Quote Wall

and was taken to the Forward Docks and a big, brightly lit hangar, where the Psychopath Class ex-Rapid Offensive Unit Frank Exchange of Views was waiting for her. Ulver laughed. 'It looks,' she snorted, 'like a dildo!' 'That's appropriate,' Churt Lyne said. 'Armed, it can fuck solar systems.

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

There is no God and we are his prophets.

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.

From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Queequeg explained to me that his world was very different from ours. However, one thing he learned quickly, was that within all groups of people there are kind men and there are unkind men.

He had spent a lot of time thinking about himself, and had come to the conclusion that he was definitely not self-absorbed.

You see, faith doesn’t have to make sense. If it did, it wouldn’t be faith, it would be logic.

It’s amazing how quickly we get used to weirdness when it’s our own weirdness.

He tried to come up with a word that meant “witch,” that didn’t have any insulting or demeaning overtones. He couldn’t. In fact, after some thought, he couldn’t think of a word that meant female that men hadn’t imbued with some belittling shade of meaning. Finally, after a much longer silence than he had intended, he simply said, “I can understand why.

The advantage that religion has over magic or science is that man’s inability to understand is built into the system, so if an explanation is confusing or unsatisfying, it strengthens the point.

They couldn’t prove themselves right, so they channeled their energies into proving the other side wrong.

In fact, after some thought, he couldn’t think of a word that meant female that men hadn’t imbued with some belittling shade of meaning.

The day we stop learning is the day we stop living.

Sure, as a teenager he’d experimented with the whole pose, but found that rebelling against everything all the time was just too exhausting.

Phillip shook his head. “I understand all of these specs, but the numbers are all so large, I don’t know what any of it means. What on earth can a person do with four gigabytes of RAM?” “Upgrade it immediately,” Martin answered.

He drove to work, his car a sunny little island of calm in the middle of the swollen river of misery that was the morning commute.

Zakalwe, in all human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses." "Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted. "Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing.

But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.

I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway" - the man laughed - "people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And," the man said with a smile, "it's a good way of meeting people. So where are you from, anyway?

But just because something does not have an ending doesn't mean it doesn't have a conclusion.

The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!

I once visited a place where they killed people by putting them in a chair. Not torture — that was common enough; beds and chairs were very much the par when it came to getting people helpless and confined, to inflict pain upon them — but actually set it up to kill them while they sat. They — get this — they either gassed them or they passed very high electric currents through them. A pellet dropped into a container beneath the seat, like some obscene image of a commode, producing a fatal gas; or a cap over their head, and their hands dipped in some conducting fluid, to fry their brains. You want to know the punch line? Yeah, [...] give us the punch line. This same state had a law that forbade — and I quote — “cruel and unusual punishments!” Can you believe that?

Myself,” said the drone sniffily, “I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty percent water.

Can’t machines build these faster?” he asked the woman, looking around the starship shell.“Why, of course!” she laughed.“Then why do you do it?”“It’s fun. You see one of these big mothers sail out those doors for the first time, heading for deep space, three hundred people on board, everything working, the Mind quite happy, and you think, I helped build that. The fact a machine could have done it faster doesn’t alter the fact that it was you who actually did it.” “Hmm,” he said. “Well, you may ‘hmm’ as you wish,” the woman said, approaching a translucent hologram of the half-completed ship, where a few other construction workers were standing, pointing inside the model and talking. “But have you ever been gliding or swum underwater?” “Yes,” he agreed. The woman shrugged. “Yet birds fly better than we do, and fish swim better. Do we stop gliding or swimming because of this?” He smiled. “I suppose not.” “You suppose correctly,” the woman said. “And why?” She looked at him, grinning. “Because it’s fun.

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.

Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.

The fact that you use the term "cunt" in the same breath as "sexist", shows that you display the same muddled, fucked-up thinking oan this issue as you do oan everything else.

-ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.

Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ah sound mind, ectetera, ectetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, because it's seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whut they huv tae offer.

They mean well, and they mean well tae me, but there's nae way under the sun that they can appreciate what ah feel, what ah need. Protect me from those who wish tae help us.

Johnny wis a junky as well as a dealer. Ye hud tae go a wee bit further up the ladder before ye found a dealer whae didnae use. We called Johnny ‘Mother Superior’ because ay the length ay time he’d hud his habit.

Sex generally makes them intae real relationships, or ends them. Ye go backwards or forwards after shagging, but maintaining the status quo is difficult.

Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything.

Gender is who you are, and sexuality is who you want; sexual orientation is who you go to bed with and gender identity is who you go to bed as.

We cannot afford to be seduced by the sophistry of single-issue movements. As Audre Lorde so rightly said, we do not live single-issue lives.

Those looking to know how it feels, to have a chance at life in a congruent body, free of dysphoria? Just listen to trans people and what we know of our own lives. We have been speaking this truth for a long time.

Part of being trans, of being queer—not all of it, not for all people, but part—is in the re-imagining of what it is to be human. These are categories forged from the failure or refusal to acquiesce to majority rule.

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

Obsession is just a variety of addiction ~ Ian Malcolm

God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs.

The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.

Life will find a way.

Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused

Race is real because we perceive it. Racism is real because we enact it. Neither race nor racism has foundations in science. It is our duty to contest the warping of scientific research, especially if it is being used to justify prejudice. If you are a racist, then you are asking for a fight. But science is my ally, not yours, and your fight is not just with me, but with reality.

Scientific racism’ or ‘race science’ are both misnomers. These are pseudoscientific domains.

When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Race is a social construct. This does not mean that it is invalid or unimportant.

demonstrates quite clearly Swift’s maxim that you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

This is the reason why it's insufficient to respond with accusations of being 'offended,' to say that anyone who disagrees with these pieces is not obliged to read them and can take their support elsewhere. Trans people may choose not to consume transphobic media; we have no choice about living in a world shaped by the misinformation.

No,' he said. 'I don't think anyone dies happy...but you could die well.

I have an idea," Cazio said after a moment. "What a lonely creature it must be.

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.

One cannot judge by book being best seller. We all know that. Many best sellers are terrible trash.

Philosophical involvement blinded me to authentic human fact.

The body—the cage—is everything of the most respectable—but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.

Sex, yes; sexism, no.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

Hope clouds observation.

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop being true.

Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are all born selfish.

The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.

When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.

And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.

The best way to live, then, was this: have a very simple lifestyle, be kind to those around you, and surround yourself with friends.

Kierkegaard was a Christian, though he hated the Danish Church and couldn't accept the way complacent Christians around him behaved. For him, religion was a heart-wrenching option, not a cosy excuse for a song in church.

As soon as you start to doubt your own existence, the act of doubting proves that you exist as a thinking thing. This

Socrates “Life, he declared, is only worth living if you think about what you are doing. An unexamined existence is all right for cattle, but not for human beings.

If you do something just because of how you feel that is not a good action at all.

Instead of looking to increase our pleasure in life, they think, we should try to become better people and do the right thing. That is what makes a life go well.

The problem as he saw it was not how short our lives are, but rather how badly most of us use what time we have.

The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.

I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

Occasionally, on purpose, Dr. Lecter drops a teacup to shatter on the floor. He is satisfied when it does not gather itself together. For many months now, he has not seen Mischa in his dreams. Someday perhaps a cup will come together. Or somewhere Starling may hear a crossbow string and come to some unwilled awakening, if indeed she even sleeps.

The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman's pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody's business but yours.

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

It's easy to sneer that insta is all cats, brunch, selfies, and beach yoga, but social media is one of the most powerful tools for self education we've ever had. If your social media is boring you don't blame the tool, or the algorithms. If you're choosing to be spoon-fed, you can't complain that everything tastes the same.

If she had come to claim the space I had taken, I would not move. Well, I would. obviously, I am British, but I would give her such a filthy look when I did, so, that would teach her.

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

To light a candle is to cast a shadow...

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.

From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do. . . .

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.

A rock is a good thing, too, you know. If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy the illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.

Yet a greater, unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience.

That is between me and my shadow.

Master,” said Ged, “I cannot take your name from you, not being strong enough, and I cannot trick your name from you, not being wise enough. So I am content to stay here, and learn or serve, whatever you will: unless by chance you will answer a question I have.” “Ask it.” “What is your name?” The doorkeeper smiled, and said his name; and Ged, repeating it, entered for the last time into that House.

I was in too much haste, and now have no time left.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

Atticus, he was real nice." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.

There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?

I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?' I said not particularly.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?

Touchstone watched, suddenly conscious that he probably only had five seconds left to be alone with Sabriel, to say something, to say anything. Perhaps the last five seconds they ever would have alone together. I am not afraid, he said to himself. "I love you," he whispered. "I hope you don't mind.

Five Great Charters knit the land Together linked, hand in hand One in the people who wear the crown Two in the folk who keep the Dead down Three and Five became stone and mortar Four sees all in frozen water.

Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.

Let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.

Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.

Choosers will be beggars if the begging's not their choosing.

Who or what are you? Besides insufferably rude?

When the dead do walk seek water's run, for this the Dead will always shun. Swift river's best or broadest lake to ward the dead and have and make. If water fails thee, fire's thy friend, if neither guards it will be thy end.

It's always better to be doing.

Coils within coils,” murmured the cat. “Fleas upon fleas, idiots begetting idiots—” “What?” “Mmm, just thinking,” whispered Mogget. “You should try it sometimes.

Be assured that any hurt to your spirit will pass in time. It is the nature of Death to take, but the nature of Life to give.

I am the Disreputable Dog. Or Disreputable Bitch, if you want to get technical. When are we going for a walk?

Oh, Dog!" Lirael said plaintively, giving the hound a hug. "Why is everything so difficult?" "It just is," said the Dog, woofling gently in her ear. "But sleep will make it seem easier. A new day will bring new sights and smells.

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity.

The resemblance of the signs of the zodiac to the animals after which they are named... is as unimpressive as the predictions of astrologers.

Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

In the case of living machinery, the ‘designer’ is unconscious natural selection, the blind watchmaker.

if a design is good enough to evolve once, the same design principle is good enough to evolve twice, from different starting points, in different parts of the animal kingdom.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

Do you know how to read?' 'No. It is one of the black arts.' He nodded. 'But a useful one,' he said.

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.

How do I know," she said at last, "that you are what you seem to be?" "You don't," Said he. "I don't know what I seem, to you.

Pride kept her from confiding in the other girls, and caution kept her from confessing to the older women.

Let all meats—except for the thinnest cuts—come to room temperature before you cook them. The larger the roast, the earlier you can pull it out of the fridge. A rib roast should sit out for several hours, while a chicken needs only a couple,

He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could not think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble.

It is always important to look beyond a pleasant visage.

Might have been and could have done, neither worth thinking on.

I am a great believer that anything not expressly forbidden is explicitly allowed.

The most important thing is to be true to yourself, however you feel, and not try to feel or behave differently because you think you should, or someone has told you how you must feel. But do think about it. Unexamined feelings lead to all kinds of trouble.

May I say that I approve of a piece that tries to remake the entire puzzle?

A passion thwarted will often go astray.

Madness is unfortunately not incompatible with government

All of the worst books I ever read were published,

The guard was clearly puzzled and was trying to solve the puzzle by the time-honored method of frowning about it.

Saying you were going to be something isn’t the same as being that thing.

The sound of Inchgower unzipping his fly in preparation for “the quench” was cartoonishly loud and out of place. “But he went to the trouble to dig up the sound of a fly unzipping,” Tyler whined. “That’s just great. Never mind that there’s no way a Dark Ages blacksmith would even have a zipper.

The wizards from the mid-1990s or later refused to discuss any movies at all for fear of letting slip any details of the Star Wars prequels or the fourth Indiana Jones, a group of works that the later wizards would only refer to by the collective title The Unpleasantness.

See, kids, back in Phil’s and my day, if you made a good movie, you took that success and made a different movie, not the same movie over again.

At this point in history, people didn’t know how to react to “Eddie, the mysterious wizard from the Orient.” They already had difficulty dealing with Eddie’s thick New Jersey accent.

It wasn’t that Gary wasn’t smart. His brain was as good as anyone’s. He just chose to use it sparingly.

Trust is a person believing that someone won’t do any of the thousands of awful things that any of us can do to each other.

A film festival, during which all three Star Wars prequels and the fourth Indiana Jones movie were all screened back to back, in the name of getting it over with.

That’s what makes reality reality, the fact that it just keeps being true no matter how much you argue with it.

Occasionally, ignorance works in one’s favor.

You need an education, practical experience, and certifications to practice medicine. To be president, all you need is the confidence of most of the people who bothered to vote.

Everybody lies to children, even their parents. The day a child realizes that is the day they start becoming an adult.

I didn’t call you a liar, I just pointed out that you’re lying.

Good plans almost never contain the word somehow.

You’ll either learn that you like him or you’ll learn that you don’t. Either one of those is good to know.

The eight of us have been killed a combined total of sixty-seven times,” Jeff said. “This strikes me as a problem.

Honor’s face turned bright red. Her knuckles went white. “Yes,” Honor said. “I understand, Mister Gibbons.” Gibbons nodded, making the common mistake of thinking that understanding and agreeing were the same thing.

Besides, it ain’t an accident that gangs are made up of young men who have nothing. We value our lives little enough to risk them for a little money or a lot of fun.

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.

She'll die.' 'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.

For in this love he now felt there was compassion: without which love is untempered, and is not whole, and does not last.

To see a candle’s light, one must take it into a dark place.

You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is also a terrible thing,' Ged said, 'and must be feared and praised.

He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons.

In Enlad," said Arren after a while, "we have a story about the boy whose schoolmaster was a stone:' "Aye?... What did he learn?" "Not to ask questions.

I am tired of safe places, and roofs, and walls around me.

I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.

alea iacta est: ‘the die is cast’.

the human condition. The young tend to be disgusted at what they become, and the old have contempt for what they once were.

How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can't lift their heads to gaze upon them?

You are saving their lives for a life not living.

This,’ Malorie says, placing a bloodied hand on the Girl’s head, ‘this is Olympia.’ The Girl looks at Malorie quickly. She blushes. She smiles. She likes it. ‘And this,’ Malorie says, pressing the Boy to her body, ‘is Tom.’ He grins, shy and happy.

Your worries only keep you safe long enough to worry some more.

Humans are scared of just about everything. Problem is, their first reaction to be scared- Is to kill it.

. . . For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven. And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again.

Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

Shooting yourself in the foot has the same effect whether you do it to get out of the army or to kill a mosquito on your shoe.

One of the first lessons any modern person learns when they go to live in the distant past is that everyone, including the domestic servants, are much more hard-core than you will ever be.

Okay,” Martin shouted. “So I’m meddling! I’m doing it for his own good. Isn’t that what friends do?” Jeff said, “In theory, absolutely not. In practice, yeah, usually.

Once, Brit had been amazed that Steve Jobs would allow a product to ship with such an obvious aesthetic flaw, but in time, she realized that Steve Jobs didn’t consider anything that would cause a customer to want to buy a newer computer a flaw.

the curtains were drawn just enough to let light in but send the message that the light was not welcome, and had better mind its manners.

Jimmy said, “I’d rather you called me his greatest enemy, instead of his worst. Worst implies low quality. You could argue that Gary’s his worst enemy.” Phillip said, “Gary’s my friend.” “Which shows how bad at being an enemy he really is.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hidden beauty.

Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting.

Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.

He believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows in response to what’s happening to us and how we feel.

Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.

LOOK FOR THE DISCOMFORT THAT PRECEDES THE DISTRACTION, FOCUSING IN ON THE INTERNAL TRIGGER

It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile; people of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.

I was co-leading a workshop with an African American man. A white participant said to him, "I don't see race; I don't see you as black." My co-trainer's response was, "Then how will you see racism?" He then explained to her that he was black, he was confident that she could see this, and that his race meant that he had a very different experience in life than she did. If she were ever going to understand or challenge racism, she would need to acknowledge this difference. Pretending that she did not noticed that he was black was not helpful to him in any way, as it denied his reality - indeed, it refused his reality - and kept hers insular and unchallenged. This pretense that she did not notice his race assumed that he was "just like her," and in so doing, she projected her reality onto him. For example, I feel welcome at work so you must too; I have never felt that my race mattered, so you must feel that yours doesn't either. But of course, we do see the race of other people, and race holds deep social meaning for us.

The simplistic idea that racism is limited to individual intentional acts committed by unkind people is at the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic.

The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true?

If I believe that only bad people are racist, I will feel hurt, offended, and shamed when an unaware racist assumption of mine is pointed out. If I instead believe that having racist assumptions is inevitable (but possible to change), I will feel gratitude when an unaware racist assumption is pointed out; now I am aware of and can change that assumption.

While implicit bias is always at play because all humans have bias, inequity can occur simply through homogeneity; if I am not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be motivated to remove them. Nor will I be motivated to remove the barriers if they provide an advantage to which I feel entitled.

Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: - Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) - US Congress: 90 percent white - US governors: 96 percent white - Top military advisers: 100 percent white - President and vice president: 100 percent white - US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white - Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white - People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white - People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white - People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white - People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white - People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white - Teachers: 82 percent white - Full-time college professors: 84 percent white - Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society.

power that isn’t really justified by the will of the governed should be dismantled.

[A]s long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if meaningful.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to sell themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract" - but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve", that's not a choice - it's infact what was commonly referred to as 'wage slavery' in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I think that’s a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.

the basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of authority and domination and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that it’s justified—it has no prior justification. For instance, when you stop your five-year-old kid from trying to cross the street, that’s an authoritarian situation: it’s got to be justified. Well, in that case, I think you can give a justification. But the burden of proof for any exercise of authority is always on the person exercising it—invariably.

I’m quoting, so pardon the sexist language, but somewhere or other he said: socialism is an effort to try to solve man’s animal problems, and after having solved the animal problems, then we can face the human problems—but it’s not a part of socialism to solve the human problems; socialism is an effort to get you to the point where you can face the human problems

Tell me what it is like to die," I answered. He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. "You experience something similar every day," he said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter." "Yes," I said. "It is like every night when I fall asleep." "No. It is like every morning when you wake up.

It is life that hurts you not death.

Papa loves you with a dying and infernal love," the youngest girl said. "Undying," the eldest girl corrected. "And eternal.

If your appearance is all people see, they have no respect for your mind.

Cold, truthful common sense was harder to like than warm, hopeful generosity.

The right rumour in the right ears can kill the emperor, as they say.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

Though I can’t help feeling a sudden death cheats you of something. Death is an experience of life. You only get one death. I would like to be aware it was happening, even if that did mean enduring pain and fear.

Happy endings are a luxury of fiction.

Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.

In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.

In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.

You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.

A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.

He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter.

He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember.

He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.

Nothing had changed. Their lives had been expended in the cheerless labor, their wills broken, their intelligences numbed. Now they were in the earth to which they had given their lives; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the damp and rot would infest the pine boxes which held their bodies, and slowly it would touch their flesh and finally it would consume the last vestiges of their substances. And they would become a meaningless part of that stubborn earth to which they had long ago given themselves.

Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was extraordinarily vain and consumed with a sense of his own importance.

She was, as she had said, almost happy with her despair, drinking a little more, year by year, numbing herself against the nothingness her life had become. He was glad she had that, at least; he was grateful that she could drink.

It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.

But a madman at ease is safer than a sane woman unsettled.

And yet he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people.

When in doubt, say nothing and move on.

If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.

Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.

The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice.

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.

I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.

It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

But charisma only wins people’s attention. Once you have their attention, you have to have something to tell them.

Even if you are a pompous ass with no respect for authority, you're worth fifty men, and I mean to see you in my army." "That was an incredibly backhanded compliment." "I meant every word.

First rule of bathing,” Gavril said. “If you can’t smell yourself anymore, it’s time to wash.

I have the feeling you would much rather be on the front than in Adopest trying to win over the snakes in politics. At least here you’re allowed to shoot your enemies.

There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.

He took my family,” Adamat said. “Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly.” “A lot of violence planned, for a family man,” the eunuch said. Adamat leaned forward. “‘Family,’” he said. “Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.

On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?

Her extremely posh eight year-old asks her a question about the economy (!), and before she answers it, she asks her extremely posh five year-old "Do you know what the economy is, darling?" "Yes mummy, it's the part of the plane that's terrible". This is how revolutions start.

So I told them the truth: the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered. But there’s no better job in the world.

You don’t cure depression, the same way you don’t cure asthma; you manage it. I’m the inhaler he’s decided to go with and I should be pleased he’s gone this long without an attack.

I notice that every patient on the ward has a pulse of 60 recorded in their observation chart so I surreptitiously inspect the healthcare assistant’s measurement technique. He feels the patient’s pulse, looks at his watch and meticulously counts the number of seconds per minute.

Tuesday, 5 July 2005 Trying to work out a seventy-year-old lady’s alcohol consumption to record in the notes. I’ve established that wine is her poison. Me: ‘And how much wine do you drink per day, would you say?’ Patient: ‘About three bottles on a good day.’ Me: ‘OK . . . And on a bad day?’ Patient: ‘On a bad day I only manage one.

Tuesday, 9th Novermber 2004 Bleeped awake at 3AM from my first half hour shut-eye in three shifts to prescribe a sleeping pill to a patient whose sleep is evidently much more important than mine. My powers are greater than I realised; I arrive on the ward to find the patient is asleep.

I’ve not sat down for twelve hours, let alone rested my eyes, my dinner’s sitting uneaten in my locker and I’ve just called a midwife ‘Mum’ by accident.

Headaches from using my attunement? I could deal with them. Existential terror at the possibility of destroying my own mind? Pretty much routine at this point. Doing paperwork for the government? Now that was brutal.

Does he always try to solve problems by making bigger ones?" Orden nodded sagely, "That would sum up Corin's problem solving methodology quite appropriately

For the future, please promise me you will not make any life-altering oaths in order to influence my love life.

Nailing my door shut at night wasn't exactly elegant, but it was a pretty effective deterrent.

Sometimes the world’s most brilliant ideas don’t work. Doesn’t make them any less insightful.

I didn’t want, “Healing magic didn’t seem like a priority,” to be my final words.

everyone who exists is mentally compromised. We all accumulate false information over time, internalize it, and are influenced by it, consciously or otherwise. We are, in part, a product of these biases, as well as all other information we gather in our lifetimes.

I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still.

I'm not going to die," she said. "Not till I've seen it." "Seen what?" Her smile widened. "Everything.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

He could live without furniture and on a ramen-only diet, but he needed more bandwidth.

When someone hurts you like that, you don’t just heal immediately. It’s a breach of trust that makes you question everything and everyone else in your life. It makes you re-examine your friends and family under a microscope.

I guess what I’m saying is that trust is difficult. I don’t know your friends’ situation or what they’re going through, but even small betrayals can feel like heavy blows if you’re already bruised and bloody,” Angie explained quietly. “I’m not sure this helps,” she added with a soft chuckle. “It’s probably just the prattling of an old woman.

I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.

I would die for my country. But I’d rather kill for it. Ready your troops. We march!

I’ve met dozens of officers who think their immaculate mustache can move the world.

We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.

Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.

But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.

One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead.

Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.

I now walk into the wild.

Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.

Bacchus let his impatience drain down his arms and into his hands, where he crushed it with tight fists.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.

I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.

That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.

Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu.

It was just so...permanent. Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.

One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of.

I am thoughtful—full of thoughts, all the time, inescapably, exhaustingly. But I am also mindless—acting in accordance with default settings I neither understand nor examine.

We can talk and talk and talk about what the pain is like, but we can never manage to convey what it is.

Maybe we forget so that we can go on.

Gatsby is a critique of the American Dream. The only people who end up rich or successful in the novel are the ones who start out that way. Almost everyone else ends up dead or destitute. And it’s a critique of the kind of vapid capitalism that can’t find anything more interesting to do with money than try to make more of it. The book lays bare the carelessness of the entitled rich—the kind of people who buy puppies but won’t take care of dogs, or who purchase vast libraries of books but never read any of them.

I think it's helpful to know how sunsets work. I don't buy the romantic notion that scientific understanding somehow robs the universe of its beauty, but I still can't find language to describe how breathtakingly beautiful sunsets are--not breathtakingly, actually, but breath-givingly beautiful. All I can say is that sometimes when the world is between day and night, I'm stopped cold by its splendor, and I feel my absurd smallness. You'd think that would be sad, but it isn't. It only makes me grateful.

There is a face beneath this mask, but it isn't me. I'm no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it, or the bones beneath that.

Ideas are bulletproof

What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?

No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.

He brushed his teeth carefully and used dental floss. He tried to take good care of his teeth because he was his own dentist now. Some things could go to pot, but not his health, he thought. Then why don’t you stop pouring alcohol into yourself? he thought. Why don’t you shut the hell up? he thought.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door. Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.

Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.

My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

Only priests and fools are fearless and I've never been on the best of terms with God.

The boy grows upward, but the girl grows up.

It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one.

You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.

Just pity him, my boy. Tomorrow we'll be on our way, but he'll have to keep his own disagreeable company until the day he dies.

When the hearthfire turns to blue, what to do? what to do? run outside, run and hide when his eyes are black as crow? where to go? where to go? near and far. Here they are. see a man without a face? move like ghosts from place to place. whats their plan? whats their plan? Chandrian. Chandrian

There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other is to lend.

Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere

Anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.

Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness. That is why owls make poor heroes.

Remember this, son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.

If you are eager to find the reason I became the Kvothe they tell stories about, you could look there, I suppose." Chronicler's forehead wrinkled. "What do you mean, exactly?" Kvothe paused for a long moment, looking down at his hands. "Do you know how many times I've been beaten over the course of my life?" Chronicler shook his head. Looking up, Kvothe grinned and tossed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "Neither do I. You'd think that sort of thing would stick in a person's mind. You'd think I would remember how many bones I've had broken. You'd think I'd remember the stitches and bandages." He shook his head. "I don't. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years." Chronicler frowned. "You said yourself that there was nothing you could have done." "I could have," Kvothe said seriously, "and I didn't. I made my choice and I regret it to this day. Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.

He was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn't realize that once a noose is tied it will fit one neck as easily as another.

You are an educated man. You know there are no such things as demons." Bast smiled a terrible smile. "There is only my kind." Bast leaned closer still, Chronicler smelled flowers on his breath. "You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

However, while being able to think about two things at the same time is a terribly convenient, the training it takes to get there is frustrating at best, and at other times rather disturbing. I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half of me where I'd hidden it, only to find I hadn't hidden the stone at all. I had merely been waiting to see how long I would look before giving up. Have you ever been annoyed and amused with yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling, to say the very least.

What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.” “It is a sprung rhythm,” he said, his voice stiff and offended. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Sprung?” I burst out with an incredulous laugh. “I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.

Elodin pointed down the street. "What color is that boy's shirt?" "Blue." "What do you mean by blue? Describe it." I struggled for a moment, failed. "So blue is a name?" "It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself." My head was swimming by this point. "I still don't understand." He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing. "Look!" he shouted tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.

I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.

How about this?' Simmon asked me. "Which is worse, stealing a pie or killing Ambrose?" I gave it a moment's hard thought. "A meat pie, or a fruit pie?

There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.

Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

Once upon a time,” I began. “There was a little boy born in a little town. He was perfect, or so his mother thought. But one thing was different about him. He had a gold screw in his belly button. Just the head of it peeping out. “Now his mother was simply glad he had all his fingers and toes to count with. But as the boy grew up he realized not everyone had screws in their belly buttons, let alone gold ones. He asked his mother what it was for, but she didn’t know. Next he asked his father, but his father didn’t know. He asked his grandparents, but they didn’t know either. “That settled it for a while, but it kept nagging him. Finally, when he was old enough, he packed a bag and set out, hoping he could find someone who knew the truth of it. “He went from place to place, asking everyone who claimed to know something about anything. He asked midwives and physickers, but they couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The boy asked arcanists, tinkers, and old hermits living in the woods, but no one had ever seen anything like it. “He went to ask the Cealdim merchants, thinking if anyone would know about gold, it would be them. But the Cealdim merchants didn’t know. He went to the arcanists at the University, thinking if anyone would know about screws and their workings, they would. But the arcanists didn’t know. The boy followed the road over the Stormwal to ask the witch women of the Tahl, but none of them could give him an answer. “Eventually he went to the King of Vint, the richest king in the world. But the king didn’t know. He went to the Emperor of Atur, but even with all his power, the emperor didn’t know. He went to each of the small kingdoms, one by one, but no one could tell him anything. “Finally the boy went to the High King of Modeg, the wisest of all the kings in the world. The high king looked closely at the head of the golden screw peeping from the boy’s belly button. Then the high king made a gesture, and his seneschal brought out a pillow of golden silk. On that pillow was a golden box. The high king took a golden key from around his neck, opened the box, and inside was a golden screwdriver. “The high king took the screwdriver and motioned the boy to come closer. Trembling with excitement, the boy did. Then the high king took the golden screwdriver and put it in the boy’s belly button.” I paused to take a long drink of water. I could feel my small audience leaning toward me. “Then the high king carefully turned the golden screw. Once: Nothing. Twice: Nothing. Then he turned it the third time, and the boy’s ass fell off.” There was a moment of stunned silence. “What?” Hespe asked incredulously. “His ass fell off.

Vashet: “I will admit, I’ve never had a studen offer himself up for a vicious beating in order to prove he’s worth my time.” Kvothe: “That was nothing. Once I jumped off a roof.

It was only then I realized I didn't know the name of Elodin's class. I leafed through the ledger until I spotted Elodin's name, then ran my finger back to where the title of the class was listed in fresh dark ink: "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass." I sighed and penned my name in the single blank space beneath.

I won the only duel I ever lost.

I walked across the polished marble floor and sat on a red velvet lounging couch. I idly wondered how exactly one was supposed to lounge. I couldn't remember ever doing it myself. After a moment's consideration, I decided lounging was probably similar to relaxing, but with more money in your pocket.

I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.

No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.

I don't mind being called a liar. I am. I am a marvelous liar. But I hate being called a liar when I´m telling the perfect truth.

Maple. Maypole Catch and carry. Ash and Ember. Elderberry. Woolen. Woman. Moon at night. Willow. Window. Candlelight. Fallow farrow. Ash and oak. Bide and borrow. Chimney smoke. Barrel. Barley. Stone and stave. Wind and water. Misbehave.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire

They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.

I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.

The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.

Because even if I sometimes use the word abuse to describe certain things that were done to me, in someone else’s mouth the word turns ugly and absolute. It swallows up everything that happened.

It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.

She didn't understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn't agree to.

Girls in those stories are always victims, and I am not. And it doesn’t have anything to do with what Strane did or didn’t do to me when I was younger. I’m not a victim because I never wanted to be, and If I didn’t want to be, then I’m not. That’s how it works. The difference between rape and sex is state of mind. You can’t rape the willing, right?

He's always going to be old. He has to be. That's the only way I can stay young and dripping with beauty.

Elend: I kind of lost track of time… Breeze: For two hours? Elend: There were books involved.

It's easy to believe in something when you win all the time...The losses are what define a man's faith.

...A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight.

It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn't want to move around very much.

A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.

I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.

Vin isn't…like other women." Tindwyl raised an eyebrow, her voice softening slightly. "I think that the more women you come to know, Your Majesty, the more you'll find that statement applies to all of them.

Books have great value, actions have greater value.

He found insanity no excuse, however, for irrational behavior.

Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we're doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe you're at the top. And if you're at the top, then people who aren't like you... well, they've got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn't matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.

At the core, you’ve got to get university certification for parenting, just as you do for, say, being a doctor or an engineer. No offence to you or your species, but going into the business of creating life without any sort of formal prep is . . .’ He laughed. ‘It’s baffling. But then, I’m biased.

Most sapients confuse working hard with being miserable.

All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist.

The appeal of many conspiracy theories depends on the misunderstanding of this logic. That is, it depends on confusing the probability that a series of events would happen if it were the product of a huge conspiracy with the probability that a huge conspiracy exists if a series of events occurs.

That’s why successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain set—the set of people who don’t give up.

true randomness sometimes produces repetition,

Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.

Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.

dunno. I think it’s what all alkies want anyways.” She shivered. “To die, I mean. Some are just taking the slow road to it.

Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.

I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,

I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world.

You were never a real Avery,” he hissed. “You know that, don’t you?” “I do,” I said. “But Christ on a bike, you came close. You came damned close.

Do you enjoy being a writer, Mrs Avery?” asked Julian. “No, of course not, she said. “It’s a hideous profession. Entered into by narcissists who think their pathetic little imaginations will be of interest to people they’ve never met.

Anything is possible,’ I said. ‘But most things are unlikely.

The women are always the whores; the priests are always the good men who were led astray.

Love makes you want to be a better man—right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being assholes.” “What causes the other ten percent?” asked Kizzy. “Natural disasters,” said Nib.

We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.

People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful.

Do not judge other species by your own social norms

Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.

Well, if this band hates the establishment that much, then I doubt they’ll care about me making up my own words. They can’t oppress me with their “correct lyrics.” Fuck the system.

Time was a curious equaliser.

Time could crawl, it could fly, it could amble. Time was a slippery thing.

No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.

Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.

Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.

The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.

The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.

Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.

we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time. Can you find more time to do the things you enjoy doing?

You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement

[B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.

For humans, flying isn't magic, it's physics.

... it could be selling you anything. It could be a cult religion that could separate you from friends and family, or a quack medicine that could leave you paralyzed, or bogus political information that causes you to elect a numbskull to the presidency. God forbid.

There is no hidden meaning to life ... looking for one is our problem solving brain chasing its tail

Ignorance was my ally as long as it was backed up by curiosity. Ignorance without curiosity is not so good, but with curiosity it was the clear water through which I could see the coins at the bottom of the fountain.

The trouble with a lecture is that it answers questions that haven't been asked.

Only storms turn fish into dragons,

There are a million Paths in this world, Lindon, but any sage will tell you they can all be reduced to one. Improve yourself.

I have so little. To a beggar, even scraps become a feast.

When there’s only one road forward, take it with a smile.

But the foundation of any Path is learning to accept the world as it is, not as you wish or even observe it to be.

Fine then. I spit on the honor of the Sandvipers, that pathetic collection of cowards and cripples. You don't have a spine between you, you only use poison because it takes courage to face an enemy in battle, and I could improve on a Sandviper warrior by stapling a snake to a scarecrow's arm. Also your mothers were dogs and your fathers were blind, and so on. Fight me.

A man holds grudges for a day, a family for a year, and a clan for a lifetime.

Removing Japan would also have a big effect on ocean currents.

War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.

They were monsters!" Rin shrieked. "They were not human!" "Have you ever considered" he said slowly "that that was exactly what they thought of us?

It’s easy to be brave. Harder to know when not to fight.

Even dragons,” Orthos said, “know when to bow.

A dragon uses his full strength, whether he's fighting a Sage or a mouse.

When a horse carries a man, which of them is the stronger party?

You want somebody for a suicidal mission, sure, we're your guys. But this is just suicide.

Some believe that hope is the strongest force in the universe,” Dross said. “Although that is objectively untrue.

It’s interesting how humans decide whether or not to panic by watching others, [...] what if all of you are wrong together?

As he was halfway through the portal, pushing forward as though trying to escape a rushing river, he screamed, “Remember, Lindon! Remember to visit a barber! A barber, Lindon! Your hair lacks volume and defin—

The cynical would say there was only one reason a high-profile specialist finally took up the cause. On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died.

My body means nothing but pain to me,” Grace revealed, “and it might mean longer life or relief to the others, if science had it. It’s all I have to give.

The girls,” remembered a local resident of the time, “were ‘good Catholic girls’ who were raised not to challenge authority.

Apologies, but I thought you would try to trick me into doing it.” “Lindon! Lindon. Lindon. How dare you say something so hurtful and yet so accurate.

Accepting an unpleasant situation you are powerless to change is not treachery, it is maturity.

Power exploded from the Silent King’s corpse. Hunger aura. It flashed to every corner of the world, empowering the other Dreadgods. All four of them.

Lindon sat at a table, mug of hot tea in his hands. “Is it just me, or does this book feel shorter than the others?” “That’s the goal, isn’t it?” Eithan pointed out. He was leaning back in his chair, with his black armor hanging on a stand behind him. “Don’t you want a story to feel shorter than it is? To leave you wanting more?” “Couldn’t say I care if it is,” Yerin said. She rolled her empty mug across the table. “Tea’s not bad. Where’d you get it?” “Space.” Eithan turned back to Lindon. “I’m not usually one for measuring things precisely, but I get the feeling that this book will actually end up longer than the last one. Thanks to a little strategic addition.” “Really?” Lindon frowned and took another sip of tea. “You think this story is longer than the last one?” “If my calculations are correct, this book should have more words than the last by exactly…” Eithan counted to himself. “…one.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?

Whether the future is wonderful or terrible is, in part, up to us.

There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.

The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience--that of half the global population, after all--is seen as, well, niche.

It's not always easy to convince someone a need exists, if they don't have that need themselves.

The fact is that worth is a matter of opinion, and opinion is informed by culture. And if that culture is as male-biased as ours is, it can’t help but be biased against women. By default.

When we exclude half of humanity from the production of knowledge we lose out on potentially transformative insights.

How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway?

Belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.

Just when you start to get ahead in the rat race, the universe delivers bigger rats.

Don’t make the common mistake of thinking your opponents are stupid just because they don’t see things your way,

But right or wrong, I’ll die in peace. And Pascal’s Wager works both ways, right?” I nodded, returning his smile. “Yup. If you’re wrong, you won’t have the opportunity to regret it.

All actions have risks. Most inactions even more so.

the wonderful thing about knowledge is that you can give it away and still have it.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

People always assume that family is a ‘right’, but it’s not - not at all. Family is a privilege. It’s earned.

The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.

Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

And I was so stupid, because I thought since I loved you, that meant you loved me.

I have never claimed to be a smart person. We all do stupid things. A lot of times, people do stupid shit not because they are stupid, but because in the heat of the moment, they make rash decisions. It’s a different sort of thing. That’s my excuse here. Heat of the moment. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Delete, delete, delete. What words, sentences or paragraphs can you eliminate before sending? Every word or sentence you can shave saves the other person time. Less is more—and a gift.

The first sentence is your one—and likely only—chance to tell someone what they need to know and convince them not to move on.

When you’re just a face in the crowd, then you can hold an ideal without being required to live up to it.

Yes,” Jason said, “I’m not very smart and simple formalities are super-hard to figure out. It’s definitely not that I find them to be a set of arbitrary behavioural norms that serve as a tool of exclusionary tribalism and that eschewing the rituals of cultural performance facilitates the fostering of new relationships by having both sides step out of their preconceived societal modes.

Do you have aristocracy in your world?” “Sure,” Jason said. “We’re slowly phasing it out in favour of wealth-based oligarchy, but it’s still around.

You should always welcome being proven wrong,” Jason said. “It means your understanding of the world just got a little bit better.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he does not become a monster?

I decided early on that I was going to be who I am and people could take it or leave it. Like me or hate me, I’ll take passion over ambivalence. It lets me know who to avoid and who to be friends with. It makes for a better life.

Alright,” Jason said. “Any idea if I’ll be getting my old rank back?” “The issue is that you’re very… loud for an iron-ranker,” Vincent said. “They’re going to want a display of humility.” “No worries,” Jason said. “No one’s as good at being humble as me.

You don’t get it,” Neil said. “We’re here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and we never actually found out what bubblegum was.

Always either be modest or wildly self-aggrandising. Avoid anything in between, for there lies mediocrity.

I need to go in the other room. This is getting awkward and I left my thinly-veiled excuse to leave you two alone in there.

You know butlering isn't a real genre right." Jason said. "Given the real genres that is hardly an indictment." Shade said. "I'm not responsible for the literary failings of your planet. Mister Asano

I wasn’t trying to make a pun. If I was, I’d have done better.” “There is no better with puns, Mr Asano. There is only worse.

Political favour is for today, Mr Asano. Integrity is forever.

You do realise whose familiar I am, don’t you? I am older than some of this world’s gods and my knowledge base now includes a comprehensive understanding of the canonicity of various entries to the Knight Rider franchise.” “I don’t know what that means.” “I am not largely an advocate for ignorance,” Shade said, “but in this instance, I offer with all goodwill my hope that you retain yours in perpetuity.

I don’t know. Until civilisations started measuring time, it never occurred to me to keep track.

I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. "Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with." Because once the context ends, so does the friendship

I was conditioned to believe any boundary I wanted was a betrayal of her, so I stayed silent. Cooperative.

Mom didn’t get better. But I will.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It's also a radical act of self-love.

You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me.

Oxygen was called flammable air for a while, but it didn't catch on.

But Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar, or Socrates. Alexander the Great conquered half the world without even a café latte to perk him up. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a whiff of a sniff of caffeine. Coffee was introduced to Europe only in 1615. The achievements of antiquity are quite enough to cow the modern human, but when you realize that they did it all without caffeine it becomes almost unbearable.

If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred. The fault, as Shakespeare put it, is not in our stars; but the language is.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest work of reference ever written, and it’s largely the result of a Scotsman who left school at fourteen, and a criminally insane American.

The Latin word for sausage was botulus, from which English gets two words. One of them is the lovely botuliform, which means sausage-shaped and is a more useful word than you might think. The other word is botulism. Sausages may taste lovely, but it's usually best not to ask what's actually in them. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was a sausage-maker who disposed of the body.

Freud said that everything was secretly sexual. But etymologists know that sex is secretly food.

The neatest palindrome in English is undoubtedly: “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.

Monty Python is, for reasons best known to nobody, rather popular with computer programmers. There’s even a programming language called Python, based on their sketches.

All over America, infuriating white people would address black men with the words “Hey, boy.” And it grated. It really grated. That’s why, in the 1940s, black Americans started taking the fight the other way and greeting each other with the words “Hey, man.” The vocative was not inserted for the purposes of sexual identification; it was a reaction against all those years of being called boy. It worked. White people were so confused by “Hey, man” that the sixties happened and everybody, of whatever race, started calling each other man, until the original significance was lost. This is an example of Progress. Now,

The glorious insanities of the English language mean that you can do all sorts of odd and demeaning things to a book. You can cook it.

Things don’t have to stay as what they started out as.

it was like drinking the feeling of being peaceful. Being peaceful in your mind. Well, not if you have too much, then it’s something else.

The combined aromas of hot cinnamon, ground coffee, and sweet cardamom intoxicated her, and as she brewed and smiled and served and chatted, a deep contentment welled up. It was a glowing warmth she’d never experienced before, and she liked it. She liked it a great deal.

Calamity." His own callused paw was swallowed by hers. Her eyes widened. "Hob name," he said. "You can call me Cal." "Whichever you like best. I don't need your name to suit me.

They believe all paths of evolution eventually lead to crabs—a process called carcinization

Love and loss,” he said, “are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.

What are we drinking to?" "The living," said Rhy. "The dead," said Alucard and Lila at the same time. "We're being thorough," added Rhy.

On vis och," he told himself. Dawn to dusk. A phrase that meant two things in his native tongue. A fresh start. A good end.

We don't choose what we are, but we choose what we do.

The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.

Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place.

It's the reason we say "pork" and "beef" instead of "pig" and "cow." Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial.

I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see.

Monster was the best, his favorite word. The first half was a kiss, the second a hiss.

What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.

I can't change where I come from or what I've been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me?

Funerals aren't for dead people. They're for the living.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!

No such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid people who never ask questions.

Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions.

We just don’t deserve dogs, do we?

danger is to life as salt is to food. Too much ruins all. Too little makes meals bland and unpleasant. But just enough? Makes a feast.

An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.

But then, as she knew too well, the more fondly we imagine something will last forever, the more ephemeral it often proves to be.

there came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.

An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass . . . when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. That was an Outside Context Problem; so was the suitably up-teched version that happened to whole planetary civilisations when somebody like the Affront chanced upon them first rather than, say, the Culture.

Collective responsibility. Also known as sharing the blame.

Being eaten by a bugbear makes me uncomfortable, Carl. So if your boyfriend ogling your tootises keeps these easy-peasy bugs coming at us instead of more of those lava-spitting llamas, then you better buck up, get over your human male privilege, and take one for your princess.

Reward: I SAID THE GHOST OF STEVE IRWIN SMILES DOWN UPON YOU.

Learning a language is never a wasted effort, young man… It develops your mind and expands your horizons!

It’s not true fun unless you regret it immediately afterwards.