Chris Cutler > Chris's Quotes

“Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets

“How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
― Linda Grayson

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”
― Victor Hugo

“Hyperbole is sometimes necessary to get at the truth. (It seems odd, doesn't it, that we have to lie to tell the truth better?)”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“I am not sure I am ready to know what I think about that, so I dare not write it out.”
― Shannon Hale, Palace of Stone

“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

“I'm not a stranger," I said, and pointed to his book. "I'm someone who reads the same authors you do.”
― Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?

“An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community and also of a willingness to contribute something meaningful to it.
So choose your audience. Write something.”
― Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

“You're brave and not very bright, which is the key to success.”
― Ursula Vernon

“Patience is always the last ingredient in any spell, the last part in any machine, what ever your original blue prints say.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Family is a transitive property.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“Finding the book was like kissing a lightning bolt.”
― Karen Miller

“What I want is to hold you like a bell holds space between the hours.”
― Miguel Murphy

“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
― Niels Bohr

“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.”
― Robert Benchley

“I may have ruined my life, but at least I got to eat some really good Chinese food.”
― Louis Sachar, Small Steps

“There are a lot of idiots in this country, and they deserve representation as much as the next man.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

“Making a Fist

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern
past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

“There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolutely bally insult like the above.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

“To be both rich and handsome was bad enough. But to have a voice like honey over warm bread on top of that was simply inexcusable.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear