“But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?"
"Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“It doesn't matter. I'm not asking forever of you...just let me love you now.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Learn to be - gentle with them. Learn that... that gentleness isn't... weakness.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Yes, she made me love her. But she didn't mean to. She took by giving... and that makes all the difference.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become doctors? Except for the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the blood and the pain.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Most people simply aren’t unhappy enough with the known to trade it for the unknown”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don't we? We have to go on looking for justice... and settling for revenge.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“How time slips past, masked in the rhythm of the days!”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“[S]omehow, without his being aware of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of wonder had turned to vinegar.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“You've made her so beautiful; when she's come to take your life away.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares...heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in the frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled.”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Things change all the time; but how much of it is real? Does any choice any of us ever makes, no matter how important it seems, really cause a ripple in the greater scheme of things?”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
“Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn’t act, it allows. And that’s what gives it so much power.” He”
― Joan D. Vinge, quote from The Snow Queen
Joan D. Vinge
Born place: in Baltimore, Maryland, The United States
Born date April 2, 1948
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“Kristin comes down the stairs, and the pressure on my chest snaps. I take a moment to turn away, inhaling deeply, blinking away tears. She sets the plate on a table behind the couch, and half tiptoes back up the stairs.
Thank god. I don’t think I could have handled maternal attention right this second. My body feels like it’s on a hair trigger.
I need to get it together. This is why people avoid me. Someone asks if I want a drink and I have a panic attack.
“You’re okay.” Declan is beside me, and his voice is low and soft, the way it was in the foyer. He’s so hard all the time, and that softness takes me by surprise. I blink up at him.
“You’re okay,” he says again.
I like that, how he’s so sure. Not Are you okay? No question about it.
You’re okay.
He lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “But if you’re going to lose it, this is a pretty safe place to fall apart.” He takes two cookies from the plate, then holds one out to me. “Here. Eat your feelings.”
I’m about to turn him down, but then I look at the cookie. I was expecting something basic, like sugar or chocolate chip. This looks like a miniature pie, and sugar glistens across the top. “What . . . is that?”
“Pecan pie cookies,” says Rev. He’s taken about five of them, and I think he might have shoved two in his mouth at once. “I could live on them for days.”
I take the one Declan offered and nibble a bit from the side. It is awesome.
I peer up at him sideways. “How did you know?”
He hesitates, but he doesn’t ask me what I mean. “I know the signs.”
“I’m going to get some sodas,” Rev says slowly, deliberately. “I’m going to bring you one. Blink once if that’s okay.”
I smile, but it feels watery around the edges. He’s teasing me, but it’s gentle teasing. Friendly. I blink once.
This is okay. I’m okay. Declan was right.
“Take it out on the punching bag,” calls Rev. “That’s what I do.”
My eyes go wide. “Really?”
“Do whatever you want,” says Declan. “As soon as we do anything meaningful, the baby will wake up.”
Rev returns with three sodas. “We’re doing something meaningful right now.”
“We are?” I say.
He meets my eyes. “Every moment is meaningful.”
The words could be cheesy—should be cheesy, in fact—but he says them with enough weight that I know he means them. I think of The Dark and all our talk of paths and loss and guilt.
Declan sighs and pops the cap on his soda. “This is where Rev starts to freak people out.”
“No,” I say, feeling like this afternoon could not be more surreal. Something about Rev’s statement steals some of my earlier guilt, to think that being here could carry as much weight as paying respects to my mother. I wish I knew how to tell whether this is a path I’m supposed to be on. “No, I like it. Can I really punch the bag?”
Rev shrugs and takes a sip of his soda. “It’s either that or we can break out the Play-Doh”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Alkimist
“Indeed, the idea that doubt can be heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne's old age, is one of the keys to our century. A touchstone of modernity itself.”
― Robert Hughes, quote from The Shock of the New
“Even Scientific American entered the fray with an article proposing that the person portrayed in the famous Martin Droeshout engraving might actually be--I weep to say it--Elizabeth I.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Shakespeare: The World as Stage
“„– Będę czujny – westchnął. – Ale nie sądzę, żeby twój wytrawny gracz był w stanie mnie zaskoczyć. Nie po tym, co ja tu przeszedłem. Rzucili się na mnie szpiedzy, opadły wymierające gady i gronostaje. Nakarmiono mnie nie istniejącym kawiorem. Nie gustujące w mężczyznach nimfomanki podawały w wątpliwość moją męskość, groziły gwałtem na jeżu, straszyły ciążą, ba, nawet orgazmem, i to takim, któremu nie towarzyszą rytualne ruchy. Brrr...
- Piłeś?”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Time of Contempt
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