Quotes from To Green Angel Tower

Tad Williams ·  1083 pages

Rating: (27.6K votes)


“A man who will not listen carefully to advice honestly given is a fool. Of course, a man who blindly takes any advice he receives is a bigger fool.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old god who had lost His grip.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“Fight and live, fight and die, God waits for all.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind... but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless—except the one we’re fighting now?”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower



“Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“He shouldn't have had to die."

"Nobody should have to die," Miriamele said slowly. "Especially while they're still alive.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


“Welcome, Simon, to the world of those who are every day condemned to thinking and wondering and never ever knowing with certainness.”
― Tad Williams, quote from To Green Angel Tower


About the author

Tad Williams
Born place: in San Jose, California, The United States
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Popular quotes

“After dinner Karamenaios would drop in. We had about fifty words with which to make lingual currency. We didn't even need that many, as I soon discovered. There are a thousand ways of talking and words don't help if the spirit is absent. Karamenaios and I were eager to talk. lt made little difference to me whether we talked about the war or about knives and forks. Sometimes we discovered that a word or phrase which we had been using for days, he in English or I in Greek, meant something entirely different than we had thought it to mean. It made no difference. We understood one another even with the wrong words. I could learn five new words in an evening and forget six or eight during my sleep. The important thing was the warm handclasp, the light in the eyes, the grapes which we devoured in common, the glass we raised to our lips in sign of friendship. Now and then I would get excited and, using a melange of English, Greek, German, French, Choctaw, Eskimo, Swahili or any other tongue I felt would serve the purpose, using the chair, the table, the spoon, the lamp, the bread knife, I would enact for him a fragment of my life in New York, Paris, London, Chula Vista, Canarsie, Hackensack or in some place I had never been or some place I had been in a dream or when lying asleep on the operating table. Sometimes I felt so good, so versatile and acrobatic, that I would stand on the table and sing in some unknown language or hop from the table to the commode and from the commode to the staircase or swing from the rafters, anything to entertain him, keep him amused, make him roll from side to side with laughter. I was considered an old man in the village because of my bald pate and fringe of white hair. Nobody had ever seen an old man cut up the way I did. "The old man is going for a swim," they would say. "The old man is taking the boat out." Always "the old man." If a storm came up and they knew I was out in the middle of the pond they would send someone out to see that "the old man" got in safely. If I decided to take a jaunt through the hills Karamenaios would offer to accompany me so that no harm would come to me. If I got stranded somewhere I had only to announce that I was an American and at once a dozen hands were ready to help me.”
― Henry Miller, quote from The Colossus of Maroussi


“At the beginning of her life, she will feel your love. At the end of her life, you will be on her mind. And what happens in between is up to you. Love her extraordinarily. This is the heart of great fathering.”
― quote from Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know


“El error de los hombres superiores es gastar los años de su juventud en hacerse dignos de la estimación de los demás.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin


“The pulsations of the arteries along my fingers pressing across hers, told her what was passing within me:
she look’d down—a silence of some moments followed.”
― Laurence Sterne, quote from A Sentimental Journey


“Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line
Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line
I ain't got no ticket please let me ride the blinds”
― August Wilson, quote from Fences


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