SarahBeth > SarahBeth's Quotes

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
― Jim Henson

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
― Robert Bloch

“If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice for me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?”
― Sharon Shinn, The Alleluia Files

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
― Mark Twain

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it. . . . The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Big U: A Hilarious Satire of American College Life

“Well,” said the frog, “what are you going to do about it?”

“Marrying Therandil? I don’t know. I’ve tried talking to my parents, but they won’t listen, and neither will Therandil.”

“I didn’t ask what you’d said about it,” the frog snapped. “I asked what you’re going to do. Nine times out of ten, talking is a way of avoiding doing things.”
― Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons

“Many, if not most, of the best and most lasting children’s books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readers…at least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.”
― Patricia C. Wrede

“(In reply to the question, 'Would you like some suggestions for a plot for your next book?')

There are three problems with getting plot suggestions from other people. The first is that ideas are the easy part of writing; finding the time and energy to get them down on paper is the hard part. I have plenty of ideas already. Which brings me to the second problem: the ideas that excite you, the ones you think would make a terrific book, are not necessarily the same ideas that excite me. And if a writer isn't excited about an idea, she generally doesn't turn out a terrific book, even if the idea is terrific. And the third problem with my using your suggestions is that, theoretically, you could sue me if I did, and that tends to make publishers nervous, which makes it hard to sell a book. So thank you, but no.”
― Patricia C. Wrede

“May you and your triple cursed wash water turn purple with orange spots and fall down a bottomless pit!”
― Patricia C. Wrede, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

“I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“The book answers questions other people have thought of. I have thought of questions they have not answered. I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance.

Maybe my questions matter.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful.”
― Elizabeth Moon

“He glanced up as I entered, and for a moment, looked almost surprised.
"Mr. Swift!"
"Ta-da!" I exclaimed weakly.
"You're still..."
"Still not dead. That's me. It's my big party trick, still not being dead, gets them every time.”
― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“We be light, we be life, we be fire! We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free!”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels

“Being brave is only standing up when you're afraid.”
― Jon Steele, The Watchers

“Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“Normal' is a dryer setting.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Marque and Reprisal

“I'm here to rape, and pillage, and run off with all of your spoons.”
― Steven Williamson

“One is always willfully absurd.... If one does not say silly things with a purpose, then he is merely an idiot.”
― Galen M. Beckett, The House on Durrow Street

“I'll just hang upside down from the wire banana and throw bags of flour at the librarians.”
― Lissa Evans, Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, & a Very Strange Adventure

“When last I checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi."
"You've seen Star Wars?"
"Seen it and denounced it."
"You've denounced Star Wars?"
She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Hollywood should not glorify witches."
"I think you've missed the point..."
"I also denounce Harry Potter."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Because..."
"...because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches."
"Oda, what do you do for fun?"
She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humor, "I denounce things.”
― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“Offer me?" A shrill note of indignation entered her voice. "Young man, there are three things that make Britain great. The first is our inability at playing sports."
How does that make Britain great?"
"Despite the certainty of loss, we try anyway with the absolute conviction that this year will be the one, regardless of all evidence to the contrary!"
I raised my eyebrows, but that simply meant I could see my blood more clearly, so looked away and said nothing.
"The second," she went on, "is the BBC. It may be erratic, tabloid, under-funded and unreliable, but without the World Service, obscure Dickens adaptions, the Today Program and Doctor Who, I honestly believe that the cultural and communal capacity of this country would have declined to the level of the apeman, largely owing to the advent of the mobile phone!"
"Oh," I said, feeling that something was expected. "Oh" was enough.
"And lastly, we have the NHS!"
"This is an NHS service?" I asked incredulously.
"I didn't say that, I merely pointed out that the NHS makes Britain great. Now lie still.”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels

“Paranoia seems more reasonable when you've got twelve stitches in your side.”
― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“The dream state just before wakening when it seems perfectly logical for the goldfish not to like peeling its own potatoes on the bus.”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels