Tom Deaderick > Tom's Quotes

“For the end of the world, it was better than he'd have expected.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“Of all the pleasures of life that cannot last, children are first.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“Kids are expert negotiators. When you've never had a job and have no income, you'd better be a good negotiator.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“Memory is the great torturer.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“We are all God's mosquitos.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“Jon prepared himself for the end of his life, in fourteen more rounds.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightspawn

“She reads me at a college level and I'm on Dr. Seuss.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“I think those idiots have stepped into a sack of dog crap on the porch with a 50-megaton firecracker underneath. I think we're about to lose the porch, best case.”
― Tom Deaderick, The Lazarus Spear

“If all you know in life is that you are loved, you can press through anything.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“It's the parts that reflect back at us that we most dislike in other people.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“Distance incubates intelligence.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“The strangest thing about being invisible was that you always forget you are.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“You'll be the first human to see an entire alien civilization. The bad news being that you won't be able to actually do anything or speak with anyone. You'll just be ignored and alone, like a headache—something to be pushed aside and forgotten.”
― Tom Deaderick

“I’ll live out my whole life as a voice with no one listening.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightsuit

“It was a desperate feeling to watch everyone else move forward.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightsuit

“Life is more than not dying. Every living creature is born; it grows and dies. The pattern is the same, regardless of the span allotted. You build between the beginning and the end. What you build is yours. Nothing else is.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“No living creature lives without mistakes, Leo.” As it spoke, the flightsuit played videos in the visor, showing diapered babies sitting down hard as they learned to walk, tiger cubs rolling with each other and a blur of dozens of different moments captured from Earth. Everything man and Explorer creates is designed from mistakes, learned and corrected, to improve subsequent designs. I am the product of millions of mistakes, adjustments made to original concepts and plans.”

The images in the visor displayed bridges swaying wildly, buildings crumbling to the ground, the blackened interior of a space capsule through a charred open door.

“Every device you've ever used-so familiar you may have never considered their creation. Every device is the product of mistakes, hundreds or thousands of previous mistakes. You see the results, but you do not see the mistakes.”

The flightsuit paused. “You see yourself in the mirror and see the results, and you do not see the millions of shaping events that made you. You survived these challenges. There are millions more shaping events ahead of you. You have not yet survived these, and so they feel dangerous and uncertain. If you were able to precisely recall, at will, the feelings of fear and uncertainty you experienced in the past or the moments you long ago overcame and survived would you discourage your past self from trying?”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightsuit

“I thought a lot about what I wanted to say,” Ethan softly interrupted. “I wanted to be sure it would give you the strength and courage to win through today. I decided that all you need to know is all that anyone really needs to know—you are loved. I love you. Melanie loves you. We believe in you. Somewhere up there God’s watching. He’s surely watching you. If His eye watches a sparrow, you know He’s watching the first of His children to reach across the stars and take the history of our small corner with His message out to every race of the universe. I think He must be on the edge of his throne watching and thinking, ‘Finally! This moment has come.’ He loves you, Leo. You can be sure of that. If all you know in life is that you are loved, you can press through anything. You can bear anything. Don’t let them stop you.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“Ethan’s voice was choked. “I realize now, what my father felt. When I left home. He must have felt as if everything was ending. That everything he knew was finishing. I wasn't even aware of what he was going through, how it felt for him. I was so caught up in the excitement of moving out and having a job that would buy me a car. I was so eager to leave. His heart was breaking, and I totally missed it. I was completely unaware that his whole world was changing too. But for him it wasn't gaining, it was losing. He was losing part of himself. The part of his life that had focused on me and my mother for seventeen years was ending, and I never even noticed.”

For a moment, Leo thought Ethan was about to ask him to stay. If he does, I will, Leo thought.

Ethan took a deep breath. “But hard as it is. It can’t be stopped. Can’t be sidestepped. No matter how much we want to or how fearful the future looks, we can’t stay frozen in place. You can go forward or you can try to hold on. I've seen people that were afraid to let go, that never committed to their life. You can feel the desperate regret emanate from them. They know they missed something, but instead of jumping on the next train, they keep looking back for the one they missed.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“It's pretty easy to be tricked when someone has access to your mind, and you have no idea they're in there.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightsuit

“Isolation's not so bad, he thought, depending on the company.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“Every device is the product of mistakes, hundreds or thousands of previous mistakes. You see the results, but you do not see the mistakes.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“No living creature lives without mistakes.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“Wearing an alien form inside the alien flightsuit, Leo stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and marveled, slowly shaking his head in disbelief and wonder. He stared into the impossible without considering the miracle of his own existence, like everyone else.”
― Tom Deaderick, Flightpack

“First thing Falvo said after he slapped my arm was, 'What time is it?' I've been with a few other people who wake up after getting shot and being dug around in for a slug. That's the first time anyone ever asked that particular question, like they had something important to attend to and happened to get shot on the way.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“Just driving around looking for him is not going to help. We might as well go back and wait on the porch for news as drive around. You're only going to see yards that're neglected and filled with old cars out there. They could kidnap an elephant from the zoo and be dressed like circus clowns with it in the basement and you'd drive past without noticing anything unusual.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“People looked at a knife a lot differently than they'd look at stunners. A knife can get someone's attention when you want it.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“This is the rare thing, Jon thought, one of the moments when you feel life snapping into place.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“Normal society flowed. People went to work, went to school programs, raised families, but over here where no one was looking, there was awfulness with children trapped in it, slowly sinking.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash

“Technology has uncovered our world. Hardly a moment goes unrecorded, analytics engines trail our every move, giving us a confidence in the world around us beyond the ken of anyone who lived before us. Everything they knew, we know, the moment we might need to know it.”
― Tom Deaderick, Lifeflash