“Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Not bad in short, though the last one [understanding the language of animals], isn't half as useful as you might expect, since when all's said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: a) the endless hunt for food, b) finding a warm bush to sleep in the evening, and c) the sporadic satisfication of certain glands. (Many would argue that the language of human kind boils down to this too)”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."
I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry."
"Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes."
"What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?"
"More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“The Evasive Cartwheel ™ © etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III— you can just see me in the background of The Dedication of the Royal Family before Ra, wheeling out of sight behind the pharaoh.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“En pleine bagarre, vous vous en tenez au strict nécessaire, à savoir étriper l’adversaire en faisant en sorte que ce dernier ne vous arrache pas les bras pour vous assommer avec.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Ich für meinen Teil denke während einer Verfolgungsjagd gern nach. Keiner stört einen, man ist allein und all die Problemchen werden bedeutungslos. Das wichtigste Thema heißt natürlich: "Wie bleibe ich am Leben?", aber auch andere Dinge sieht man in neuem Licht, was zu ganz neuen und manchmal überraschenden Erkenntnissen führt.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
“Wenn man schon eines grässlichen Todes sterben muss, sollte man wenigstens einen stilvollen Abgang hinlegen.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Ring of Solomon
Jonathan Stroud
Born place: in Bedford, The United Kingdom
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“We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.”
― Robert Fulghum, quote from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“And you are the girl's bitch, forever.”
― Alison Goodman, quote from Eona: The Last Dragoneye
“If not for me being stoned and clinging to a taco, it would have been terribly romantic.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Succubus on Top
“I did note this, and set it down as yet one more of life’s injustices: that the man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. My creditors would come to me most graciously, diffident, if not downright apologetic, for asking what was theirs. It was as if I would be doing them a great, unlooked for kindness if only I would pay them a trifling sum on my outstanding debts. I would give them tea, and polite conversation, and, even when my answer to their just entreaty had to be a regretful, “Nothing, sir, ” my mortification was always entirely self-inflicted, for their civility never failed”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from March
“We watched the swimmers and sunbathers and I thought about this. Had I faced all the facts? It seemed like I had, but actually, you never know, just by remembering, how many facts you were allowed to have faced. Your own endurance might be a pleasant fiction allowed you by others who've really faced the facts. The eerie feeling this thought gave me made me shiver in the hot wind.”
― Jane Smiley, quote from A Thousand Acres
Mortal Enchantment
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