Tom > Tom's Quotes

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.”
― Greg Bear, Blood Music

“Didn’t anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?”
― Greg Bear, Blood Music

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Survival is insufficient.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“A fragment for my friend--
If your soul left this earth I would follow and find you
Silent, my starship suspended in night”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“A life, remembered, is a series of photographs and disconnected short films.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“You don't speak of dreams as unreal. They exist. They leave a mark behind them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“Love is a debt, she thought. When the bill comes, you pay in grief.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God

“It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.”
― Samuel Butler, Erewhon

“common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy.”
― Samuel Butler, Erewhon

“Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illuminated faith, and fear into love.”
― Manly Hall