Nicky Penttila > Nicky's Quotes

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“Every one of them has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin' but drink. A father who didn't come home at all, or a stepfather who did. A brother who should have protected her. A beau who promised marriage and left when he got what he wanted, because he wouldn't marry a slut. If a girl like that has lost her way, it's-because some worthless no-account-sonofabitch left her in the wilderness alone!”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc

“It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“We’ve always been privileged, you see. Privilege just means ‘private law.’ That’s exactly what it means.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“She had a pocket recorder and was taking all this down: every five seconds, as the law required, the thing went teep. “Will you describe the therapy you’re employing please, teep and explain the role this device plays in it? Don’t tell me how it teep works, that’s in your report, but what it does. Teep for instance, how does its use differ from the Elektroson or the trancap?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“The nature of truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to “own up” and some habits are hard to break if they’ve been beaten in hard enough.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“Well, I hear things,” she began. “And…well, writing things down? I suppose that’s a suitable job for a lady, isn’t it? It’s practically cultural.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“Then it dawned on him that he was alone—Otto probably didn’t count at the moment—in the place with Commander Vimes’s permission to be there, if “the kitchens are over that way” could be parlayed into “permission.” And William was good with words. Truth was what he told. Honesty was sometimes not the same thing.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“The press waited. It looked now like a great big beast. Soon he’d throw a lot of words into it. And in a few hours it would be hungry again, as if those words had never happened. You could feed it, but you could never fill it up.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“As they stepped out into the silent street he wondered if Lord Vetinari had been right about the press. There was something…compelling about it. It was like a dog that stared at you until you fed it. A slightly dangerous dog. Dog bites man, he thought. But that’s not news. That’s olds.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what’s in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“You’d have known that without being told if you let yourself think about it.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“Novelists are evil psychopomps, basically. We treat a few characters as real, but the rest of them are cannon fodder.”
― Scott Westerfeld, Afterworlds

“She fell in love with him, and he with her; that’s a spell if you like.”
― Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown

“plot is how the dramatic events (action) in a story change and/or transform the main character (emotion) over time in a meaningful way (theme).”
― Martha Alderson, Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story Through Action, Emotion, and Theme

“Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“I can see it, when your heart slows down. That’s how I know when to call. I keep your heart—the icon of your heart—in one corner of my vision. All the time.” Her stomach flipped over and tried to exit through her fingertips. Adrenaline jangled down her arms like music. Her mouth went dry and all she could taste was the burn of the drug in her throat. “See, there? It skipped.”
― Madeline Ashby, Company Town

“The part of Cardenia’s brain in charge of gestalting slammed everything together and shoved it into her consciousness.”
― John Scalzi, The Collapsing Empire

“So, she wants you to pay to share some of her success. Why’s that a problem? Dan Brown sold the rights to The Da Vinci Code for six million dollars. I didn’t hear anyone complaining about that.”
― Jenny Trout, Say Goodbye to Hollywood

“What if they’d brought some weapon with them, or are launching an assault on the Mokshi right now? How can you or her trust people who are no better than bandits?” I gaze at the human skin stretched over the table. Zan follows my look and quiets. “We are all villains here,” I say.”
― Kameron Hurley, The Stars Are Legion

“Talking to the gods had been a much more comfortable proposition when there had seemed no danger of Their talking back.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose