“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
“That's another thing that pisses me off about that Michelangelo statue of me in Florence. He's got me standing there uncircumcised! Who the fuck did he think I was?”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows
“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from Paradise
“All I ever wanted, nira I expected: Nonette, upon whom my life pivots.
The name I give my fire when I lay down, defenseless before its majestic awfulness.
A little no, a little negation. A French girly pout, the syllables for which have been found at last.
All my hurt dug up, exposed for dissection in the glaring light, and finally melted away by the loving caresses of her yielding thighs.
And the girl who took such simple job in this terrible duty.
Nonette.”
― Julian Darius, quote from Nira/Sussa
“Alle waren jetzt damit beschäftigt, den Tisch zu decken, und niemand außer ihr bemerkte, was das Baby tat. Es drückte seine Lippen in das Innere von Avrams Hand, blökte ein sanftes und angenehmes Ba-ba-ba und genoss mit seinem ganzen Sein den Klang und das Kitzeln, das es wohl in den Lippen spürte. Auch in Oras Hals und Mund schwebte ein anregendes Summen, ihre Lippen spürten es auch, und in ihr murmelte es stimmlos ba-ba-ba.”
― David Grossman, quote from To the End of the Land
“We are the sum of our lives and not simply pieces of them. We are the whole of our time in this world.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bloodfire Quest
BookQuoters 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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