Devan Woads > Devan's Quotes

“For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Silence creates its own violence.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Forests have secrets,' he said gently. 'It's practically what they're for. To hide things. To separate one world from another.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Time is communal, Marya Morevna, the most purely communal of all commodities. It belongs to us all equally.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“As soon as my log-in sequence completed, a window popped up on my display, informing me that today was an election day. Now that I was eighteen, I could vote, in both the OASIS elections and the elections for U.S. government officials. I didn’t bother with the latter, because I didn’t see the point. The once-great country into which I’d been born now resembled its former self in name only. It didn’t matter who was in charge. Those people were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it. Besides, now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
― They Might Be Giants

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Sitting alone in the dark, watching the show on my laptop, I always found myself imagining that I lived in that warm, well-lit house, and that those smiling, understanding people were my family. That there was nothing so wrong in the world that we couldn’t sort it out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something really serious).”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. Things used to be awesome, but now they’re kinda terrifying. To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in ‘decline.’ Some people even say it’s ‘collapsing.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”
― Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

“Like all walls it was ambiguous, two faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side you were on.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“I brought nothing,” Shevek said. Though the suit had been bleached almost to white and bad shrunk a bit, it still fit, and the harsh familiar touch of holum-fiber cloth was pleasant. He felt like himself again. He sat down on the bed facing the doctor and said, “You see, I know you don't take things, as we do. In your world, in Urras, one must buy things. I come to your world, I have no money, I cannot buy. therefore I should bring. But how much can I bring? Clothing, yes, I might bring two suits. But food? How can I bring food enough? I cannot bring, I cannot buy. If I am to be kept alive, you must give it to me. I am an Anarresti, I make the Urrasti behave like Anarresti: to give. not to sell If you like. Of course, it is not necessary to keep me alive! I am the Beggarman, you see.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia