“you were both hunter and hunted; the shadow of your thoughts was the beast which killed you.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“All things are known, Tallis, but most things are forgotten.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“if you don't first accept the gift as it is—if you change what you hear, or change what you learn—doesn't that make it weak somehow?" "Why should it?" Mr. Williams asked softly. "As I believe I've said to you before, the gift is not what you hear, or learn… the gift is being able to hear and learn. These things are yours from the moment they come and you can shape the tune, or the clay, or the painting, or whatever it is, because it belongs to you. It's what I've always done with my music.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“I really didn't mean to steal it." Mr. Williams shook his head. He scratched at his chin nervously. "Why not? That's what they're there for. Tunes belong to everybody. So do stories.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“So are you telling me…" he composed his thoughts. "Are you telling me that if you told the last story again, and changed the young woman to a young man, then somewhere in history that same young woman would suddenly grow a beard?" Tallis laughed at the image. "I don't know," she said. "I suppose so.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“But stories are fragile. Like people's lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you've lost the first one." "But if I stick to the first tune, then I've lost the second." "But someone else might discover it. It's still there to be born." "And the first tune isn't?" "No," Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. "It has already come into your mind. It's lost forever." "Nothing is lost forever," Mr. Williams said quietly. "Everything I've known I still know, only sometimes I don't know that I know it." All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them. "My grandfather said something like that to me," Tallis whispered. "Well there you are. Wise Old Men, one and all…”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“Have I told you about Christ?" "Ghost-born-man-walking-on-water-telling-stories-dead-on-tree.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“A hundred years ago they'd have burned you as a witch…" "But I'm not a witch." "I don't suppose any of them were.”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“Minden mese és dallam varázslatból születik”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
Robert Holdstock
Born place: in Hythe, Kent, England, The United Kingdom
Born date August 2, 1948
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“I really don’t worry about that anymore. When you’re dying, you don’t have time for that junk. The shit people did to you? It’s over.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from The Porcupine of Truth
“Foxy girls know that silence may be golden-but only for four seconds. Anything longer and you're heading for Awkward Avenue.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Prom Nights from Hell
“It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“The cabby left, muttering under his nose. "What's he muttering about?" Mr. Goliadkin thought through his tears. "I hired him for the evening, I'm sort of...within my rights nows...so there! I hired him for the evening, and that's the end of the matter. Even if he just stands there, it's all the same. It's as I will. I'm free to go, and free not to go. And that I'm now standing behind the woodpile--that, too, is quite all right...and don't you dare say anything; I say, the gentleman wants to stand behind the woodpile, so he stands behind the woodpile...and it's no taint to anybody's honor--so there! So there, lady mine, if you'd like to know. Thus and so, I say, but in our age, lady mine, nobody lives in a hut. So there! In our industrial age, lady mine, you can't get anywhere without good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example...You say one must serve as a chief clerk and live in a hut on the seashore. First of all, lady mine, there are no chief clerks on the seashore, and second, you and I can't possible get to be a chief clerk. For, to take an example, suppose I apply, I show up--thus and so, as a chief clerk, say, sort of...and protect me from my enemy...and they'll tell you, my lady, say, sort of...there are lots of chief clerks, and here you're not at some émigrée Falbala's, where you learned good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example. Good behavior, my lady, means sitting at home, respecting your father, and not thinking of any little suitors before it's time. Little suitors, my lady, will be found in due time! So there! Of course, one must indisputably have certain talents, to wit: playing the piano on occasion, speaking French, some history, geography, catechism, and arithmetic--so there!--but not more. Also cooking; cooking should unfailingly be part of every well-behaved girl's knowledge!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double
“The very fact of their fury shows how much Plato threatens what is dear and intimate to them. They are little able to defend their experience, which had seemed unquestionable until questioned, and it is most resistant to cool analysis. Yet if a student can- and this is most difficult and unusual- draw back, get acritical distance on what he clings to, come to doubt the ultimate value of what he loves, he has taken the first and most difficult step toward the philosophic conversion. Indignation is the soul's defence against against the wound of doubt about its own; it reorders the cosmos to support the justice of its cause. It justifies putting Socrates to death. Recognizing indignation for what it constitutes knowledge of the soul, and thus an experience more philosophic than the study of mathematics”
― Allan Bloom, quote from The Closing of the American Mind
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