Brian Callahan > Brian's Quotes

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“My old friend, I am not like the seasons. I cannot go on forever. It has to finish sometime."
-Abbot Mortimer=”
― Brian Jacques, Redwall

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Some lose all mind and become soul,insane.
some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual.
some lose both and become accepted”
― Charles Bukowski

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. ”
― Stephen Hawking

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”
― William Shakespeare

“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it’s true. Children know that. Adults know it too and that’s precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart
from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from
certain great dominants of our contemporary life -- science, all the sciences,
and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them.
Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an
alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a
metaphor.

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these
words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used
up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly,
that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation”
― Rob Gilbert

“If nothing changes, nothing changes. If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting. You want change, make some.”
― Courtney C. Stevens, The Lies about Truth