George > George's Quotes

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Cats have a sort of game they play when they meet. A player alternates between watching the strange cat and ignoring her, grooming or examining everything around herself - a dead leaf, a cloud - with complete absorption. It is almost accidental how the two cats approach, a sidelong step and then the sitting again. This often ends in a flurry of spitting and slashing claws, too fast to see clearly, and then one or the other (or both) of the cats leap out of range. The game can have one exchange or many - and is not so different from the first meetings of women.”
― Kij Johnson, Fudoki

“Waiting required a future to wait for: a falsehood. I know now that there is only now. I remember things that happened months (or what is years?) ago: old -worn-out nows. The future happens, but it is always shaped from a series of nows.”
― Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman

“That's not a goal," Kit said.

"Why? Because it's not yours? Which is better, Kit Meinem of Atyar? A single great victory, or a thousand small ones?”
― Kij Johnson

“I rememeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visible.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye

“A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye

“What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?”
― R. Scott Bakker

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.”
― Sean O'Casey

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“There is a goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting. Yet there should be, as they are twin sisters, twin powers, and walk on either side of us, disputing for sovereignty over us and who we are, all the way until death.”
― Richard Holmes

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.”
― Nora Ephron

“The way I see it, anyone who's proud of their country is either a thug or just hasn't read enough history yet.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Thirteen

“A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

“The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

“War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?"
- Quellcrist Falconer”
― Richard K Morgan

“You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven't you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you've seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?" She made a tiny spitting sound. "You can always get some more people. they reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It's the axiomatic truth of our times.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

“The trouble with atheism," Temoc said, "is that it offers a limited range of curses.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“The God Wars had not been a pleasant time for Craftsmen and Craftswomen around the world. One day, you’re a simple thaumaturge, idly meddling in matters man was not meant to comprehend. The next, a collection of beings as old as humanity, with legions of followers, declare war on your “kind”, and neighbours who once thought you a harmless eccentric with a fondness for mystic sigils and foul unguents see you as an affront to Creation.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“A thousand prickling tender touches lit upon her, as if she was caught in a rainstorm and the raindrops were love.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead

“Never ask a poet to tell you the truth. We have ten different ways to describe a drink of water, and each is true and all lie.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Teo had once claimed that human history began with a storm: the interval between lightning and thunder, between flash and rumble felt in the body's core, was primitive man's first experiences of time -- the awakening of consciousness, the birth of the gods.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise