“Maybe if I act well enough, I'll come to believe it myself.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?"
"Yum," said Mogget.
"Yes, sir!" mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Why, Yrael?” it said, as the last of the dark gave way to silver, and the shining sphere of metal sank slowly to the ground. “Why?”
“Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“So I'll do that, and I'll do my best and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the ninth gate.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Sam picked up his pack, but before he could put it on, Mogget leaped onto it and slid under the top flap. All that could be seen of him were his green eyes and one white-furred ear.
"Remember I advised against this way," he instructed. "Wake me when whatever terrible thing is a about to happen happens, or if it appears I might get wet.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I have never known what to tell anybody. Except that it is better to do something than nothing, even if the cost is great.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Time plays tricks between here and home," said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“But think of how much worse it would be to sit here, not knowing. Until the Dead choke the Ratterlin and Hedge walks across the dry bed of the river to batter down the door.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Just like the Perimeter! It never rains but it pours," declared the Major.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Please, Mogget,” whispered Lirael, too soft to be heard by anyone at all. But the white shape did hear. It stopped and turned inwards, to face Orannis, changing from a pillar of fire to a more human shape, but one with skin as bright as a burning star. “I am Yrael,” it said, casting a hand out to throw a line of silver fire into the breaking spell-ring, its voice crackling with force. “I also stand against you.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“This? It's a feather-coin. I made it.'
'What is it for?'
'It isn't for anything. It's a toy.'
'It's for annoying people,' said Mogget from Sam's pack. 'If you don't put it away, I shall eat it.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Together, the bells and Dog sang a song that was more than sound and power. It was the song of the earth, the moon, the stars, the sea, and the sky, of Life and Death and all that was and would be. It was the song of the Charter, the song that had bound Orannis in the long ago, the song that sought to bind the Destroyer once again.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I won't let you go! I love you, Dog!'
'There will be other dogs and friends, and loves' whispered the Dog. 'You have found your family, your heritage, and you have earned a high place in the world. I love you too, but my time with you has passed.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“...I've been thinking that it's as if my ancestors are saying it's all right to make things. That's what I'm meant to do. Make things, and help the Abhorsen and the King. So I'll do that, and I'll do my best, and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Mogget’s voice. Sam whirled around. “Mogget? Is that you? Where are you?” “Here, and regretting it as per usual,” replied Mogget, and a small white cat sauntered out from behind a fern tree.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“they might refuse the evidence of their own eyes and continue blindly on over the ridge, driven by optimism and hope that finally they would find somewhere to call home.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Nick was watching her, too, she realized, as those thoughts clamored in her mind. But not with puzzlement or enmity. He was just looking, tilting his head on the side, with one eye partly closed. “Pardon me,” he said. “I was wondering how you knew Sam. Are you a . . . um . . . a princess? Only, if you’re his fiancée or something, I thought I should know. To . . . ah . . . offer my congratulations, as it were. And I don’t even know your name.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Lirael almost apologized, but she held it back. She did feel sorry for Nick. It wasn’t his fault he had been chosen by an ancient spirit of evil to be its avatar. She even felt sort of maternal to him. He needed to be tucked in bed and fed willow-bark tea. That thought led to the idle speculation of what he might look like if he were well. He could be quite handsome, Lirael thought, and then instantly banished the notion. He might be an unwitting enemy, but he was still an enemy.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I lied,” said the Dog cheerily. “That’s one of the reasons I’m the Disreputable Dog. Besides,”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“If she had been in a pointing competition, she would have lost points.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Lirael didn’t answer either question. She just looked at him, waiting for him to talk. He met her gaze at first, then faltered and looked away. There was something unnerving about her eyes. A toughness he had never seen in the young women he knew from the debutante parties in Corvere. It was partly this that made him talk, and partly a desire to impress her with his knowledge and intelligence.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“تصور الحيرة التي لابد أن الرب المسكين يمر بها بدوره! لا شك أنه تورط في خلق العالم! ان السمك يصرخ: "لا تعمني يا رب! لا تجعلني أدخل الشباك!"، ويصرخ الصياد: "اعم السمك يارب! اجعله يلج الشباك!"، فالي أي منهما يجب أن ينصت؟ أحياناً يلبي طلب السمك! وطوراً يلبي رغبة الصياد! بهذه الطريقة يُسَيّر العالم!”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, quote from The Last Temptation of Christ
“Master of the Dark Shadow. For I also, Niniel, had my darkness, in which dear things were lost; but now I have overcome it, I deem.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Children of Húrin
“Why were these people seeking a new home coming to Israel and not to America? Where had the American dream faltered? And he saw that Israel was right; it was taking people—any people—as America had once done; so that in fifty years the bright new ideas of the world would come probably from Israel and no longer from a tired America.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Source
“To dream in isolation can be properly splendid to be sure; but to dream in company seems to me infinitely preferable.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Weaveworld
“You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a daughter is? You have no idea what a daughter is. You think you know what this country is? You have no idea what this country is. You have a false image of everything. All you know is what a fucking glove is. This country is frightening. Of course she was raped. What kind of company do you think she was keeping? Of course out there she was going to get raped. This isn't Old Rimrock, old buddy - she's out there, old buddy, in the USA. She enters that world, that loopy world out there, with whats going on out there - what do you expect? A kid from Rimrock, NJ, of course she didn't know how to behave out there, of course the shit hits the fan. What could she know? She's like a wild child out there in the world. She can't get enough of it - she's still acting up. A room off McCarter Highway. And why not? Who wouldn't? You prepare her for life milking the cows? For what kind of life? Unnatural, all artificial, all of it. Those assumptions you live with. You're still in your olf man's dream-world, Seymour, still up there with Lou Levov in glove heaven. A household tyrannized by gloves, bludgeoned by gloves, the only thing in life - ladies' gloves! Does he still tell the one about the woman who sells the gloves washing her hands in a sink between each color? Oh where oh where is that outmoded America, that decorous America where a woman had twenty-five pairs of gloves? Your kid blows your norms to kingdom come, Seymour, and you still think you know what life is?" Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive. Meredith Levov, 1964. "You wanted Ms. America? Well, you've got her, with a vengeance - she's your daughter! You wanted to be a real American jock, a real American marine, a real American hotshot with a beautiful Gentile babe on your arm? You longed to belong like everybody else to the United States of America? Well, you do now, big boy, thanks to your daughter. The reality of this place is right up in your kisser now. With the help of your daughter you're as deep in the sit as a man can get, the real American crazy shit. America amok! America amuck! Goddamn it, Seymour, goddamn you, if you were a father who loved his daughter," thunders Jerry into the phone - and the hell with the convalescent patients waiting in the corridor for him to check out their new valves and new arteries, to tell how grateful they are to him for their new lease on life, Jerry shouts away, shouts all he wants if it's shouting he wants to do, and the hell with the rules of hte hospital. He is one of the surgeons who shouts; if you disagree with him he shouts, if you cross him he shouts, if you just stand there and do nothing he shouts. He does not do what hospitals tell him to do or fathers expect him to do or wives want him to do, he does what he wants to do, does as he pleases, tells people just who and what he is every minute of the day so that nothing about him is a secret, not his opinions, his frustrations, his urges, neither his appetite nor his hatred. In the sphere of the will, he is unequivocating, uncompromising; he is king. He does not spend time regretting what he has or has not done or justifying to others how loathsome he can be. The message is simple: You will take me as I come - there is no choice. He cannot endure swallowing anything. He just lets loose. And these are two brothers, the same parents' sons, one for whom the aggression's been bred out, the other for whom the aggression's been bred in. "If you were a father who loved your daughter," Jerry shouts at the Swede, "you would never have left her in that room! You would have never let her out of your sight!”
― Philip Roth, quote from American Pastoral
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