that notebook is any indication, you pursue scholarship in your free time for its own sake. That is encouraging. It is, perhaps, the best argument you could make on your own behalf.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“He kept staring, slumped. There was a way out. Bridgemen could visit the chasm nearest the camp. There were rules forbidding it, but the sentries ignored them. It was seen as the one mercy that could be given the bridgemen. Bridgemen who took that path never returned. “Kaladin?” Syl said, voice soft, worried. “My father used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world,” Kaladin whispered, voice raspy. “He said there are those who take lives. And there are those who save lives.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“It fell, one ruby drop at a time, splattering on the boy’s open, lifeless eye. A little trail of red ran from the eye down the side of his face. Like crimson tears. That night, Kaladin huddled in the barrack, listening to a highstorm buffet the wall. He curled against the cold stone. Thunder shattered the sky outside. I can’t keep going like this, he thought. I’m dead inside, as sure as if I’d taken a spear through the neck. The storm continued its tirade. And for the first time in over eight months, Kaladin found himself crying.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length on the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectant look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy.”
― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses’ hoofs, the cracking of the driver’s whip, and his “Hi-yi! g’lang!” were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it.”
― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the “sage-brush.” Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and “sage-tea” made from it tastes like the sage-tea which all boys are so well acquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing else in the vegetable world”
― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“She didn’t run. Gideon never ran unless she had to. In the absolute darkness before dawn she brushed her teeth without concern and splashed her face with water, and even went so far as to sweep the dust off the floor of her cell. She shook out her big black church robe and hung it from the hook. Having done this every day for over a decade, she no longer needed light to do it by. This”
― Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler

“no light would make it here for months, in any case; you could tell the season by how hard the heating vents were creaking. She dressed herself from head to toe in polymer and synthetic weave. She combed her hair. Then Gideon whistled through her teeth as she unlocked her security cuff, and arranged it and its stolen key considerately on her pillow, like a chocolate in a fancy hotel.”
― Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler

“Crux spat on her. That was disgusting, but whatever. His hand went to the long knife kept over one shoulder in a mould-splattered sheath, which he twitched to show a thin slice of blade: but at that, Gideon was on her feet with her scabbard held before her like a shield. One hand was on the grip, the other on the locket of the sheath. They both faced each other in impasse, her very”
― Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler

“At that, Harrowhark stopped working her scaphoid and glanced at Gideon. She gave a rather brusque hand-wave to the geriatric fan club behind her and they scattered: tottering, kissing the floor and rattling both their prayer beads and their unlubricated knee joints, disappearing into the darkness and down the tier.”
― Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler

“A great dullness had sunk over her; a deep coldness, a thick stolidity. When her heart beat in her chest it was with a huge, steady grief. Every pulse seemed to be the space between insensibility and knives.”
― Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler

“What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money, and re-establish the living organic connections, with the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“There's a cave in this very city where the Arelius family has sealed a descendant of the ancient dragons, and that cave is filled with such madra! What luck!” Lindon finally caught on. “By chance, does that cave happen to be Underground Chamber Number Three?” Eithan beamed and clapped him on the back. “By now, my servants should have the seals undone and a medical team standing by. After you!”
― Will Wight, Cradle: Foundation

“It’s not the kind of place Quini’s thugs would hang around in, and if they did they would stick out like scowling, vantablack-clad sore thumbs. But it pays to be paranoid in public in this day and age, what with the feds now legally able to hijack phones and implant mics. Ergo, the babelware. If I’m using ergo right.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“Masking or turning off tech built right into the nervous system is actually a lot harder than simply hiring what our German friends call a Fleischgeist. It’s not as snappy in English: meat ghost. But it gives you the idea—someone with no implants. None. No hand chip, no cranial, no optics or aurals. Nothing with an electronic signature. In our day and age, they might as well be invisible. Ergo, the ghost part.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“which means you’ll sit around for a year on couches in basements, watching his band get stoned. He will know two chords, then three. He will know nothing about laundry, nor birth control. All his songs will be about the girl before you, who’ll wear leather pants and also turn”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“This manuscript had been Abbi’s most precious possession, and was now mine. It had a richly illuminated frontispiece and finispiece. All one hundred and fourteen of its surahs were calligraphed in an early Abbasid script and decorated in gold leaf. The four quls were ornamented in gold filigree and the Chapter of Light and Verse of the Throne in silver.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“Witness, I thought. He wants a witness. All these men with their starched turbans and silver seals want a witness when a woman reports maltreatment. But have her walk the street, head uncovered, and preachers and counselors pour out of rat holes, a hundred recriminations in hand. Have her complain about shabby shoes or threadbare clothes and she’s a squanderer. Have her try to earn a few extra dirhams washing out men’s filth at the bathhouse and she is a harlot.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“I will read long books and the journals of dead writers. I will feel closer to them than I ever felt to people I used to know before I withdrew from the world. It will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets, for I won’t have to touch them or answer their questions. They will talk to me and not expect me to answer. And I’ll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. I’ll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain.”
― Tennessee Williams, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays

“Numbers are simple, obedient things, as long as you understand the rules they live by. Words are trickier. They twist and bite and require too much attention.”
― Seanan McGuire, Middlegame

“making him look like a very small mortician who had somehow wandered into the wrong sort of neighborhood, one where there were too many living people and not nearly enough dead ones.”
― Seanan McGuire, Magic & Mayhem Sampler: Rule-breaking new fantasy from Tor and Tor.com Publishing