“Go ahead! Panic!" screamed Picchu from somewhere in the background. "Do it now and avoid the June rush! Fear death by water!”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“Must I accept the barren Gift?
-learn death, and lose my Mastery?
Then let them know whose blood and breath
will take the Gift and set them free:
whose is the voice and whose the mind
to set at naught the well-sung Game-
when finned Finality arrives
and calls me by my secret Name.
Not old enough to love as yet,
but old enough to die, indeed-
-the death-fear bites my throat and heart,
fanged cousin to the Pale One's breed.
But past the fear lies life for all-
perhaps for me: and, past my dread,
past loss of Mastery and life,
the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!
Lone Power, I accept your Gift!
Freely I make death a part of me;
By my accept it is bound
into the lives of all the Sea-
yet what I do now binds to it
a gift I feel of equal worth:
I take Death with me, out of Time,
and make of it a path, a birth!
Let the teeth come! As they tear me,
they tear Your ancient hate for aye-
-so rage, proud Power! Fail again,
and see my blood teach Death to die!”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“Blood in the water I sing,
and one who shed it:
deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it-
weaving the ancient-most tale
of the Sea's sending:
singing the tragedy,
singing the joy unending
This is our shame-
this is the whole Ocean's glory:
this is the Song of the Twelve.
Hark to the story!
Hearken, and bring it to pass:
swift lest the sorrow
long ago laid to it's rest
devour us tomarrow! ”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“Belief made no difference to the truth.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“Belief as such always has doubt at the bottom. It's knowing that makes wizardry work. Only knowing can banish doubt.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
“Most people think it's normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
Diane Duane
Born place: in New York, The United States
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“After tidying up, Adela would plunge the rooms into semidarkness by drawing down the linen blinds. All colors immediately fell an octave lower, the room filled with shadows, as if it had sunk to the bottom of the sea and the light was reflected in mirrors of green water–and the heat of the day began to breathe on the blinds as they stirred slightly in their daydreams.”
― Bruno Schulz, quote from The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
“There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes—then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There, this is the final kiss—no, this is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I’m just kissing that kiss good night.”
― Miranda July, quote from The First Bad Man
“Suppose that Art is a real hothead. If Bud rats on him, Art will be so enraged that nothing will stop him from killing Bud, even if he has to wait ten years, and even if he has to chase Bud to the ends of the earth. If Bud knows of Art’s vengeful nature, then Bud has a strong incentive not to rat on him. Thus, by being vengeful, and being known for it, Art can be his own robotic hit man, incentivizing others to cooperate with him through his high-flying, credible threats. Of course, being vengeful can be very costly. Art could lose everything if he does, in fact, devote his life to exacting vengeance on Bud. Still, if all goes well, Art will never actually need to go after Bud, because people like Bud won’t dare cross him. Thus, the emotions that fuel vengeful behaviors are, or can be, a kind of rational irrationality. They serve our interests by publicly committing us to doing things that are not in our own interest. We”
― Joshua D. Greene, quote from Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
“Students who were harder on themselves for procrastinating on their first exam were more likely to procrastinate on later exams than students who forgave themselves. The harder they were on themselves about procrastinating the first time, the longer they procrastinated for the next exam! Forgiveness—not guilt—helped them get back on track.”
― Kelly McGonigal, quote from The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
“During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced out on the ceiling.
I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn’t feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan.
I’d add a large amount of salt — I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn’t look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else’s eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands would flip the omelette on to a plate and I’d spread the remainder of the butter on the toast when the two slices of bread leapt from the toaster.
‘Delicious,’ he’d say, commenting on the food before even trying it.”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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Thomas the ObscureBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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