Michael > Michael's Quotes

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn't want to move around very much.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“Elend: I kind of lost track of time…
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
― Ray Bradbury

“When you can't cheat the game, you'd best find a means to cheat the players.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“There are only three people in life you can never fool--pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother's dead, I've taken her place. Hence, I'm bullshit-proof.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“I don't pretend to see the path, but I know it's there all the same. One day, we'll look back and wonder how we ever missed it.”
― Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop."

[New Statesman interview, 7 January 1939]”
― Winston Churchill

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Only one way to win when you're being chased by someone bigger and tougher than you. Turn straight around, punch their teeth out, and hope the gods are fond of you.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed.”
― Neil Gaiman

“You’re evil, you know that?” I said.
She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
― J.K. Rowling