Doug > Doug's Quotes

“If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning."
Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said.”
― Richard Stark, Dirty Money

“I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
May your villages remain ignorant of tax collectors, and may your sons be many and ugly and strong and willing workers, and may your daughters be few and beautiful and excellent providers of love gifts from eminent families that live very far away, and may your lives be blessed by the beauty that has touched mine.
Farewell.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“I can see him now in his cart pulled by two deer, followed by a couple of servants. Once carried enough wine to kill Liu Ling, and the other carried a spade to bury him on the spot – so much for Confucian ceremony. When I came to call, he’d greet me stark naked and I can still hear him scream, “The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?”
― Barry Hughart The Story of the Stone

“Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!" he bawled.

"Take a large bowl," I said. "Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei — which means 'dry cup' — and drink to the dregs."

Procopius stared at me. "And I will be wise?" he asked.

"Better," I said. "You will be Chinese.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Immortality is only for the gods," he whispered. "I wonder how they can stand it.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“...the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“I have never been able to understand why perfectly sensible people waste time being wittily obscure instead of just saying what they want and going on about their business.”
― Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone

“....Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“Ox, at an early age a Chinese genius gazes at the path that lies ahead and reaches for a wine jar," Master Li said. "Is it any wonder that our greatest men have lurched rather than walked across the landscape as they hiccuped their way into history?”
― Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone

“Show me a quest for personal immortality and I'll show you a path through a slaughterhouse, and the incense of personal divinity is the stench of other people's corpses.”
― Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone

“Gene police! You! Out of the pool, now!”
― Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives

“Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.”
― Charles Stross, Toast, and Other Stories

“Steampunk is nothing more than what happens when Goths discover brown.”
― Charles Stross

“Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them "librarians".”
― Charles Stross

“Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Most roads lead men homewards,
My road leads forth.”
― John Masefield

“Men in a ship are always looking up, and men ashore are usually looking down.”
― John Masefield

“All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.”
― John Masefield

“The days that make us happy make us wise.”
― John Masefield

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“My home is not a place, it is people.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

“Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr