Ash Stral > Ash's Quotes

“The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.”
― Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

“Save your anger for the enemy. Here it will do you no good; there, it can overcome fear. Use this time now to teach your sword what to do, so later it will do it without conscious thought.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he’d seen at the People’s Palace, in D’Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing up in Hartland, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands. Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism—in terms of human suffering—is the belief that love is a matter of “the heart,” not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy.”
― Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

“It means only one thing, and everything: cut. Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. “The lines are a portrayal of the dance. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit. “It is the balance to life: death. It is the dance with death.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“Wishing gets people killed,” he often said. “Using your head gets you home.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“But you know how Richard feels. He thinks it would be wrong—more than that, he thinks it would be irresponsible to give in to such a wish when reason tells him he must not.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“I love you, Kahlan. Never anyone before you, nor ever after. Only you.” His eyes said it even better.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“Dalton had expected it, he never failed to find it remarkable the way he had but to say a thing enough times, through enough people, and it became the popular truth, its provenance lost as it was mimicked by ordinary people who came to believe that it was their own idea—as if original thought routinely came forth from their witless minds of clay.”
― Terry Goodkind, Soul Of The Fire

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I know you and I know the way you feel, but you have to listen to me. The time has not yet come. It may never come. You may think I’m wrong in this, but if you close your eyes to the reality of what is, in favor of what you would wish just because you’re the Mother Confessor and feel responsible for the people of the Midlands, then there is no reason for us to bother hoping we’ll be together again because we won’t. We will be dead, and the cause of freedom will be dead.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“He can run faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“A cardinal principle of good fiction [is]: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated—as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.”
― Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

“Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“If an idea was sound, it had to have a life beyond a leader, or the leader had failed.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“This is how tyrants win the will of the people: with lies.”
― Terry Goodkind, Soul Of The Fire

“In art, and in literature, the end and the means, or the subject and the style, must be worthy of each other.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth re-creating in art.”
― Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Everything about him: the way he shot an arrow; the way he carved; the way he used a sword; even the way he walked with such fluid reasoned intent—they weren’t separate things, separate abilities…they were all the same thing.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith Of The Fallen

“You are talking crazy-person talk. Put your words in word places please.”
― Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Vol. 4: Time of Your Life

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.”
― Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Vol. 2: No Future for You

“Vampire Willow: "Bored now.”
― Joss Whedon

“A good novel is an indivisible sum: every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.”
― Ayn Rand

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
― Ayn Rand

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.”
― Victor Hugo

“Slaves, slaves to anything or anyone, despite how much they abhor it, will often cling to that slavery out of fear the alternative would be insufferable.”
― Terry Goodkind, Soul Of The Fire