Shyan > Shyan's Quotes

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“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.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Moons might rise and fall, empires wax and wane, even the stars come and go, but there are constants too, and though the story of our kind is ever-changing it is also always the same.”
― Mark Lawrence, Holy Sister

“Each of us plunges through our own existence, punching me-shaped holes through days, through weeks, through conversations. We're none of us one thing or the other; we're legion. There's a different Yaz inside your skull for everyday of your life. We deceive others. We deceive ourselves. We keep secrets that even we don't know and hold beliefs we don't understand. And in that state of profound, fundamental, primal ignorance, we still think we can sculpt the clay of our own selves. We think we know what to cut away, that we understand the consequences of excising greed.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Girl and the Stars

“But if you were determined to want the impossible, there was a better way to get it. Zhu thought with amused defiance: Change the world, and make it possible.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, He Who Drowned the World

“SCIENCE FICTION IS OFTEN DESCRIBED, AND EVEN DEFINED, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. “If this goes on, this is what will happen.” A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.

This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as “escapist,” but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because “it’s so depressing.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“The criminal is a creative artist; detectives are just critics.”
― Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be.”
― Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

“We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“There might not be a meaning to the world, or in it, but that does not mean that what we do has no meaning.”
― Mark Lawrence, Holy Sister

“Save that anger,” Mai said with a sigh. “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Silence is a statement, Diago. Inaction picks a side. And when those lead to personal benefit, they are complicity.”
― James Islington, The Will of the Many

“For I did not know which was harder to bear: The echo of her passing, or the long silence that followed.”
― James Islington, An Echo of Things to Come

“The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“He didn't administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“What someone is means nothing about what kind of person they are. Truth is in actions.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“But for a society buit on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon

“I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger