Victor Joceran > Victor Joceran's Quotes

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

“I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.”
― Stephen King

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”
― Stephen King

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”
― Stephen King

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”
― Stephen King

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe