Tracy Hickman > Quotes

“[P]eople only make decisions based on what they know. You can have everyone in the country vote freely and democratically and still come up with the wrong answer - if the information they base that decision on is wrong.

People don't want the truth [when] it is complicated. They don't want to spend years debating an issue. They want it homogenized, sanitized, and above all, simplified into terms they can understand...Governments are often criticized for moving slowly, but that deliberateness, it turns out, is their strength. They take time to think through complex problems before they act. People, however, are different. People react first from the gut and then from the head...give that knee-jerk reflex real power to make its overwhelming will known as a national mandate instantly and you can cause a political riot.

Combine these sins - simplification of information and instant, visceral democratic mandates - and you lose the ability to cool down. There is no longer deliberation time between events that may or may not be true and our reaction to them. Policy becomes instinct rather than thought.”
― Tracy Hickman, The Immortals

“I will do this. Nothing in my life matters except this. No moment of my life exists except this moment. I am born in this moment, and if I fail, I will die in this moment.”
― Tracy Hickman

“What words are in you that can change the world?”
― Tracy Hickman

“This wasn't in the histories", Raistlin murmured to himself, staring down at the little wretched bodies, his brow furrowed. His eyes flashed. "Perhaps", he breathed, "this means time has already been altered?"
For long moments he sat there, pondering. Then suddenly he understood.
None saw Raistlin's face, hidden as it was by his hood, or they would have noted a swift, sudden spasm of sorrow and anger pass across it.
"No," he said to himself bitterly, "the pitiful sacrifice of these poor creatures was left out of the histories not because it did not happen. It was left out simply because-"
He paused, staring grimly down at the small, broken bodies. "No one cared...”
― Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, War of the Twins

“Tanis blinked with disbelief, then he heard a sound behind him that nearly made him leap into a tree in panic. He whirled around, heart in his throat, sword in his hand. Raistlin was laughing.”
― Margaret Weis Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

“[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?"

I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.”
― Tracy Hickman, The Immortals

“Sometimes people do much wrong unintentionally, meaning for the best”
― Tracy Hickman

“It is your only way home, my brother! And maybe our only way out of here alive.”
― Tracy Hickman

“My life for your life.' That means while we live, we share the joy of living with each other. 'My death for your life.' I would be willing to lay down my life to save yours. 'My life for your death.' I will spend my life avenging your death, if I can't prevent it. 'My death for your death.' A part of me will die when you do.”
― Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

“How much wrong have we done unintentionally, meaning the best”
― Tracy Hickman

“So dark. Endless darkness, eternal. It was not the absence of light that was so frightening as the absence of thought, of knowledge, of comprehension. Our lives, the lives of the living will go on. The sun shines, the moons rise, we will laugh and talk, and he will know nothing, feel nothing. Nothing.
So final. It will come to us all. It will come to me.”
― Margaret Weis Tracy Hickman, The Soulforge

“Raistlin opened his eyes, looking at her without recognition. And in them, she saw deep, undying sorrow--the look of one who has been permitted to enter a realm of deadly, perilous beauty, and who now finds himself, once more, cast down into the grey, rain-swept world.”
― Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, War of the Twins

“He remembered a dog—the only living thing they found in the entire village—curled around the body of a dead child. Caramon stopped to pet the small dog. The animal cringed, then licked the big man’s hand. It then licked the child’s cold face, looking up at the warrior hopefully, expecting this human to make everything all right, to make his little playmate run and laugh again.”
― Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

“There was a triumph in patience that no temporary application of force could conquer.”
― Tracy Hickman, The Sword of Midras

“I don't understand, Your Majesty."
"Of course you don't; you academics!" Skarmak snarled. "All you do is sit in your towers, trying to think your way into a reality that exists only in your own minds, and then you judge the world as wrong because it does not conform to your impossible standards. I live in a real world, academic. And it's my real world that keeps pumping blood into your dead, idealistic one.”
― Tracy Hickman Laura Hickman

“Noble words, my friend; you can't drink them or wrap them around your feet or burn them in your firepit or give them to children crying in hunger......They will cry for a month, then they will eat his share of the food. And wouldn't he want it that way?”
― Tracy Hickman

“Your soul rages. You cannot control your spirits within your body, so you need this to force others to your will." The king stepped boldly toward Meklos, holding the dragonstaff in front of him, the Eye shining even in the dim light of the temple chamber. "You need this---this crutch to compel the great spirits, and they rebel against you, Meklos! They are fighting you and calling the gods' displeasure against you. Your life is diminished by the length of this rod!”
― Tracy Hickman Laura Hickman, Mystic Empire

“They saw the ordered concrete and steel of postwar United States showing stress fractures and were determined to bring it down and break free.”
― Tracy Hickman, Wayne of Gotham

“Ariakas worked himself into a
fury. Few survived Lord Ariakas's displeasure. None survived his furies.
- Dragons of Spring Dawning (Chronicles of Dragon Lance)”
― Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman

“Justice must be swift … and sure … and final.”
― Tracy Hickman, Wayne of Gotham

“People will forgive a penitent enemy before they forgive a professed friend.”
― Tracy Hickman, Song Of The Dragon

“Darkis pointed toward the dwarf sitting btween them on the ground. "Uh, don't you think that's a bit much?"
Turi and Ethis each held separate ropes around the bound hands and feet of the dwarf. A gag was tied tightly over hi mouth.
Ethis considered the prisoner for a moment before replying. "No, it seems a resonable precaution." "Why? What did he do?" Darkis said. The chimera looked at each other, thier blank faces considering for a moment. "He kept promising not to escape," Thuri answerd at last. "He promised not to escape," Darkis asked, his brow furrowed with the puzzle, "and so you tied him up?"
"He wouldn't shut up about it," Ethis replied, his large eyes blinking indignantly. "He kept going on and on about how we could trust him and how he had nowhere to run and how he was glad it was us who took him as a slave captive of war."
"It was unnerving," Thuri finished.”
― Tracy Hickman

“We are all free to make our own decisions–but if the information on which we base those decisions is carefully selected and presented to us in the “pre-thought for you” form of a story, then how much of an informed decision can we make?”
― Tracy Hickman, XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery

“... there is no pain you or anyone could inflict on me worse than the pain I bear within myself.”
― Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

“C'est le sort qui donne son sens à la vie. La mort, la grande égalisatrice. Homme, femme, paysan, roi, riche, pauvre, nous sommes tous égaux à la fin du voyage. La vie est précieuse, sacrée, on ne doit pas en priver un homme à la légère ou de gaieté de coeur.”
― Margaret Weis - Tracy Hickman

“It is your job to interpret the dice rolls and give meaning and impact to their results, not just report sports scores.”
― Tracy Hickman, XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery

“The difference is that leveling characters is artificial; leveling XDMs, that’s real!”
― Tracy Hickman, XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery