Dawn > Dawn's Quotes

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right.
You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her.
It is imperfect.
So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“the gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“We are all of us, every one, our own works; we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“One learns better than to hand one’s choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“Not all prisons are made of iron bars, some are made of feather beds.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this one night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Stand before his grave and use your gift of breath to complain of your limited time. If you dare.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“innocence based in ignorance was unfit to protect itself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.
Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Take heart, sir," Cazaril consoled him. "It is not your destiny today to win a royacy for your son. It is to win an empire for your grandson.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right -- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”
― Toni Morrison

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
― Toni Morrison

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.”
― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved