Kristopher Freeh > Kristopher's Quotes

“I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward. 
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined. 
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“It’s true that AI can mimic the human brain, but it can also outperform us mere humans by discovering complex patterns that no human being could ever process and identify.”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“Mom, please don't use 'the happy voice.' It reminds me of the day Tinkles died."
"Who was Tinkles?" Sue asked around a mouthful of pancake.
"My cat. When I was five, Tinkles died choking on a mouse that was a bit ambitious for a kitten to eat."
"It was terribly traumatic for Aurelia because it was the first time she'd experienced loss." 
"What did you do to help her get through it?" 
Rosalind smiled at Mother Guardian. "Well, after a good cry, we performed an autopsy."
Aurelia reached for her mother's hand. "I never thanked you for that.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“Not to change the subject, but…you do realize you’ve been going over the speed limit for quite a few miles? Never mind. And thank you Professor Ludefance. Somehow, I think this lecture is meant for me, but I have a lot more interchange of material and energy with my environment than most.”
“In a physical sense, you’re not decaying at all, you’re a very vibrant young woman. The decay I’m speaking about for you is emotional. As for the professorship, that very lecture was given to me from a Turkish friend who had inherited a great deal of wealth and didn’t know what to do with himself. I learned this from him. As for you, you interact with your environment, but you are predatory, fearless, irritable, and listless. You’re getting no emotional feedback.”
“And just where do you suggest I go to look for ‘emotional feedback,’ Mr. Professor?”
“Aha. That’s the catch. You can’t. It’s not that mechanical. You merely have to be receptive and hope it comes along.”
“Meanwhile, I’m being ground down by the second law of thermodynamics.”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Thank you so much, Professor. I never would have known.”
― Behcet Kaya, Appellate Judge

“A haunting memory flooded over Ethan when his own little sister had died. He had not thought of her in years! He glanced at the other chairs that sat empty around the table and wondered how different, or better his life would have been if she had lived. He tried to imagine her sitting there, but had trouble conjuring up her face.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“The most beautiful things in life are unassuming and simple to begin with.”
― Merlin Franco, A Dowryless Wedding

“Since solving The Secret of the Old Clock, she had longed for another case. Here was her chance! Attractive, blond-haired Nancy was brought out of her daydreaming by the sound of the doorbell. At the same moment the Drews’ housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, came down the front stairs, “I’ll answer it,” she offered. Mrs. Gruen had lived with the Drews since Nancy was three years old. At that time Mrs. Drew had passed away and Hannah had become like a second mother to Nancy. There was a deep affection between the two, and Nancy confided all her secrets to the understanding housekeeper. Mrs. Gruen opened the door and instantly a man stepped into the hall. He was short, thin, and rather stooped. Nancy guessed his age to be about forty.”
― Carolyn Keene, The Hidden Staircase

“But nobody else understands about the fire. If someone threw you a rope when you were drowning. If a doctor said take this because if you don't take you'll die - you would, wouldn't you?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself—it’s a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I’d gotten Diane’s .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn’t do it. It’s probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“I was just an average bloke. It was the media that tried to transform me into a heroic figure. But I've learned through the years, as long as you don't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you can't come to too much harm.' - Sir Edmund Hillary”
― Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

“Almighty God! enough! enough!”
― Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

“Why would anyone wish to be provincial in time, any more than being tied down to one place through life, when the whole reach of the human drama is there to experience in some of the greatest books ever written.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“To pilot a racehorse is to ride a half-ton catapult. It is without question one of the most formidable feats in sport.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“What you're going to do is apologize to Lucian. My f**k partner, my lover, my protector. And my best friend. Right now."?”
― Lucian Bane, Dom Wars: Round Four

“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Let me put it another way: the men, the system, the cogs of the machine that ground you down, the evil men who framed you and tortured you, have rendered you the greatest service possible. They brought forth a new man, superior to the first, and if today you recognize honor, goodness and charity, and realize the energy you will need to surmount the obstacles and become someone superior, you owe it to them.”
― Henri Charrière, Papillon

“She hands him his coffee; crosses to the doorway; motes of dust flutter nervously in her wake.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The door from the kitchen opened, and the smell of Freada’s Chesterfield cigarettes”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus may have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard- ice. Sometimes it was soft- snow. Sometimes it was visible but weightless- clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible- vapor- floating up into the the sky like the soals of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said. It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp. Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water forgranted, Jim said. Always cherish it. Always beware of it.”
― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

“Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is shit.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Let's all stand for the separation of Church and hate...”
― T. Rafael Cimino

“The house fostered an easier and more candid exchange of ideas and opinions, encouraged by the simple fact that everyone had left their offices behind and by a wealth of novel opportunities for conversation—climbs up Beacon and Coombe Hills, walks in the rose garden, rounds of croquet, and hands of bezique, further leavened by free-flowing champagne, whiskey, and brandy. The talk typically ranged well past midnight. At Chequers, visitors knew they could speak more freely than in London, and with absolute confidentiality. After one weekend, Churchill’s new commander in chief of Home Forces, Alan Brooke, wrote to thank him for periodically inviting him to Chequers, and “giving me an opportunity of discussing the problems of the defense of this country with you, and of putting some of my difficulties before you. These informal talks are of the very greatest help to me, & I do hope you realize how grateful I am to you for your kindness.” Churchill, too, felt more at ease at Chequers, and understood that here he could behave as he wished, secure in the knowledge that whatever happened within would be kept secret (possibly a misplaced trust, given the memoirs and diaries that emerged after the war, like desert flowers after a first rain). This was, he said, a “cercle sacré.” A sacred circle. General Brooke recalled one night when Churchill, at two-fifteen A.M., suggested that everyone present retire to the great hall for sandwiches, which Brooke, exhausted, hoped was a signal that soon the night would end and he could get to bed. “But, no!” he wrote. What followed was one of those moments often to occur at Chequers that would remain lodged in visitors’ minds forever after. “He had the gramophone turned on,” wrote Brooke, “and, in the many-colored dressing-gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water-cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall, giving occasional little skips to the tune of the gramophone.” At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on. —”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones; the difference is only in the price.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Philip had arguably created the first nation-state in Europe, with a population of perhaps a million. He would next create Europe’s first empire.”
― Robin Waterfield, Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“No todo depende del azar, si todo dependiera del azar, el universo nos abandonaría por completo y el universo no nos abandona, cuida de sus creaciones mas frágiles de un modo invisible. Quizá sea una lotería, pero el universo acaba compensándolo, el universo cuida de todos sus pájaros.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“لماذا تكون لعبة الليغو اللعبة الأكثر عبقرية في العالم؟

لماذا نتوقف عن اللعب عندما نكبر؟”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World