The Gates Quotes

“Incidentally, when you put inverted commas around a word in this way, as I just did around the word 'sick,' it means that you don't really believe that the word in question is true. In this case, I know that you weren't' really sick that day; you just felt like having a morning off to watch children's television in your pajamas. Hence 'sick,' instead of, well, sick. If you really want to annoy someone, you can make little inverted commas by holding up two fingers of each hand and twitching them gently, as though you're tickling an invisible elf under the armpits. For example, when your mother calls you for dinner, and dinner turns out to be boiled fish and broccoli, you can say to her, 'Well, I'll just eat my 'dinner,' then,' and do the little fingers sign. She'll love it. Seriously, I can hear her laughing already.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Whenever someone uses the word 'glitch,' which means a fault of some kind in a system, you should immediately be suspicious, because it means that they don't know what it is. A technician who uses the term 'glitch' is like a doctor who tells you you're suffering from a 'thingy,' except the doctor won't tell you to go home and try turning yourself on and off again.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Scientists, while very intelligent, don't always think things through. Take, for example, the first caveman who found a nice rock, tied it to a stick with a piece of vine, and thought, 'Hmm, I've just invented a Thing for Banging Other Things into Things With. I feel certain that nobody will use this to hit someone over the head with instead.' Which someone promptly did. In fact, they probably hit him with it so that they could steal it. This is how we end up with nuclear weapons, and scientists claiming that they'd only set out to invent something that steamed radishes.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“He didn't trust people, especially children, who displayed signs of individuality.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“If you really want to annoy someone, you can make little inverted commas by holding up two fingers of each hand and twitching them gently, as though you're tickling an invisible elf under the armpits. For example, when your mother calls you for dinner, and dinner turns out to be boiled fish and broccoli, you can say to her, "Well, I'll just eat my 'dinner', then," and do the little fingers sign. She'll love it. Seriously. I can hear her laughing already.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Mum,” said Christopher. “It’s a demon. I don’t think a poker will hurt it.”

“It will where I’m going to put it,” said Mrs. Mayer.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“The Great Malevolence had been squatting in the blackness for a very long time. He was there billions of years before people, or dinosaurs, or small, single-celled organisms that decided one day to become larger, multicelled organisms so they could, at some point in the future, invent literature, painting, and annoying ring tones for cell phones.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“She laughed loudly. It sounded to her husband like someone pushing a witch in a barrel over a waterfall. He pictured his wife in a barrel falling into very deep water, and this cheered him up a bit.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“los astrónomos que recientemente han estado escudriñando miles de señales de Sagitario B2, una gran nube de polvo situada en el centro de nuestra galaxia, han encontrado allí una sustancia llamada etil-formato, que es la responsable química del sabor de las frambuesas y del olor del ron, la popular bebida de los piratas. Por lo tanto, nuestra galaxia sabe un poco a frambuesa y huele a ron, lo cual es agradable.”
― John Connolly, Las puertas del infierno

“Deseó amar a alguien hasta el punto de que le doliera.”
― John Connolly, Las puertas del infierno