Daniel Wallace > Quotes

“A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“When a man's stories are remembered, then he is immortal.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.”
― Daniel Wallace

“Dreams are what keep a man going.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“The ending is always a surprise.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“You’re not necessarily supposed to believe it…You’re just supposed to believe in it.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true. ”
― Daniel Wallace

“This is what is meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They're not last words but passwords, and as soon as they're spoken you can go.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“He believed the stars were wishes, and that one day they would all come true.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“Remembering a man's stories makes him immortal.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“In the land of the dying, sentences go unfinished, you know how they're going to end.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“We all have stories, just as you do. Ways in which he touched us, helped us, gave us money, sold it to us wholesale. Lots of stories, big and small. They all add up. Over a lifetime it all adds up. That's why we're here, William. We're a a part of him, who he is, just as he is a part of us. You still don't understand, do you?"
I didn't. But as I stared at the man and he stared back at me, in my father's dream I remembered where we'd met before.
"And what did my father do for you?" I asked him, and the old man smiled.
"He made me laugh," he said.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“In a moment, everything can change and in a moment, you can change everything.”
― Daniel Wallace

“Magic is dangerous: it's neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it can be both a blessing and a curse. It takes strength, the strength of a man, to make the magic his own, to make it serve him, and not the other way around.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that’s true. What they don’t tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.”
― daniel wallace

“People were so cheap there... they ate beans to save on bubble bath.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“There are those rare people who function like human magnets, who are individually so attractive – or repellent, depending on the situation – that a considerable amount more seems to happen to them, and likewise, their presence in a certain place makes more seem to happen around them. They’re magical people. They have special power.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Watermelon King

“How can the world be seen at such speeds? Where do people need to go so badly they can't realize what is already here, outside the car window?”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“How do you know when it's me?"
"Your footsteps are apologetic?"
"What does that mean?"
She turned, smiling wiping her hands on her long, black skirt. "It doesn't mean anything," she said. "Everybody else here just does what they want to do and doesn't think twice about it. But you're never sure.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“You're a good man," Fang said. "You're the last good man in this whole town. All the good that could be squeezed out of this forsaken place was used to make you. That's why you're so small, my friend: there just wasn't that much left." Fang laughed. "and that's why you can see us, you know, and nobody else can. You see everybody, even that lumberjack.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“The day Edward Bloom was born, it rained.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“Being alone was lonely, but there was an even greater loneliness sometimes when he was surrounded by a lot of other people who were constantly making demands of him. He needed a break. C”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“You lie to her, you lie to me, you lie to yourself. Blind girl blind you.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“Still,” he says, “if I shared my doubts with you, about God and love and life and death, that’s all you’d have: a bunch of doubts. But now, see, you’ve got all these great jokes.” “They’re”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“He thought she hung the moon. He actually believed this from time to time. He believed the moon wouldn’t have been there but that she’d hung it. He believed the stars were wishes, and that one day they would all come true. For her, his daughter. He had told her this when she was little to make her happy, and now that he was old he believed it, because it made him happy and because he was so very old. He”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“What is it you say now, what peace is there to be made in the last minutes of the last day that will mark the before and after of your life until then, the day that will change everything for both of you, the living and the dead?”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“I look into his gray-blue dying eyes. We’re staring at each other, showing each other our last looks, the faces we’ll take with us into eternity, and I’m thinking how I wish I knew him better, how I wish we’d had a life together, wishing my father wasn’t such a complete and utter goddamn mystery to me...”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

“Mine was a crazy dream- but what dream isn't crazy? Can a dream be a dream and be sensible? No. A sensible dream is a plan. Men like us dream, and our dreams come true because we believe in ourselves.”
― Daniel Wallace, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

“My father is on the roof. This is how I remember him sometimes. Well-dressed in a dark suit and shiny, slippery shoes, he is looking left, looking right, looking as far as his eyes will travel. Then, looking down, he sees me, and just as he begins to fall he smiles, and winks. All the way down he's looking at me–smiling, mysterious, mythic, an unknown quantity: my dad.”
― Daniel Wallace, Big Fish