Eric > Eric's Quotes

“Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such a one has the capacity to love. Freely, naively, to say I do.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli. ‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’ ‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli. ‘Or break it,’ said Elrond.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“My black-headed black-eyed boy. I remember every day of you. How would I forget?”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“He recalled now the small boy who had played along the sea-wall. By night he had dreamt of magnificence and on the wings of its tales he flew. Well, it was more miserable here than magnificent, he supposed. But he believed he might reach across the years to that boy and lift him up on his high shoulders. See, I come to war because I love that boy, See how beautiful he is, see how fine. Here is his friend: he too is fine and beautiful. They go to war because they love, each his country. And I too love my country. Do you feel the wind that is rising,the magnificent wind? These things will come, my dear. Let you dream of this.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“May the earth lie gently on them”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never—and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Yes, I had known him all my life - and then we met.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“PS. I write to you in stings, Red, but this is me, the truth of me, as I do so: broken open by the act, in the palm of your hand, dying.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“To be so lovely and so lost. To be all answerful with all that knowing trapped inside. To be beautiful and broken.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“She felt ... less. She felt tamped down. Dim. More faint. Feint. Feigned. Fain.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“He looked around at the perfectly white world, felt the wet kisses of the snowflakes, pondered hidden meanings in the pale yellow streetlights that shone in a world so whitely asleep.

"Beautiful," he whispered.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“So I go. I travel farther and faster and harder than most, and I read, and I write, and I love cities. To be alone in a crowd, apart and belonging, to have distance between what I see and what I am.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring