Chris Wooding · 292 pages
Rating: (3.5K votes)
“Devil-boy Jack: "A higher power than ours directs us against the wych-kin. There is no turning back."
Thaniel Fox: "There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of."
Devil-boy Jack: "I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“This was London, and you either held on, or fell by the walkside like that fellow had.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“She was quite maniac when I met her. I scared her, maybe.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“Mad she may be, or possessed; or maybe only scared out of her wits.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“She felt like a proper lady, she did.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“I want ... something other than what I know. She is so strange to me, you see? I think that her life must have been very different from mine (...) I want to know what that is like.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“Suddenly it was if she was merely a brain, being transported inside the skull of some hideous fleshy machine, a piece of living cargo in someone else's body.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“He let the smoke drift around the inside of his mouth, trying to relax, but nothing could so easily dispel the unquiet that he felt.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“A strange irony, Crott reflected, that the most base and lowly of London folk were the most honour-bound of all, and that the value of honour diminished in direct proportion to the heights of society a man climbed to.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“Darkness, terrible cold darkness, the salty depths of the deepest oceans where no light warmed the rocks and the weight of the black water would crush a man like a grape.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“They would erect great temples, and cities built of bone and sinew, and their foulness would spread like a cancer until finally, a hundred years from now, Mother Earth would be theirs.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“Was it possible that he liked the world the way it was?”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
“Pray, do not speak to me of weather Not sun, not cloud, not of the places Where storms are born I would not know of wind shivering the heather Nor sleet, nor rain, nor of ancient traces On stone grey and worn Pray, do not regale the troubles of ill health Not self, not kin, not of the old woman At the road’s end I will spare no time nor in mercy yield wealth Nor thought, nor feeling, nor shrouds woven To tempt luck’s send Pray, tell me of deep chasms crossed Not left, not turned, not of the betrayals Breeding like worms I would you cry out your rage ’gainst what is lost Now strong, now to weep, now to make fist and rail On earth so firm Pray, sing loud the wretched glories of love Now pain, now drunken, now torn from all reason In laughter and tears I would you bargain with the fey gods above Nor care, nor cost, nor turn of season To wintry fears Sing to me this and I will find you unflinching Now knowing, now seeing, now in the face Of the howling storm Sing your life as if a life without ending And your love, sun’s bright fire, on its celestial pace To where truth is born Pray, An End to Inconsequential Things Baedisk of Nathilog”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen
“So dark. Endless darkness, eternal. It was not the absence of light that was so frightening as the absence of thought, of knowledge, of comprehension. Our lives, the lives of the living will go on. The sun shines, the moons rise, we will laugh and talk, and he will know nothing, feel nothing. Nothing.
So final. It will come to us all. It will come to me.”
― Margaret Weis, quote from The Soulforge
“Shall I tell you why young men love war? . . . In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer. . . . Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”
― Mary Doria Russell, quote from A Thread of Grace
“Love was the breaking and healing of hearts. Love was the misunderstood. Love was faith; love was the promise of now that became hope for the future. Love was a rhythm, a resonance, a reverberation. Love was awkward and foolish, it was aggressive and simple, possessed of so many indefinable qualities that it could never be conveyed in language. Love was being.”
― R.J. Ellory, quote from A Quiet Belief in Angels
“I'm not what they expect. About once a year I get discovered, get called a diamond in the rough.”
― Michael Dorris, quote from A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
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