Tad Williams · 815 pages
Rating: (16.1K votes)
“Of all the songs we Zida'ya sing," she (Aditu) murmured, "the closest to our hearts are those which tell of things lost."
"Perhaps that is because none of us can show something's value until it is gone," said Josua.”
“But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat.”
“And you, a king’s daughter, who willingly gave herself to me—who brought me to her bed? Are you so high and pure?” She”
“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.”
“That is what I hate about ruling and royalty, Simon. It is living, breathing people with whom a prince plays the games of statecraft.”
“Why is it that men think they are brave and women are weak? Women see more blood and pain than men ever do, unless men are fighting - and that is foolish blood.”
“We get no credit for being sane, do we? I get no credit. Even from me. From myself. I hold it together and hold it together and I make it another day, another year, and there’s no reward. Nothing great about me being normal. About not being crazy.” He frowned. “Then you have one bad day, and you worry for yourself, you know? It only takes one.”
“Your heart beats so strong, I feel it against my chest. You make mine want to catch up, to match the rhythm.”
“We tried not to look at each other for a minute, smiling each time we did. Except for the tiny scars on her wrists, she seemed perfect to me, and so I loved the scars, because they meant that I could save her from something, and save myself”
“Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification. When we began working on this book, the poster boy for "tenacious clinging to a discredited belief" was George W. Bush. Bush was wrong in his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong in claiming that Saddam was linked with Al Qaeda, he was wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing joyfully in the streets to receive the American soldiers, he was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly, he was wrong in his gross underestimate of the financial cost of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
“They’re measurements which express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant,” he says. “There are three of them. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense.”
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