Josiah Bancroft > Quotes

“Senlin did not believe in that sort of love: sudden and selfish and insatiable. Love, as the poets so often painted it, was just bald lust wearing a pompous wig. He believed true love was more like an education: it was deep and subtle and never complete.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“We are, each of us, a multitude. I am not the man I was this morning, nor the man of yesterday. I am a throng of myself queued through time. We are, gentle reader, each a crowd within a crowd.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“Even beauty diminishes with study. It is better to glance than gawk.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“We shouldn't have to go around congratulating each other for behaving with basic human dignity.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“It is easier to accept who you’ve become than to recollect who you were.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“Never let a rigid itinerary discourage you from an unexpected adventure.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“The man or woman who is rarely lost, rarely discovers anything new.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“I’m suspicious of people who are certain.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“Learning starts with failure.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“All I know is that, at the end of the day, dreams don't matter, but neither does regret. We aren't what we want or wish for. We are only what we do.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“The rich “learn lessons.” The poor commit crimes. “Mistakes” are generally considered a mark of the middle class.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“History is a love letter to tyrants written in the blood of the overrun, the forgotten, the expunged!”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“It is not cynical to admit that the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added and removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and vision and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice!”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“Suits me. I’d rather be a nothing at the center of everything than a puffed-up somebody at the edge of it all.” She said this in her usual unguarded way. And without meaning to, she had described him exactly: a puffed-up somebody at the edge of it all.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“Mirrors are not so honest as one might think. They can be mugged at, bargained with, and one can always ferret out a flattering angle. Really, there is nothing like the expression of a long-lost friend to reflect the honest state of your affairs.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“I’m counting on greed and egotism, forces that are as reliable as gravity”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“My sense of being, my identity, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't reside in my parts. It lives in my past, and in the continuity of my present thoughts, and in my hopes for the future. I'm more afraid of losing a memory than a limb.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“You’ve made it impossible for me to read a book in peace. When you’re not here, I just gaze at the words until they tumble off the page into a puddle in my lap. Instead of reading, I sit there and review the hours of the day I spent in your company, and I am more charmed by that story than anything the author has scribbled down. I have never been lonely in my life, but you have made me lonely. When you are gone, I am a moping ruin. I thought I understood the world fairly well. But you have made it all mysterious again. And it’s unnerving and frightening and wonderful, and I want it to continue. I want all your mysteries.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“The universe breathes in ragged breaths. The body dies. The fungus grows. The loam spreads. The tree roots. The forest burns. The cloud bursts. The flood drowns. The alluvium feeds the fields. In, out. In, out. There is no stasis, no stillness. The source of all misery lies in our insistence that tomorrow be like today. But if it were, if it ever were, it would spell the end of everything.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“Sometimes a wheel squeaks not because it is faulty but because it bears the most weight.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“The mob does two things well: nothing and revolution.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“The tradition among libraries of boasting about the number of volumes in their collection is well established, but surely, it is not aggregation that makes a library; it is dissemination. Perhaps libraries should bang on about how many volumes are on loan, are presently off crowding nightstands, and circulating through piles on the mantel, and weighing down purses. Yes, it is somewhat vexing to thread through the stacks of a library, only to discover an absence rather than the sought-after volume, but once the ire subsides, doesn’t one feel a sense of community? The gaps in a library are like footprints in the sand; they show us where others have gone before; they assure us we are not alone.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“The essential lesson of the zoetrope is this: movement, indeed all progress, even the passage of time, is an illusion. Life is the repetition of stillness.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“I’m glad your self-righteousness has given you some exercise, but you forget: we are not such a tidy, reasonable, and humane race. Our thoughts don’t stand in grammatical rows, our hearts don’t draw equations, our consciences don’t have the benefit of historians whispering the answers to us.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“You have no friends.” Senlin laughed, startling Adam. “That’s what all my friends say.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“We can cower behind oaths and excuses, but it does not change the fact that many are suffering and dying. Perhaps we are not responsible for the crimes of our fathers, but make no mistake, we are beneficiaries of those crimes, which makes us answerable to its victims.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel

“The only event I'm certain to attend is my funeral, and I hope to arrive very, very late.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King

“I’m going to feel very weak and you’re going to feel very dumb. But that’s how it always is in the beginning. Learning starts with failure.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“Every important journey I have undertaken has begun the same: with crushed sheets, a balled pillow, flung open books, and not a wink of sleep.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

“Inevitably, invariably, eventually you will discover you are unprepared to make an informed choice. When in doubt, say, Yes. Yes is the eternal passport. Yes is the everlasting coin.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends