Eric > Eric's Quotes

“All other trades are contained in that of war.

Is that why war endures?

No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

That's your notion.

The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“All this happened, more or less.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl

“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant

“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“Truth is truth and nothing you can do about it even if you hide it, or kill it, or even tell it. It was truth before you open your mouth and say, That there is a true thing.”
― Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“He is my friend.” “Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.”
― Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Sailing to Sarantium

“The longer I live, Burke, the more I have come to understand that extraordinary people are eroded by their worries while the useless are carried ever forward by their delusions.”
― Téa Obreht, Inland

“Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.”
― Marcel Proust