Andrew > Andrew's Quotes

“So much technology, so little talent.”
― Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“like this, simply by looking and touching; but Harry had long since learned that bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Harry had long since learned that bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“One morning, the twins crowded in front of their bathroom mirror, four identical girls fussing with their hair.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“As if the conversations were the only true residents of a prison, the inmates merely transient voices mouthing words first spoken long before.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Poisonfeather

“It was common courtesy. A birthday was a birthday, and that meant it got celebrated on the day of birth. None of this waiting for the weekend nonsense. That was weak-kneed hippie talk. Everyone has a job to get to, now take your damn shot.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Poisonfeather

“From a safe distance, tragedy was life’s most irresistible spectacle.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Poisonfeather

“Loose snow tumbled across the runway as they stared each other down like defanged gunslingers.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Cold Harbor

“Benjamin Lombard. Calista Dauplaise. Now this? It is possible that you are the worst judge of character in the history of the world. Seriously, have you ever been right about anyone in your entire life?”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Debris Line

“Can I ask you something?” Gibson said. “How did you make me so fast?” “Ye didn’t belong there,” Bobby replied. “Yeah, but how did you know?” “Because ye said hello to no one, and no one said hello to you.” Gibson had to laugh. It was so simple, yet it would take someone perceptive and alert to pick up on it in a pub so crowded. Uncle Bobby might like to play the drunken buffoon, but there was more to him than met the eye.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, Origami Man

“C’mon, Paper . . . story it up like you know how. Put a little pop in it, a little scoop, y’know.” “Why should I?” “ ’Cause if you tell it any other way, it’ll sound like a lie.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“They moved slowly, like fusgeyers, wanderers seeking a home in Europe, or erú West African tribesmen herded off a ship on a Virginia shore to peer back across the Atlantic in the direction of their homeland one last time, moving toward a common destiny, all of them—Isaac, Nate, and the rest—into a future of American nothing.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“It was a future they couldn’t quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“Their illness is honesty, for they live in a world of lies, ruled by those who surrendered all the good things that God gived them for money, living on stolen land, taken from people whose spirits dance all around us like ghosts.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“If you need Irene Dunne to show up and sing songs for a week, cut-rate, I can do that. If you need Cab Calloway to sing hi de hi de ho at Moshe’s theater, I can arrange that. But cutting deals with dummkopfs who pinch politicians for marshmallows and cigarettes in a town I don’t know, that’s out of my range.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“As hard as he tried, he could not erase the memory of the woman with the shining black hair, sparkling eyes, easy laugh, and magic marbles; he could not forget the friend who thrust his finger out and held it in the dark like a beacon, all night till the sun came up. The memory of that finger, that one solitary white finger, reaching out in friendship and solidarity, shone in his memory like a bright, shining star.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“Sam’s grandfather had two core beliefs: (1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken. Sam believed these things as well.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“He had spent hours sitting next to her, playing games and then making them, staring at her hands as her fingers flew across a keyboard or jabbed at a controller. Tell me I don’t know you, Sam thought. Tell me I don’t know you when I could draw both sides of this hand, your hand, from memory. “Sam?” she said. He passed her the joint.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Los Angeles, he decided, was a profoundly stupid city, and he felt a palpable, if irrational, longing for all things Massachusetts.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“This world, you think. You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap. This time, you keep flying.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“You can be anything you want to be.” “As long as it is a farmer or a shopkeeper,” Emily said.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Emily B. Marks and Dr. Edna Daedalus are proud to report the arrival of their son, Ludo Quintus Marks Daedalus. Dr. Daedalus says the boy is healthy and has an area of 17 square pixels.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“She confessed to Alabaster, “There must be more to life than working and swimming and playing Go.” “The boredom you speak of,” Alabaster said. “It is what most of us call happiness.” “I suppose.” Alabaster sighed. “This is the game, Emily.” “What game?” Alabaster rolled their lilac eyes. “You are happy, and you are bored. You need to find a new pastime.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“How to explain to Destiny that the thing that made her work leap forward in 1996 was that she had been a dervish of selfishness, resentment, and insecurity?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow