Mark > Mark's Quotes

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.”
― Clive Barker

“It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course -- thousands in fact -- but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“Memory, prophecy, and fantasy—
The past, the future, and
The dreaming moment between—
Are all in one country,
Living one immortal day.

To know that is Wisdom.

To use it is the Art.”
― Clive Barker, Everville

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Are you always a smartass?'

Nope. Sometimes I'm asleep.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family. ”
― Jim Butcher

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“We live on, as long as there are people to live on in.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When you’re a child, you think your family works in a straight line. Then you get older and find out where the curves are.”
― Brando Skyhorse, Take This Man. A Memoir

“Sometimes things come out of your mouth that you regret later on. Or no, not regret. You say something so razor-sharp that the person you say it to carries it around with them for the rest of their life.”
― Herman Koch, The Dinner

“Survival is insufficient.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“but people underestimate just how starved everybody is for some magic pathway back into childhood.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. ”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Quick, make a wish.
Take a (second or third or fourth) chance.
Remake the world.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it’s worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped basil leaves in boiling water to make the same point. What’s more valiant: littering from a wharf or years of doing chores and looking after children from dawn to dark without caffeine?”
― Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

“That, to me, is the quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart.”
― Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

“The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only nineteen years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.”
― Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

“If it no go so, it go near so. —Jamaican proverb”
― Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

“But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now.”
― Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

“A man, a life - it was barely worth mentioning. The Visigoths had destroyed the Romans, and had themselves been destroyed by the Muslims. Who were destroyed by the Spanish and Portuguese. You did not need Hitler to see that it was not a pleasant story. And yet here she was. Breathing, having these thoughts. The blood that ran through history would fill every river and ocean, but despite all the butchery, here you were.”
― Philipp Meyer, The Son

“Wild Spanish cattle were easily acquired with a rope - within a year we had a hundred head. Hogs and mustang horses were also for the taking. There were deer, turkey, bear, squirrel, the occasional buffalo, turtles and fish from the river, ducks, plums and mustang grapes, bee trees and persimmons - the country was rich with life the way it is rotten with people today. The only problem was keeping your scalp attached.”
― Philipp Meyer, The Son

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“As long as I'm with you, I know exactly who I am.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

“If you don't like the place where you find yourself, Waldemar, it pays to remember that you'll be somewhere else in just a moment. The place itself will be a different place.”
― John Wray, The Lost Time Accidents