Misba > Misba's Quotes

“75:26-30 Indeed when it reaches as high as one's collarbone, and someone says: "WHO IS SUCH A WIZARD?" he will supposed that it means leave-taking, while ONE SHIN WILL TWIST AROUND THE OTHER SHIN [to keep it from moving], TOWARDS YOUR LORD will the Drive be on that day!

2:149, 150 No matter where you may set out from, turn your face towards the Hallowed Mosque ... No matter where you may set out from, TURN YOUR FACES TOWARDS TOWARDS THE HALLOWED MOSQUE, wherever you maybe, turn your faces towards it ...”
― T. B. Irving, A Translation Of The Meaning Of The Noble Qur'an

“5:103 God has not set up [specially] any slit-eared camel, nor is any [livestock] to be turned loose [to pasture freely], nor any twin-bearing goat or ewe, nor any pensioned stallion, but rather who disbelieve make up a lie about God.”
― T. B. Irving, The Noble Qur'an: The First American Translation and Commentary

“83:18-28 Of course the book for the virtuous will rest in the Highest. What will make you realize what the highest are? An annotated book, which those closest to God will bear witness to. The virtuous will dwell in Bliss on couches watching. You will recognize a blissful splendor on their faces. They will be offered a sealed potion to drink whose seal will be musk. For that let rivals compete! It will be blended with a beverage from a spring where those close [to God] will drink. ”
― T. B. Irving, A Translation Of The Meaning Of The Noble Qur'an

“Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it...because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
― Christopher J. J. Nolan

“The boy grows upward, but the girl grows up.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.”
― Pierre Boulle, Planet of the Apes

“I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“No, listen. I've got it now. You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she's beautiful, she'll think you're sweet, but she won't believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding." Bast gave a grudging shrug. "And sometimes that's enough."

His eyes brightened. "But there's a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you..." Bast gestured excitedly. "Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn't seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“অন্তত যথেষ্ট সফলই বলা উচিত এসব 'মাস্টারমাইন্ড' নামধারীদের। কারণ, তাদের প্ল্যান মেধাবীদের পরিণত করেছিল ম্যাশিনে, বীরযোদ্ধাদের অলস নাগরিকে; সেনাপতি হয়ে গেলো বিশ্বস্ত দাস আর লেখক কিংবা আর্টিস্টরা হলেন পোষা প্রাণী অথবা ট্রফি।”
― মিসবা

“I could wish somebody wanted to talk about something besides the weather. Everyone complains about it.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Why did you stop looking for it?”
“Secrets of mesmerism?” Magic Mama scoffs. “Look around, Kusha. The place you’re in gives you some problems. You either solve the problem or stay with it as it is. But whichever path you choose, it shapes your purpose. Maybe my purpose is more earthly: dealing with a gutter, getting water from a fall miles away. I’m aging. I don’t have time to earn more time, Kusha. I don’t have time for philosophies.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“If you’re a bug, you need toads—dozens of toads so you may evolve.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“But faith betrays sometimes. Faith has fluidity.
Faith evolves like her machine-learning-models, self-correcting from previous experiences.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Some say whatever they utter with voice becomes an enchantment. Like that in Shattya Yug—the age of truth—the thousands of years old era when people spoke only the truth. And whatever they used to say would always happen, whether it was a blessing or a curse.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“He’d only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he’d always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding why such things were forbidden. Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one’s conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Sometimes, curiosity overpowers the warning of danger. It just does. Especially, when the human brain doesn’t have enough memories to measure the level of danger. Because the brain lacks examples, past references. People call it experience. So, when the reference data is few, the only option is to get more of it. Curiosity is an inexperienced brain’s call to collect reference data. Right now, this very human curiosity burns her brain.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Sometimes, there are those people whose voices are so strong, you just do what they say. You hold their glasses or keep their purses or buy them dinner because they ask you to do it out of the blue. You don’t ponder if you want to do it or not. Because they don’t give you the time to think. Then, you end up doing it, for you’re too much in the present limbo. It’s a basic manipulation that works on indecisive people. Kusha recognizes it, as Meera has warned her about all sorts of traits to identify any High-Grade con-artist.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“TJ frowns; she can’t write about willing wind and water in the official report. Voicing elements is a rumor. However, she remembers what her grandmother said five decades ago when she was a child; (it was shortly after the war): “Anyone who trains hard can be a Grade A by the time they’re forty or fifty. But it takes decades more to become strong enough to voice one element.”
“One element?” TJ asked.
“Do you want to voice the entire universe then?”
“Can’t I?”

Grandmother didn’t answer, not directly anyway, as most great masters do. They never say you can’t do this or no one can do that or that thing is impossible just because they couldn’t do it, or because they hadn’t found it yet. True masters answer differently. Wisely. Like her grandmother answered that day.

“Do you know why we evolve, Tirity?”
“Because we’re supposed to?” TJ replied.
“Yes. It’s in the grand design. We’re ‘supposed to’ evolve. Not just in body, but also in mind,” she said. “In time. You see, time is the key. If given infinite time, you can evolve your mind infinitely. But we live only for a hundred years or so.”

“A hundred years is ‘only’?”
“You’re so young, Tirity! But yes, it is little for a complete cognitive evolution. Most hard trainers can prolong it to a couple of hundred years. They even get to call the wind or grow a giant plant that could touch the clouds. But voicing everything in the universe? I think only God can do it, the God who created everything with only words. And if God created the world so that he could see how far the humans can evolve, then I’d say, yes, even a human could get godly power. Godlier than voicing one or two elements. If. Given. The. Time.”

“How much time?”
“More than thousands of years, maybe. Could even need millions, who knows? …”

TJ smiles drily; she remembers how her eyes sparkled at the thought of becoming a goddess who could voice everything. She dreamed of flying in the air or walking in space. She thought of making her own garden full of giant flowers where only enormous butterflies would dance. Some days, when she played video games in VR, she even dreamed of voicing the thunder and lightning to join her wooden sword. She thought time could help her do it.

But she didn’t know then, time only makes you grow up.
Time steals your dreams.
Time only turns you into an adult.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“For me, where genre ends and literature begins doesn’t matter. What matters is whether a given novel hits me with high impact. If it does, it probably is fulfilling the purpose of fiction. It has drawn me into a story world, held me captive, taken me on a journey with characters like none I’ve ever met, revealed truths I’ve somehow always known and insights that rock my brain. It’s filled me with awe, which is to say it’s made me see the familiar in a wholly new way and made the unfamiliar a foundational part of me. It both entertains and matters. It both captures our age and becomes timelessly great. It does all that with the sturdy tools of story and the flair of narrative art.”
― Donald Maass, Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling

“Beautiful writing may sparkle like a diamond necklace, but sparkling isn’t a feeling.”
― Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

“Chapter 90: [This] Countryside
I swear by [this] countryside, you are a native settled on this land, as well as any parent and whatever he may father. We have created man under stress. Does he reckon that no one can do anything against him? He says: "I have used up piles of money!" Does he consider that no one sees him? Have we not granted him both eyes, a tongue and two lips, and guided him along both highroads? Yet he does not tackle the Obstacle!

What will make you realize what the Obstacle is?

It means redeeming the captive, or feeding some orphaned relative on a day of famine or some needy person in distress.

Then he will act like someone who believes, recommends patience and encourages mercifulness. Those will be the companions on the right-hand side, while the ones who disbelieve in Our signs will be companions on the sinister side: above them a fire will hem them in.”
― T. B. Irving, A Translation Of The Meaning Of The Noble Qur'an