“Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“Now I end my death song. I give my farewell to mountain and sky. It has been good to be alive.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“Fear goes where it is invited.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“It was strange how the future seemed tied inseparably to the past, so that both revolved through the present, like a great wheel...”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“For all the things we've seen... my goodness, the world still has more to show us, doesn't it?”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night. . . .”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: ‘what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“well-armed and fierce-faced, threatening despite their small stature. Simon stared at the trolls. The trolls stared at Simon. “They’ve all heard of ye, Simon,” Haestan boomed; the three riders looked up, startled by his loud voice, “—but no one’s hardly seen ye yet.” The trolls looked the tall guardsman up and down in alarm, then clucked at their mounts and rode on hurriedly, disappearing around the mountain face. “Gave them some gossip,” Haestan chuckled. “Binabik told me about his home,” Simon said, “but it was hard to understand what he was saying. Things are never quite what you think they’re going to be, are they?” “Only th’ good Lord Usires knows all answers,” Haestan nodded. “Now, if y’would see y’r small friend, we’d best move on. Walk careful now—and not so close t’edge, there.” • • • They made their way slowly down the looping path, which alternately narrowed and widened as it traversed the mountainside. The sun was high overhead, but hidden in a nest of soot-colored clouds, and a biting wind swooped along Mintahoq’s face. The mountaintop above was white-blanketed in ice, like the high peaks across the valley, but at this lower height the snow had fallen more patchily. Some wide drifts lay across the path, and others nestled among”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“You show her respect. That is a good thing,” he said. “Too often it is that men think those who serve are doing it from inferiorness or weakness.”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“In a hole, in a hole.” Skodi piped, “. . . in the ground, in a hole, where the wet-nosed mole sings a song of cold stone, and of mud and gray bone, a quiet, small song all the chill, dark night long as he digs in the deep, where the white worms creep, and the dead all sleep, with their eyes full of earth where the beetles give birth, laying little white eggs, and their brittle black legs go scrape, scrape, scrape, and the dark, like a cape, covers all just the same, darkness hiding their shame as it covered their names, the names of the dead, all gone, all fled, empty winds, empty heads, Above grass grows on stone, fields lie fallow, unsown all is gone that they’ve known so they wail in the deep, crying out in their sleep, without eyes, still they weep, calling out for what’s lost, in the darkness they toss, under pitweed and moss in the deeps of the grave, neither master or slave, has now feature or fame, needs knowledge or name, but they long to come back, and they stare through the cracks at the dim sun above, and they curse cruel love, and the peace lost in life, think of worry and strife, ruined child or wife, all the troubles that burned, dreadful lessons unlearned, still they long to return, to return, to return, they long to return. Return! In a hole, in the ground, under old barrow-mound, where skin, bone, and blood turn to jelly-soft mud, and the rotting world sings . . .”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
Tad Williams
Born place: in San Jose, California, The United States
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“What she said was “I want a man who stays out of my way.”
― Gail Carriger, quote from Waistcoats & Weaponry
“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, quote from The Velveteen Rabbit
“You swear you’ll never become your parents. You listen to edgy music, you dress young and hip, you have sex standing up and on kitchen tables, you say “fuck” and “shit” a lot, and then one day, without warning, their words emerge from your mouth like long-dormant sleeper agents suddenly activated. You’re still young enough to hear these words through the ears of the teenager sitting beside you, and you realize how pitiful and ultimately futile your efforts will be, a few measly sandbags against the tidal wave of genetic destiny.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from How To Talk To A Widower
“I thought I’d been in love before. I thought I knew what love was. I thought I understood its curves, its angles, its shape. But then, I kissed you.” “And?” I swallowed hard. “And I realized you were the first and only thing that ever made my heartbeats come to life.”
― Brittainy C. Cherry, quote from The Gravity of Us
“To the three men in gray coats and golden buttons just cresting the hill, the pantomime was a strange one. The speck of green merged with the gray, and the black with the flash of red, as they shot off toward north.”
― Katherine Rundell, quote from The Wolf Wilder
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