germ > germ's Quotes

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“They say God watches us in every moment. But I think, in some moments, when some deeds are done, he turns his face away.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“Happy endings are just stories that aren't finished yet.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Devils

“It was organization that always seemed to cause the problem. When the cells began to clump together and grow dark.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Sometimes our worst fears aren’t realized—though in my experience it’s only to make room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“The gods love to laugh at a happy man, however.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half a War

“It is healthy to be disabused of our self-deceptions every now and then, even if it hurts.”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“If we don’t have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Don’t trust the light, Prince Jalan. The stars are pretty but the space between them is infinite and black with promise.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Liar's Key

“Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Volume Two

“The shadows on the flat screen of a shadow play are projections from more complex objects. Our three-dimensional hands can cast a variety of two-dimensional shadows to delight the audience. In the same way there are fabulous beasts that swim in the seas of mathematics. Multidimensional behemoths of incredible beauty that even the best of minds struggle to glimpse. The equations we battle with, the proofs that we use to nibble at the edges of such wonders: these are the shadows cast by those we hunt.”
― Mark Lawrence, Limited Wish

“Some people hate waiting, but not me. Without anticipation, life can be comfortable, but it'll never be thrilling. Instant gratification is for boring assholes.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 9

“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.56–57”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“Death is wonderful to music. It makes the singers sound like ghosts.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“We all have our issues. I have a spare tire around my middle. His father is Satan. Nothing that can’t be worked out if we try hard enough.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Where body meets air, we are all cadavers. These outer skin cells are replaced every month. We shed skin copiously, almost carelessly: some twenty-five thousand flakes a minute, over a million pieces every hour. Run a finger along a dusty shelf, and you are in large part clearing a path through fragments of your former self. Silently and remorselessly we turn to dust.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“I am not one of those women who can stand things.”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

“Smile while you can, that's what I say. The world'll kick you in the twat soon enough.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Devils

“Say what you like about the Saved, they were masters of setting up in other people's houses and pretending they were the architect. Lying was a sin, apparently, unless you did it outrageously and persistently enough, in which case it qualified as scripture.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Devils

“The Saviour had definitely tended against killing, and she heard priests talk about murder like it was really the worst, but when she finally read the scriptures herself, she found God couldn't go a page without smiting the shit out of someone.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Devils

“A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“Good music always defeats bad luck.”
― Jack Vance

“Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.”
― Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

“So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with God, Boo. I’ll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about. I’m pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I’m not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest