Marcus Beach > Marcus's Quotes

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

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

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you'll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.
That is what happened when Denna smiled at me.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other is to lend.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“However, while being able to think about two things at the same time is a terribly convenient, the training it takes to get there is frustrating at best, and at other times rather disturbing.

I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half of me where I'd hidden it, only to find I hadn't hidden the stone at all. I had merely been waiting to see how long I would look before giving up. Have you ever been annoyed and amused with yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling, to say the very least.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“He was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn't realize that once a noose is tied it will fit one neck as easily as another.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.” “It is a sprung rhythm,” he said, his voice stiff and offended. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Sprung?” I burst out with an incredulous laugh. “I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Now let me say this: when you're traveling a good cloak is worth more than all of your other possessions put together. If you've nowhere to sleep, it can be your bed and blanket. It will keep the rain off your back and the sun from your eyes. You can conceal all manner of interesting weaponry beneath it if you are clever, and a smaller assortment if you are not.

But beyond all that, two facts remain to recommend a cloak. First, very little is as striking as well-worn cloak, billowing lightly about you in the breeze. And second, the best cloaks have innumerable little pockets that I have an irrational and overpowering attraction toward.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“All stories are true," Skarpi said. "But this one really happened, if that's what you mean.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“What are the three most important rules of the chemist?"

This I knew from Ben. "Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous".”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart's yearning.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.”
― Dave Grohl