Nate Lott > Nate's Quotes

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon

“Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.”
― Steven Brust, Jhereg

“I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Have I ever told you how glad I am we're not enemies? Eragon asked.
No, but it's very sweet of you.”
― Christopher Paolini, Brisingr

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“I desired dragons with a profound desire.”
― C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

“If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-grand-uncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“This may be my only chance to see humans before these two are made into fertilizer for Moonwind's rosebushes.”
― Tamora Pierce, The Realms of the Gods

“Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”

“You know, I preferred you as an evil monk. Would have made killing you a whole lot easier.”
― Chris D' Lacey

“Dragons and legends...It would have been difficult for any man not to want to fight beside a dragon.”
― Patricia Briggs, Dragon Blood

“He had only heard of dragons, and although he had never seen one, he was sure they existed.”
― Dee Marie, Sons of Avalon: Merlin's Prophecy

“It is because of its emptiness that the cup is useful.”
― Carole Wilkinson, Dragon Keeper

“I will see you bereft of all that you have, of home and happiness and beautiful things. I will see your nation cast down and your allies drawn away. I will see you as alone and friendless and wretched as am I; and then you may live as long as you like, in some dark and lonely corner of the earth, and I shall call myself content.

-Lien, Albino Celestial (Dragon) ”
― Naomi Novik, Black Powder War

“How should we be able to forget those myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilka

“If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons.”
― Ilona Andrews, Fate's Edge

“They say dragons never truly die. No matter how many times you kill them.”
― S.G. Rogers, Jon Hansen and the Dragon Clan of Yden

“I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“My nightly craft is winged in white, a dragon of night dark sea.
Swift born, dream bound and rudderless, her captain and crew are me.
We've sailed a hundred sleeping tides where no seaman's ever been
And only my white-winged craft and I know the wonders we have seen.”
― Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong

“And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore