Kevin > Kevin's Quotes

“At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford

“Laughter, Susannah would later reflect, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“When you're running a bureaucracy the best way to safeguard your job is to make sure you're the only one who knows how the whole thing works. -Lord Julius”
― Dave Sim, Cerebus

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated”
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1) separate

“First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1) separate

“it buried between the fastenings of a Frenchman’s corselet. Which is actually not a bad end for a fine dagger like that one.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Captain Alatriste

“Foxholes might breed belief, but trench systems are full of fatalistic cynics.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping

“And this was all getting a bit steampunk for my liking. If Jacob Astor turned out to be wearing goggles it was going to go very hard on him indeed.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, False Value

“You can say what you like about late-sixties architecture, but when they baked in the ugly they baked it in good.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, False Value

“When Nightingale was training me he said that if you’re not dead in the first instance, then your chances of survival are much improved. “By how much?” I’d asked. “That depends,” said Nightingale. “On what?” “On what happens next,” he said.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, False Value