Bethany > Bethany's Quotes

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“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

“In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.

So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying "YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night, Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in."

And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they're being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.”
― Neil Gaiman

“So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.

But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin?”
― Patrick Rothfuss, Rogues

“My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...”
― Isaac Asimov

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
― Mark Twain

“I only want power so I can get books.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Extremists have shown what frightens them most: a girl with a book.”
― Malala Yousafzai

“Bibliotropic," Hugh said. "Like sunflowers are heliotropic, they naturally turn towards the sun. We naturally turn towards the bookshop.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!”
― Horace Mann

“It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times.
Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single
look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable
reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can
only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear
boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he
is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it,
and finds both.”
― The Pocket University - Volume XXIII

“Truth is stranger than fiction. But it has terrible pacing problems.”
― Wayne Gladstone, Agents of the Internet Apocalypse

“The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“That it was a wolf was somewhat comforting. Wolves talked occasionally. So did bears. Foxes talked all the time, particularly if you caught them in the hen house, where they would do their best to addle you with fine nonsense until they could slip out the door, and it was generally believed that all cats could talk and simply refused to do so for inscrutable reasons of their own. ”
― T. Kingfisher, Toad Words and Other Stories

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane