Quotes from The Gospel of Loki

Joanne Harris ·  302 pages

Rating: (6.8K votes)


“After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith; start a war; change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster; topple walls; scale mountains - hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being the King of the gods; because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Change isn't always comfortable, but it is a fact of life.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“A demon, if you prefer the term; although to be honest, the difference between god and a demon is really only a matter of perspective.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Work. Like pain, I sensed that this was an experience I would want to avoid as often as possible.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki



“Loki, that's me. Loki, the Light-Bringer, the misunderstood, the elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“They tell you revenge isn't worth it. I say there's nothing finer.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
No one's immune to bribery.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Always look on the bright side. And if there is no bright side?
Look away.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki



“There were a few compensations to having corporeal Aspect. Food (jam tarts were my favourites); drink (mostly wine and mead); setting things on fire; sex (although I was still extremely confused by all the taboos surrounding this - no animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons - frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had sex at all, with so many rules against it).”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“From this I think we can all conclude that the cow was the primary instigator of everything that followed - war, Tribulation, the End of the Worlds. Lesson One: never trust a rumiant.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Most problems can be solved through cake.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Better a king in the gutter,' he said, 'than a slave in an emperor's place”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“There's good news and slightly less good news.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki



“And Odin should have known from the first that perfect Order does not bend; it simply stands until it breaks, which is why it rarely survives for any meaningful length of time.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Clever folk aren’t popular, by and large. They arouse suspicion. They don’t fit in.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“I don’t pretend to know much about love, but that’s how great love comes to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Well, that’s history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue, and for the most part written by folk who weren’t even there.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“I'm sorry. You went too far.'
Lovely. What an epitaph.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki



“I'm only keeping in touch with you for the sake of the children. Way to look after our son, by the way. I let you have him for the weekend and before I know it he's chained underground, awaiting Last Times and stinking of mead.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Even the damned can dream - infact, it's part of their torment. To escape, even for a second or two, to forget reality and drift, only to be yanked back into the waking world like a fish caught on a line... Yes. In some ways that's even worse than to have no relief at all. That second of two, on awakening, when anything still seems possible”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“All words have power, of course, but names are the most potent of all, which is why the gods had so many.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Not that a promise means much to a demon - or a god.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“And when you fall from that parapet,the sound you'll be hearing as you go down will be me,laughing my head off.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki



“When the going gets tough, choose your cliché.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“Thor had always been popular. Big and strong and good-natured and about as bright as your average Labrador,”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“a man often meets his destiny running to avoid it,”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


“That's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes. . . .

After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith, start a war, change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster, topple walls, scale mountains--Hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Gospel of Loki


About the author

Joanne Harris
Born place: in Barnsley, The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“A person has all sorts of lags built into him Kesey is saying. Once the most basic is the sensory lag the lag between the time your senses receive something and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it takes if you are the most alert person alive and most people are a lot slower than that.... You can't go any faster than that... We are all doomed to spend the rest of our lives watching a movies of our lives - we are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1 30th of a second ago. We think we are in the present but we aren't. The present we know is only a movies of the past and we will really never be able to control the present through ordinary means.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test


“It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole. In a later period this impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and even minor ethical lapses, among public officials; here, in April of 1959, it took the form of a blazing patriotic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into space. In either case, the animal's fundamental concern remained the same: the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided with the correct feelings! One might regard this animal as the consummate hypocritical Victorian gent. Sentiments that one scarcely gives a second thought to in one's private life are nevertheless insisted upon in all public utterances. (And this grave gent lives on in excellent health.)”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Right Stuff


“It was amazing to Knox that they all knew, instinctively, how to build implements of pain. It was something even shadows knew how to do at a young age, knowledge somehow dredged up from the brutal depths of their imagination, this ability to deal harm to one another.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Wool Omnibus


“Yeah, let’s get John here. That way we can stall for a while longer. We can keep on doing nothing for just a little while longer.”
Albert said, “Take it easy, Howard.”
“Take it easy?” Howard jumped to his feet. “Yeah? Where were you last night, Albert? Huh? Because I didn’t see you out there on the street listening to kids screaming, seeing kids running around hurt and scared and choking, and Edilio and Orc struggling, and Dekka hacking up her lungs and Jack crying and…
“You know who couldn’t even take it?” Howard raged. “You know who couldn’t even take what was happening? Orc. Orc, who’s not scared of anything. Orc, who everyone thinks is some kind of monster. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t…but he did. And where were you, Albert? Counting your money? How about you, Astrid? Praying to Jesus?”
Astrid’s throat tightened. She couldn’t breathe. For a moment panic threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to run from the room, run away and never look back.
Edilio got to his feet and put an arm around Howard. Howard allowed it, and then he did something Astrid never thought she would see. Howard buried his face in Edilio’s shoulder and cried, racking sobs.
“We’re falling apart,” Astrid whispered for herself alone.
But there was no easy escape. Everything Howard had said was true. She could see the truth reflected in Albert’s stunned expression. The two of them, the smart ones, the clever ones, the great defenders of truth and fairness and justice, had done nothing while others had worked themselves to exhaustion.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Lies


“Sometimes while you wait for what you think is better," Philomene said, "what is good enough slips away.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


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