D. B. Patterson > D.'s Quotes

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I often hear people say that they read to escape reality, but I believe that what they’re really doing is reading to find reason for hope, to find strength. While a bad book leaves readers with a sense of hopelessness and despair, a good novel, through stories of values realized, of wrongs righted, can bring to readers a connection to the wonder of life. A good novel shows how life can and ought to be lived. It not only entertains but energizes and uplifts readers.”
― Terry Goodkind

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”
― Henry Green

“On June 3, 1972, I was born in Miss Eva’s barn. Mom christened me Dean Adam Doogan, as she lay sheet-covered and spread-eagled over two bales, her bird legs akimbo. Granny held one leg, Aunt Belladonna held the other, Pidge held her hands, Hattie cradled her head, and Miss Eva was the accidental midwife after Mom went down in that horse stall.”
― D.B. Patterson, Perdido River Bastard

“Flomaton suddenly felt like ancient history. Blooming honeysuckle mingled with a stink from the belching paper mill you could taste in the back of your throat. I tripped on a pair of tree roots diving in and out of the sandy ground like barky sea serpents. Luckily, I didn’t fall or drop the bags. From where I stood, I could see the railroad tracks curving around the bend of pine trees on Muscogee. When I was a boy, Grandpa would take me here to watch trains carry cargo to the paper mill. I remembered him holding my hand as they rumbled by. As I got older, watching trains was no longer fun. My imagination craved make-believe, and the yard was a creative playground for Tyler and me. We used to lay tracks, build forts and secret outposts, and raise all kinds of holy hell with our own version of World War II as the backdrop. And this beautiful oak tree I’d climbed many times as a child. Spanish moss covered most of the branches now. Hattie once told me the gray draping mosses in these trees were memorials for lost and forgotten souls, as if all the nearby dead in unmarked graves had heaved themselves into the branches for the wind to remember. Hattie called them Graveyard Trees.”
― D.B. Patterson, Perdido River Bastard

“    Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache—as would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day, quiet at his table. An Oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon