Jamie > Jamie's Quotes

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”
― Jonathan Swift , Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays

“First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“If ka will say so, let it be so.”
― Stephen King

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“They exploit, and deal, and shift ground constantly, but for all that you can get used to them. You can get used to their gleaming company towers and their nanocopter security, their cartels and their HOGs, their stretched-over-centuries unhuman patience and their assumed inheritance of godfather status for the human race. You can get so you're grateful for the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God relief of whatever little flange of existence they afford you on the corporate platform. You can get so it seems eminently preferable to a cold gut-swooping drop into the human chaos waiting below.

You can get so you're grateful.

Got to watch out for that.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

“A Man Down Is Not a Man Dead. Leave No Stack Behind.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“You are what you do when it counts”
― John Steakley, Armor

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable." ~~~~ Mark Manson”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“there is no honour among consultants.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“Personal feelings don't make for good politics, legal decisions, or business deals.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“Why do you not fight when there is still breath and blood within you? Why do you not trumpet and flail?”
― Brooke Bolander, The Only Harmless Great Thing

“Today’s world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Sanity is a matter of consensus.”
― Robert Sheckley, Options

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”
― J.G. Ballard

“On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Things every person should have:

•A nemesis.
•An evil twin.
•A secret headquarters.
•An escape hatch.
•A partner in crime.
•A secret identity.”
― Wil Wheaton

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.”
― Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

“The mind is the reality. You are what you think.”
― Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

“We all have forests in our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Art can’t decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it’s a tragic, bloody farce.”
― Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn