Full Fathom Five Quotes

“Never ask a poet to tell you the truth. We have ten different ways to describe a drink of water, and each is true and all lie.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Gods, I love sports. All the excitement of real news, only it doesn't matter so you don't have to worry about it.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“You have no power here," Jace said. His voice quivered less than Kai expected.
Ms. Kevarian cocked her head to one side. "Interesting assertion. I can speak, at least, and words have power wherever they are heard.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Whatever else one might think of poets, they are excellent barometers for metaphysical shenanigans. Not as good as proper prophets, but these are fallen times.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“The world’s a complicated place, and it changes, that’s all. People interpret the universe, and their interpretation alters it.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“You see. He thinks of conversations like a chess game, and I don’t mean that in a good way.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Justice is like math, anyone can think she knows the answer, but not every answer is right.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Inside the knife-edged cradle, she began to work.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Sixty years ago my family lived in an orange grove. Forty years ago we were one house in a field of houses, with few orange trees between. Twenty years ago we were one of many houses in a row in a rich neighborhood. Ten years ago, mainlanders bought up all the houses, all but my family’s, because my father didn’t sell. So now we have a hotel to the left of us, and a surf shop to the right, and two bars on the street, and three mansions, and no orange trees. My father sits on the porch and rocks, as he’s done all my life. Even if you live sixty years on one block, the block moves around you.

Gladstone, Max. The Craft Sequence . Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“This is a strange world, and we’re alone in it.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Homes aren’t always kind.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Gravity’s a hard habit to break.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Beliefs give rise to truth.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Artists are liars—they lie to everyone, especially themselves.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“All poets are soldiers. We fight our wars across centuries.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Deny me pen and ink until you can plug up the wellspring of my art.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“They knew each other’s jokes, even the bad ones, and the weak points in their walls. That was why their fights were so harsh.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“To steal a man’s wallet from his front pocket you pressed against his thigh in place of the wallet’s weight. To steal a man’s soul, you pressed against him with your dreams and visions, so he wouldn’t notice when his own lost color.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Shame I’m all out of virgins and aurochs. What the hell’s the plural of ‘aurochs’ anyway?”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“There are many worlds, and one.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Simple accident: a zombie-crewed containership from Southern Kath wrecked in a storm. The containership had been hired to transport a horror from beyond the stars, but the horror broke free and twisted a few hundred miles of Kathic coastline into unearthly geometries before the Coast Guard caught it. Resulting market fluctuations broke the Great Squid. Steve, the priest responsible, was promoted after the event, for exceptional skill managing a crisis,”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“A page lay on his desk. His fingers held a pen. With these tools he built a world. Perhaps the world he built lived behind his eyes and was transmitted to the page by the instrument of ink, or else it lived beneath the page somehow, his pen’s progress sculpting form out of a purer white than sculptor’s marble.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Why?” “What do you want me to say?” “The truth.” He chuckled, meanly. “Never ask a poet to tell you the truth. We have ten different ways to describe a drink of water, and each is true and all lie.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Falling, again, and always. Kai’s eyes sang.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“Tongues and odors mixed on the air: Iskari and motor oil, sweat and leather, Camlaander and Archipelagese and some Shining Empire dialect like silk-muffled cymbals.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“You want to help people, even strangers”—and she tapped her own chest, below the collarbone—“of debatable character. But that way of life means sacrifice. You don’t belong to yourself. You live in, you know, connections. Duty.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five

“xxx you can't escape yourself, and you're the only thing that hurts you in the long run.”
― Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five