Vmaganti > Vmaganti's Quotes

“Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out. It's all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It's all the wasted chances.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“Don't be a pawn in somebody's game. Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on”
― Anne Rice

“everything is relative, one man’s absolute belief is another man’s fairy tale;”
― Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“They open their wings,
flash patterns and colors,
fly from flower to flower.
I, with the dark bristles and many feet
of the former form,
inch along the ground.

Sometimes all I want
is two armfuls of air,
a fistful of sky.”
― Nina Kiriki Hoffman, A Fistful of Sky

“Footsteps in the snow
suggest where you have been,
point to where you were going:
but when they suddenly vanish,
never dismiss the possibility
of flight...”
― Diane Duane

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow. Isn't that the way it works?”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“It’d be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things. ---Rhiow”
― Diane Duane, To Visit the Queen

“You should know how terrible a power belief is, especially in the wrong hands -- and how do you tell which hands are wrong? Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow.”
― Diane Duane

“Nita stood still, listening to Joanne's footsteps hurrying away, a little faster every second- and slowly began to realize that she'd gotten what she asked for too- the ability to break the cycle of anger and loneliness, not necessarily for others, but at least for herself. It wouldn't even take the Speech; plain words would do it, and the magic of reaching out. It would take a long time, much longer then something simple like breaking the walls of the worlds, and it would cost more effort than even reading the Book of Night with Moon. But it would be worth it- and eventually it would work. A spell always works. Nita went home.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“We knew you were hurting,” Gelert said. “But sometimes—that idiom about being there for somebody, actually just means to be there. Doing anything, saying anything, sometimes you know it'll hurt them worse than just being quiet, and being close.”
― Diane Duane, Stealing the Elf-King's Roses

“She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends - books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smokey London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another...”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

“I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”
― Terry Pratchett

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. ”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo