Mon > Mon's Quotes

“Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”
― Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

“And this is what I want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father's remorse. Sometimes, I thing everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity

“They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you.
But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something - something ordinary and mild, I cannot think what. And after a time she came and kissed my cheek, and then she left me.”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity

“Hmmm, very severe... Poor condition, heavy infection... Disarticulation... Oh no, no... Clearly broken... Mm-hmmm... All right, then, all's well, perfect health, clear to go.”
― Ari Bach, Valhalla

“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

“That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I’d like respect, but failing that, a little healthy fear can go a long way to making things run smoothly.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I have been alone for most of my life. But rarely have I felt it so much as at that moment. I knew one person within four hundred miles, and he’d been ordered to keep away from me. I was unfamiliar with the culture, barely competent with the language, and the burning all across my back and face was a constant reminder of how much I was unwelcome. The food was good though.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Out of class, Elxa Dal was charming, soft-spoken, and even a little ridiculous when the mood was on him. But when he taught, his personality strode back and forth between mad prophet and galley-slave drummer.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavor of our relationship. It was more like the two of us entered into a business partnership in order to more efficiently pursue our mutual interest of hating each other.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I would have more luck trying to steal the moon. At least I knew where to look for the moon at night.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“In fact, Kote himself seemed rather sickly. Not exactly unhealthy, but hollow. Wan. Like a plant that’s been moved into the wrong sort of soil and, lacking something vital, has begun to wilt.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Where most people she knew were recognizably constant, Soter comprised a collection of posturings, guises, a composite of masks, so many that she had no idea if any one of them had ever been the true Soter, or if there had never been anything but masks.”
― Gregory Frost, Shadowbridge

“There was a time we tormented one another with excessive honesty in the naive belief it would save us.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed

“One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of its savour: the sense that this has become no longer a morning's hunting but an occasion on which either the proud ram bleeds to death on the ice or the old hunter misses his aim; that for the duration of this frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which events are not themselves but stand for other things.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“...from the oppression of such freedom who would not welcome the liberation of confinement?”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give. ”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin works, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!”
― Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

“I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized."

Everyone in the room stared at him.

"I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting limitations and its proscriptions against dishonorable engagements. You on the other hand, you are going to learn how to kill men with a sword.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I hate complaining to strangers -- you can only complain satisfactorily to people you know really well.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

“Take two pictures representing the same subject; one may be dismissed as illustration if it is dominated by the subject and has no other justification but the subject, the other may be called painting if the subject is completely absorbed in the style, which is its own justification, whatever the subject, and has an intrinsic value.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“RATS. In sewers. In religions. In words like pirate, desperate, and narrative. Rats infest this glossary as surely as words and mushrooms.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius