Mandie > Mandie's Quotes

“It's perfection. That's what it's about. It's about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty of physics, you know, the wonder of mathematics, you know the elation of action and reaction and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to.”
― Samuel T. Anders

“Sometimes people do you a favour when they drop out of your life.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics.

And I think that has happened so that men feel they can ogle them and protect them in equal measure.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts—what was said, what happened where and when—what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“We both lacked the same thing in our childhoods - the love of a father... We both sought to fill that lack in our adult lives with family and love, as everyone does, but also with thrills and sometimes periods of recklessness. Luckily, I have always come back from my recklessness. Tommy Darling did not.”
― Alan Cumming

“I love long flights. The feeling of being completely unreachable is something I savor, and the limbolike state of being, having departed but not arrived, somehow allows me to catch up with myself, to regroup and check in.”
― Alan Cumming, Not My Father's Son

“I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

—John Cavil, Cylon Model Number One, “No Exit”
― Patrick Di Justo, The Science of Battlestar Galactica

“Knowing yourself is life's eternal homework”
― Felicia Day, You're Never Weird on the Internet

“Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 6

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn

“Anyway, George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one look at the dress and says, 'You can't wear a bra under that dress.'
So, I say, 'Okay, I'll bite. Why?'
And he says, 'Because... there's no underwear in space.'
I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn't see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere.
Now, George came to my show when it was in Berkeley. He came backstage and explained why you can't wear your brassiere in other galaxies, and I have a sense you will be going to outer space very soon, so here's why you cannot wear your brassiere, per George. So, what happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn't- so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make a fantastic obit- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
― Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“In a state of war, one is always waiting. We have become waiting-machines. For the moment it is food we are waiting for. Then it will be the post. But each in its turn. When we have done with dinner we will think about the letters. After that, we shall set ourselves to wait for something else.”
― Henri Barbusse, Under Fire

“An aeroplane booms overhead. We follow its evolutions with our faces skyward, our necks twisted, our eyes watering at the piercing brightness of the sky. Lamuse declares to me, when we have brought our gaze back to earth, “Those machines ’ll never become practical, never.”

“How can you say that? Look at the progress they’ve made already, and the speed of it.”

“Yes, but they’ll stop there. They’ll never do any better, never.”
― Henri Barbusse, Under Fire

“We're all mad here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“The Mad Hatter: "Would you like some wine?"
Alice: "Yes..."
The Mad Hatter: "We haven't any and you're too young.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Spins and turns, angles and curves. The shape of dreams, half remembered. Slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of perfection - a perfect face, a perfect lace. Find the perfect world for the end of Kara Thrace. End of line.”
― Samuel T. Anders

“Doesn't matter if it's personal or professional, a good partnership takes work.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Volume 1

“I realized that if I was going to assume the responsibility of writing about my home, I needed narrative ruthlessness. I couldn't dull the edges and fall in love with my characters and spare them. Life does not spare us.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“Seeing him broke the cocoon of my rib cage, and my heart unfurled to fly.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life. It has also convinced me that carefully writing everything down is the only real defense we have against forgetting something important that once was and is no more, including the spruce tree that should have outlived me but did not.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“A CACTUS DOESN’T LIVE in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn’t killed it yet.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Public and private organizations all over the world have studied the mechanics of sexism within science and have concluded that they are complex and multifactorial. In my own small experience, sexism has been something very simple: the cumulative weight of constantly being told that you can’t possibly be what you are.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“America says it loves science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“We love each other because we can't help it. We don't work at it and we don't sacrifice for it. It is easy and all the sweeter to me because it is so undeserved. I discover within a second context that when something just won't work, moving heaven and earth often won't make it work -- and similarly, there are some things that you just can't screw up. I know that I could live without him: I have my own work, my own mission, and my own money. But I don't want to. I really don't want to. We make plans: he will share his strength with me and I will share my imagination with him...”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl