Jo Graham > Quotes

“I want to know everything. I want to know how the clouds move and why islands fall into the sea. I want to know how to plant almond trees and how to make children grow up straight and healthy. I want to know how princes should govern and why people love. I want to understand the stars in the heavens and all the words that were ever made. I want to remember every story that was ever told.”
― Jo Graham, Black Ships

“Whether or not that’s how it is,” I said, “we must live according to what we believe, not the beliefs of others.”

“The beliefs of others are not irrelevant, not when they shape the world we live in!”

“I didn’t say they were irrelevant. But they will never dictate my judgment or my decisions,” I snapped back. “Because others believe something does not make it true. You are not stupid because Plato says you must be, nor is Cleopatra a whore because some Roman wit will say it. I will never trust any learned opinion more than what I see in front of my face.”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“Yet I feel like Theseus running madly through the coils of the labyrinth with horrors following at my heels and every twist bringing a new and dreaded sight. I dream and it pursues me I am sunk so far in horror heaped upon horror that I cannot taste wine or see the sun above. The world has ended and I don't know why I yet Live”
― Jo Graham, Black Ships

“The truth will make us free, Charmian. The best we can do is carry the banner proudly in our own time.”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“Can the leopard change his spots?” Emrys mused. “Leopards have, but the other leopards don’t like it.”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“Have you ever done something so horrible and so irreparable that you knew there was nothing you could ever do to fix it?”

“No,” I said gently. “Mostly because I’m eight.”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“How shall I raise dead men up to plow fields that are fallow? How shall I plant young olive trees?”

Mikel smiled, and it was a beautiful smile. “One tree at a time,” He said.”
― Jo Graham, Black Ships

“We are all prisoners of our birthdays," I said, "Though we try to transcend them. We are creatures of our times, and sometimes our souls peek through the cracks and yearn for the sky. And then we are magnificent creatures.”
― Jo Graham, The Emperor's Agent

“Wonderful,” Rodney said again. “I wonder how many more of our former allies are going to have been Culled like this?” “That’s what I like about you, McKay,” Sheppard said. “You’re an optimist.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated,” Sheppard said. He’d always wanted to use that line.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“But you are imperfect, and you deserve to be.”
― Jo Graham, Cythera

“The mark of an educated person was a rational mind…To believe in prophecy or the intervention of the divine was no more than sloppy thinking. - Apollodorus”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“You’ve got that wrong. I care what the people I care about think. But the rest of the sheep can trot off a cliff.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“Once in a thousand years the sea/ smothers the moon at my window/ opens a gate in my heart:”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“The office was different. That was the first thing Dick noticed. Not that he’d spent enough time in the Oval Office for it to feel like home. The sunburst rug was the same, and so were the paired cream colored couches, but the heavy draperies that had covered the windows were gone. The Remington bronzes of cowboys on pitching horses had been replaced by white china containers with subdued ivy topiaries. And the desk was different. It was a mess.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“Papers, books, a laptop, a blackberry, and a half-empty cup of coffee littered its usually pristine walnut surface.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“There are always people making decisions you can’t control. But you decide what you’re willing to do. What you can live with. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing you can control.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“Atlantis currently has more than two hundred drones remaining, even after our encounter with the hive ship.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“Oh, I’m fine! People booby-trap DHDs that I’m working on every day!” Rodney paused. “Actually, that’s truer than I’d like.”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“There’s only one thing you can say when you come up against magic like this, and Mitch waited a long moment in silence to find the right words, to make them good and true and real.

“Not tomorrow,” he said. “Because it’s Sunday and it’s Christmas Day. And not Monday, because it’s a federal holiday, but Tuesday. Will you marry me on Tuesday?”

She looked up and her lashes were wet as though she’d been crying too, dawning belief in her eyes. “Yes.”
― Jo Graham, Silver Bullet

“All Knowledge is dangerous”
― Jo Graham & Melissa Scott

“Yes, I’m wearing a baby,” Sheppard said. “It’s very funny. Can we get past that?”
― Jo Graham, Homecoming

“But if the things I believe are right and true, then what fear have I of challenge, for will those things I learn not simply prove what is? And if the things I believe are not right and true, would it not be better for me to know that and face it like a man?”
― Jo Graham, The Ravens of Falkenau and Other Stories

“Someone who doesn’t know. There are lots of people who don’t, in other countries.”
“If they come here, you’d think they’d learn,” she said. “It’s stupid to go somewhere and wander around offending their gods and people.”
“He was Roman,” I said.
Dion snorted. “Which means he didn’t care.” We looked at him, and he went on. “That’s what my father says. He says the Romans don’t care anything for the customs of other people, and that they don’t even want other people to worship their own gods. That the worst thing that can happen to a people is to come under Roman rule.”
“Why would you care who your subjects worship?” Cleopatra said practically. “As long as they pay their taxes and don’t rebel? I mean, most people worship Isis and Serapis at least some, but if they don’t it’s not like there’s anything bad that happens to them.”
“Like the Jews,” I said, thinking of the most prominent group that didn’t worship Isis and Serapis. Jews had been in Alexandria forever, but there never had been any kind of problem with them.
Dion nodded. He looked very serious. “Since Rome annexed Judea four years ago, lots and lots more Jews have come to Alexandria. Haven’t you noticed?”
I hadn’t, but didn’t say so. I didn’t know a huge amount about Judea, truth to tell, though of course I knew about Queen Salome, who had only died seven years before and had been the most powerful queen in generations. Since her death, her country had fallen into all kinds of disarray.
“The Roman Pompeius Magnus even went into the Temple, into the Holy of Holies,” Dion said. “It was his way of showing that he could do whatever he wanted.”
That was serious, I thought. Almost all temples had an inner sanctum, where no one but priests were allowed. It was horribly blasphemous for anyone else to go in, and it certainly would never have occurred to Auletes to do it, even in the temples of our own gods. And it’s always a bad idea to offend other people’s gods. You never knew what might happen.
Cleopatra must have been thinking the same thing. “What happened?” she asked.
Dion shrugged. “Jews hate Pompeius. And lots and lots have come to Alexandria since then, bringing their money and their crafts.”
“And so their economy is hurt and ours benefits,”
― Jo Graham, Hand of Isis

“He hadn't done it, and there was no point thinking about might-have-beens”
― Jo Graham & Melissa Scott