Winter Arcane > Winter's Quotes

“Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.”
― Gene Wolfe

“I have never had much need for companionship, unless it was the companionship of someone I could call a friend. Certainly I have seldom wished the conversation of strangers or the sight of strange faces. I believe rather that when I was alone I felt I had in some fashion lost my individuality; to the thrush and the rabbit I had been not Severian, but Man. The many people who like to be utterly alone, and particularly to be utterly alone in a wilderness, do so, I believe, because they enjoy playing that part. But I wanted to be a particular person again, and so I sought the mirror of other persons, which would show me that I was not as they were.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor

“That was when I found out that the best way in the world to make yourself feel better when you have hit bottom is to try to get somebody else to feel better. There are certain things in life that are truly worth knowing, and that is one of the big ones.”
― Gene Wolfe, Pirate Freedom

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“But define 'completely ridiculous shit,'" Duvall said. "Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don't understand that crap at all. As far as I'm concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“I'm not insane, sir. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there. I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often.”
― Gene Wolfe, Shadow & Claw

“There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having.”
― Gene Wolfe, There Are Doors

“Men are said to desire women, Severian. Why do they despise the women they obtain?”
― Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

“Dorcas belonged, as I now realize, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us—and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor

“We love, while knowing that someday our love might be lost forever. We laugh as we stride along, even while recognising that doom lies at the end of the road. We give, while comprehending that in the end 'twill all be taken away. we are nothing less then heroes.”
― Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Well of Tears

“So this was it, she thought. So many times she'd wondered. True sacrifice was the surrender of one sacred thing in favor of keeping another. No matter how prudent or cautious one was, in the end something precious was lost. Whether the claim was in the name of family or duty or honor or truth, it exacted a terrible price. To her dismay, she did not feel the pride or pleasure that Bledig had claimed when he spoke of the sacrifices he had made for her and their children. For Alwen, sacrifice brought grief and guilt, and an unbearable sense of uncertainty.”
― Roberta Trahan, The Well of Tears

“You're an interesting person, Jack." Sullivan said. "I wish I could figure out what you were thinging when you punched Stern and turned on Isabel."

"Well, I think that's the thing." Holloway said. "I think it's clear that sometimes I just don't think."

"I think you do." Sullivan said. "It's just you think about you first. The not thinking part comes right after that.”
― John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“The trick is not to get hooked on the highs and lows and mistake an activated attachment system for passion or love. Don't let emotional unavailability turn you on.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“All the other virtues, and the living of a virtuous life, depend on them. If you took an introductory philosophy course in college, they were probably translated from the Greek as courage, justice, temperance, and prudence.”
― Charles Murray, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life

“I want to live and work alone. If we get married, do I have to live with you? No, he said. Will you marry me? Do I have to act like a wife? I don’t really want to be a wife. No, you don’t need to be a wife, he said. Will you marry me? If we get married, will we be able to sleep with other people? Yep, he said. Will you marry me? Can I maintain total control of my life? I need total control of my life. Yes, darling. I’m not trying to control you. At all. Will you marry me? I probably don’t want kids. That’s fine. I already have three. They’re great. Will you marry me? If I marry you and it doesn’t work, can we just get divorced? Sure, he said brightly.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“The good thing about death is it kills you once while life kills you for a lifetime. In fact death rescues you from life.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“Ah, demons, is it?” exclaimed the boy, in his high, reedy voice. “And what of your own? Are they not encouraging you to luxuriate in self-reproach?”

“Luxuriate!”

“To be sure. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. What a luxury that is!”
― Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack