Fran > Fran's Quotes

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”
― Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel

“Sure I do,” countered Lila cheerfully. “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

“... in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events" ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“On a morning like this, fear is a blue sky emptied of birds.”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“I had become an arrow of sound aimed at the most terrible creature in the city.”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“Emma bit her tongue. She didn't want to press him on nerdcraft when he was being helpful with spycraft.”
― Fran Wilde, The Bodiless Arm

“We share our gifts, her mother had said, with those who need them.”
― Fran Wilde, A Recipe for Magic

“Worse, I had yet to go into open sky since the migration. The thought, even though the Singers had declared the skymouths gone for now and the skies safe, made my dinner feel like a pannier full of guano. Elna”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“This was why Singers clung to tradition. To Laws. Surprises conflicted too much with duty. Sellis”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“An einem Morgen wie diesem war Furcht ein blauer Himmel, von dem alle Vögel verschwunden waren.”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“I did—and if my stomach hadn’t been emptier than the sky before a migration, I might have been sick with it.”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“Singers say ‘tradition’ when they don’t want to explain.” “It’s more than that.” Wik shook his head, struggling for patience. “It’s about our history. About how people work. Traditions hold the city together, like the bridges do the towers. Once, we had no traditions. Only fear and loss.” There”
― Fran Wilde, Updraft

“Using three battens from Kirit’s wing, Djonn and Ceetcee built a tripod over the fire and suspended a small bone trivet beneath. I placed the eggs in the trivet, and we waited hungrily.”
― Fran Wilde, Cloudbound

“Neither the embossed leather envelope containing her forged letter of introduction to the valley and the archeo- logical dig, nor the Esteemed Scientist’s notes and com- munications, nor the weight of the experimentally mod- ified micrograph in its elegant case on her lap that she had removed from Netherby’s laboratory without per- mission—none of it made Dev feel like she’d successfully embarked on her mission to find her mentor as much as the train’s rumble across the bridge, and the wide gap of distance it implied.”
― Fran Wilde, The Book of Gems