Deb > Deb's Quotes

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
― George Burns

“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
― Brent weeks

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”
― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”
― Steven Brust

“Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do.”
― Steven Brust

“The tools are real. The viewer is real, you, the artist, is real and a part of everything you paint. You connect yourself to the viewer by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you. All you have to do it with is a brush, some chemical and canvas, and technique.”
― Steven Brust

“He still kept smiling. And his moustache was definitely plotting something.”
― Sonya Lano

“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“Wil Wheaton Says: Don't be a dick.”
― Wil Wheaton

“Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we're afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.”
― Wil Wheaton, Just a Geek: Unflinchingly Honest Tales of the Search for Life, Love, and Fulfillment Beyond the Starship Enterprise

“You can’t has,' he whispered softly, 'not yours.”
― Wil Wheaton, Clash of the Geeks

“There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers.”
― Richard Castle

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Write as much as you can.
As fast as you can.
Finish your shit.
Hit your deadlines.
Try very hard not to suck.”
― Chuck Wendig

“Writers are made--forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities--over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same as the writer you become.”
― Chuck Wendig, 250 Things You Should Know About Writing

“Creativity needs time. We’re all dying. Fuck stagnation. High-five creation.”
― Chuck Wendig

“There's nothing better when something comes and hits you and you think 'YES'!”
― J.K. Rowling

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“They want your sons.”
“My–? But I don’t… ew!”
― Deb E. Howell, Healer's Touch

“The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“He'd written me up a proposal of why dating him was a sound decision. It had included things like "I'll give up cigarettes unless I really, really need one" and "I'll unleash romantic surprises every week, such as: an impromptu picnic, roses, or a trip to Paris—but not actually any of those things because now they're not surprises.”
― Richelle Mead, Spirit Bound

“I’d be happier on a horse,” Makin said.
“I’d be happier on a giant mountain goat,” I said. “One that shat diamonds. Until we find some, we’re walking.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“That's not a plan. That's a way to get a death so famously stupid that they'll be laughing about it in alehouses for a hundred years to come," Makin said.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“I like mountains, always have done. Big obstinate bits of rock sticking up where they're not wanted and getting in folk's way. Great. Climbing them is a different matter altogether though. I hate that.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns