John > John's Quotes

“Paul, there is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream.”
― R.A. Lafferty, Past Master

“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

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."

(As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)”
― Neil Gaiman

“The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure’s helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more.”
― Gene Wolfe, Shadow & Claw

“Gehenna is lovely these days.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”
― Shusaku Endo, Silence

“Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still are.”
― David Mitchell, Number9Dream

“Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“Many things that become threatening in the dark, become welcoming when we shine a light on them.”
― General Iroh Legend of Korra

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
― Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve