“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Has everyone gone mad?”
“Everyone was mad already, my lady,” Cadrach said with a strange, sorrowful smile. “It is merely that the times have brought it out in them.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“If you wish to carry a hungry weasel in your pocket, it is your choice.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“When it falls on your head, then you are knowing it is a rock.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“But that is enough of such worrying. The river is waiting, and our hearts must be light, so we can faster travel.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“If your enemy comes to speak bearing a sword, open your door to him and speak, but keep your own sword at hand. If he comes to you empty-handed, greet him the same way. But if he comes to you bearing gifts, stand on your walls and cast stones down on him.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Piercing My Hearte there is A Golden Dagger; That is God
Piercing God's Hearte there is a Golden Needle; That is me”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“A man whose wisdom is true does not sit in waiting for the world to come at him piece by piece for proving its existence!”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Do you listen to the wolves, Seoman?” Jiriki asked. “It’s hard n-not to.” “They sing such fierce songs.” The Sitha shook his head. “They are like your mortal kind. They sing of where they have been, and what they have seen and scented. They tell each other where the elk are running, and who has taken whom to mate, but mostly they are merely crying ‘I am! Here I am!’ ”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“He led them around the base of a great fallen tree whose exposed roots resembled more than anything else a huge broom - a broom that would have fired the imagination of Rachel the Dragon toward heroic, legendary feats of sweeping.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“But remember this lesson, Simon, one fit for kings... or the sons of kings. Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“No existe lo que se llama "falta de temor", Simón, a menos que un hombre esté loco.
Doctor Morgenes”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“¡Un hombre que posee sabiduría no se sienta a esperar que el mundo aparezca ante él pedazo a pedazo para probar su existencia!
Binabik”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Los valientes y los locos a menudo viven en la misma cueva, decimos nosotros.
Binabik”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Cuando te cae en la cabeza, entonces te das cuenta de que es una piedra.
Binabik”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Era un simple punto brillante en la horrorosa tormenta..., pero incluso un brillo solitario puede devolver sano y salvo a un viajero a su casa.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“A veces ser el que ostenta el mando significa poseer menos libertad que la que tiene el menor de los siervos.
Jarnauga”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“They reached the eastern outskirts of the Dimmerskog on the afternoon of the next day. Although the forest was covered in a thick blanket of white snow, it nevertheless seemed, as Binabik had named it, a place of shadows. The company did not pass beneath its eaves, and might have chosen not to even had their path lain that way, so thick with foreboding was the wood’s atmosphere. The trees, despite their size—and some of them were huge indeed—seemed dwarfish and twisted, as though they squirmed bitterly beneath their burden of needled branches and snow. The open spaces between the contorted trunks seemed to bend away crazily like tunnels dug by some huge and drunken mole, leading at last to dangerous, secretive depths. Passing in near silence, his horse’s hooves crunching softly in the snow, Simon imagined following the gaping pathways into the bark-pillared, white-roofed halls of Dimmerskog, coming at last to—who could guess? Perhaps to the dark, malicious heart of the forest, a place where the trees breathed together and passed endless rumors with the scaly rub of branch on branch, or the malicious exhalation of wind through twigs and frozen leaves. They camped that night in the open again, even though the Dimmerskog crouched only a short distance away like a sleeping animal. None of them wanted to spend a night beneath the forest’s branches—especially Sludig, who had been raised on stories of the ghastly things that stalked the wood’s pale corridors. The Sithi did not seem to care, but Jiriki spent part of the evening oiling his dark witchwood sword. Again the company huddled around a naked fire, and the east wind razored past them all the long evening, sending great powdery spouts of snow whirling all around, and sporting among the Dimmerskog’s upper reaches. When they lay down that night to sleep it was to the sound of the forest creaking, and the wind-ridden branches sawing one against the other.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“When you were old, did your memories crowd out your other thoughts? Or did you lose them—your childhood, your hated enemies, your friends?”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort. The”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.” More”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“In the midst of such industry, gawky Simon was the fabled grasshopper in the nest of ants. He knew he would never amount to much: many people had told him so, and nearly all of them were older—and presumably wiser—than he. At an age when other boys were clamoring for the responsibilities of manhood, Simon was still a muddler and a meanderer. No matter what task he was given to do, his attention soon wandered, and he would be dreaming of battles, and giants, and sea voyages on tall, shining ships ... and somehow, things would get broken, or lost, or done wrong.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“A wolf is clever-clever-clever, and they are as faithful as a debt unpaid.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“There’s sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That’s the way it’s meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“As he slipped away he heard his own cradled heartbeat, muffled though it was in the tickling wool of exhaustion.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
Tad Williams
Born place: in San Jose, California, The United States
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“Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.”
― Rob Bell, quote from Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality
“That’s how it is with infants. The minute the pain’s gone, so are the tears. If more people would do that, the world would be a happier place.”
― Susan Wiggs, quote from Just Breathe
“Jeeves," I said. "A rummy communication has arrived. From Mr. Glossop."
"Indeed, sir?"
"I will read it to you. Handed in at Upper Bleaching. Message runs as follows:
When you come tomorrow, bring my football boots. Also, if humanly possible, Irish water-spaniel. Urgent. Regards. Tuppy.
"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
"As I interpret the document, sir, Mr. Glossop wishes you, when you come tomorrow, to bring his football boots. Also, if humanly possible, an Irish water-spaniel. He hints that the matter is urgent, and sends his regards."
"Yes, that is how I read it. But why football boots?"
"Perhaps Mr. Glossop wishes to play football, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, quote from Very Good, Jeeves!
“There was a time—the year after leaving, even five years after when this homely street, with its old-fashioned high crown, its sidewalk blocks tugged up and down by maple roots, its retaining walls of sandstone and railings of painted iron and two-family brickfront houses whose siding imitates gray rocks, excited Rabbit with the magic of his own existence. These mundane surfaces had given witness to his life; this cup had held his blood; here the universe had centered, each downtwirling maple seed of more account than galaxies. No more. Jackson Road seems an ordinary street anywhere. Millions of such American streets hold millions of lives, and let them sift through, and neither notice nor mourn, and fall into decay, and do not even mourn their own passing but instead grimace at the wrecking ball with the same gaunt facades that have outweathered all their winters. However steadily Mom communes with these maples—the branches’ misty snake-shapes as inflexibly fixed in these two windows as the leading of stained glass—they will not hold back her fate by the space of a breath; nor, if they are cut down tomorrow to widen Jackson Road at last, will her staring, that planted them within herself, halt their vanishing. And the wash of new light will extinguish even her memory of them. Time is our element, not a mistaken invader. How stupid, it has taken him thirty-six years to begin to believe that.”
― John Updike, quote from Rabbit Redux
“Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.”
― Julie Otsuka, quote from When the Emperor Was Divine
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The Annotated AliceBookQuoters 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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