Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“Knowledge equals power...
The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.
Power equals energy...
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Energy equals matter...
He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“The word "yoga" literally means "uniting", because when you're doing it you are uniting your mind and your body. You can tell this almost immediately because your mind will be thinking, "Ouch, that hurts," and your body will say, "I know." And your mind will think, "You have to get out of this position." And your body will say, "I agree with you, but I can't right now. I think I'm stuck.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding

“How curious it was, how ironic, he decided, that the human brain seemed capable of understanding almost everything but itself.”
― Edward B. Hanna, The Whitechapel Horrors

“I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. I wish I could have lived in a kind world. Without anxiety. Without fear. Without hurting other people. Without being hurt myself. Only doing the right things. I wish I could have followed the shortest path to the kind world I wished for.
"That's wrong." "That's stupid." When it comes to other people's lives you can say that kind of irresponsible dreck as much as you want.
I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time we push forward. It's all we can do. On our own two feet. Even if we get a little banged up. Someday, we'll reach something. We'll reach someone. We pray. Come on. It's time to start walking.”
― Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Vol. 21

“Unless you can start some worldwide crime wave, I haven’t the strength to defy him.”
― Jennifer Fallon, Treason Keep

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“Because you are like that sky. Because I feel it so much that it breaks my heart…I love you.”
― Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Vol. 10

“Nicci looked up at Kahlan. “Knives are not my talent.” “It’s not hard,” Kahlan said as she pressed the handle into Nicci’s hand. “When the time is right, just stick the pointed end somewhere important in someone you really don’t like.”
― Terry Goodkind, Confessor

“Their conflicting sounds oppose one another, outdo one another, and fight to be better than one another. The crescendo of the heart being ripped to shreds, loves….”
― Mai Nishikata, Venus Capriccio, Vol. 1

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Giving her ten thousand Lifeless is enough to make even me consider my drunk-monkey theory.”
“The one who chooses names and titles of the Returned?”
“Exactly,” Lightsong said. “I’ve actually considered expanding the theory. I am now proposing to believe that God-or the universe, or time, or whatever you think controls all of this-is all really just a drunk monkey.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“I don’t suppose you’d want to go destroy some evil, would you? the voice said. I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest. I’ll just trust you to decide.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“Voltaire responded that, on the contrary, vivisection showed that the dog has the same organes de sentiment that a human has. "Answer me, you who believes that animals are only machines," he wrote. "Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?”
― Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

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

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“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

“Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?”
― Neil Gaiman

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
― Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays

“It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.”
― Hiromu Arakawa

“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.

[The New York Times interview, 2000]”
― Philip Pullman

“Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others.”
― Brian Jacques, Redwall

“Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.”
― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

“A lesson without pain is meaningless. For you cannot gain anything without sacrificing something else in return, but once you have overcome it and made it your own...you will gain an irreplaceable fullmetal heart.”
― Hiromu Arakawa

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“When the soul-penetrating pathos she was beaming at me failed to prevent me from continuing to put things in boxes, the helper dog became increasingly alarmed. Over the ensuing few days, she slowly descended into psychological chaos. The simple dog remained unfazed.”
― Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened