Gerhard > Gerhard's Quotes

“We are formed by what we desire”
― John Irving, In One Person

“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

“This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“To be sure, the Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom, even when it takes you through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Just watch out for parasites.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

“People assume that artists must talk about art and beauty and the sublime whenever we get together, but no, we usually talk about money.”
― Christopher Bram, The Notorious Dr. August: A Riveting Historical Novel of Ghosts, Love, and a Clairvoyant Pianist

“It has been a marvellous age of invention: radio, aeroplane, electric light, the telephone, and fellatio.”
― Christopher Bram, The Notorious Dr. August: A Riveting Historical Novel of Ghosts, Love, and a Clairvoyant Pianist

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”
― Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“I'm not interested in how things were, or how we ended up where we are now. What interests me is what we are now and what we will be.”
― Ahmed Khaled Towfik, يوتوبيا

“So let the storm rage. Let the storm rage.”
― Ahmed Khaled Towfik, يوتوبيا

“The middle class, in any society, plays the role of graphite rods in nuclear reactors: they slow down the reaction and, if it weren't for them, the reactor would explode. A society without a middle class is a society primed for explosion.”
― Ahmed Khaled Towfik, يوتوبيا

“The churning of a human mind is unpredictable, as is the anatomy of the human heart.”
― Rudy Rucker, Turing & Burroughs

“Let the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil fall, soundless in the moldering woods.”
― Rudy Rucker, Turing & Burroughs

“There are secrets within secrets, though--always.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“America isn't young, you know. It's ancient and evil. With aluminum siding.”
― Rudy Rucker, Turing & Burroughs

“The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.”
― Rudy Rucker, Turing & Burroughs

“What is inevitable is not death but change. Change is the only abiding reality. The metaverse evolves, fractally and forever. Saints become sinners, sinners become saints. Dust becomes men, men become gods, gods become dust.”
― Robert Charles Wilson, Vortex

“Words have the power to make things true if they're said right.”
― Alden Bell The Reapers Are The Angels

“But then all writers smoke, don't they? And drink? And sit in front of computer screens till their arteries clog and muscles atrophy?”
― T.C. Boyle, When the Killing's Done

“Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen.”
― Kealan Patrick Burke

“And after night comes day, or more night, depending on the particular time-frame you choose to apply to your perspective.”
― Adam Roberts, By Light Alone

“... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I know. It's apathy.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“I was very pink and young and English; and quite prepared for a Continent complete with poisonous drains, roast frogs, bedbugs and vice.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

“Cambridge exceeded our most macabre expectations ... the arm-chairs, the crumpets, the beautifully-bound eighteenth century volumes, the fires roaring in stoked grates. Each of us had the loan of an absent undergraduate's rooms - bedroom, sitting-room and pantry; all fitted up in a style which, after the spartan simplicity of a public school study, seemed positively sinful.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

“There was nothing to be done with him and his kind - unless you were prepared to shoot them.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

“Finally, after a glance at Notre Dame and a brisk trot through the Louvre, we sat down at a cafe on the Place de l'Opera and watched the people. They were amazing -- never had we seen such costumes, such make-up, such wigs; and, strangest of all, the wearers didn't seem in the least conscious of how funny they looked. Many of them even stared at us and smiled, as though we had been the oddities, and not they. Mr. Holmes no doubt found it amusing to see the pageant of prostitution, poverty and fashion reflected in our callow faces and wide-open eyes.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

“Chalmers, like many of the English writers whom he then most admired, felt a strong natural sympathy with everything French. At Rouen he imagined himself as having escaped into a world in which it was possible to speak openly and unaffectedly of all those subjects which in England must be introduced by an apology or guarded with a sneer - poetry, metaphysics, romantic love.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties

“Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew all about Taffreuse Juive, opium, absinthe, negresses, Lesbos and the metamorphoses of the vampire ... Needless to say, Chalmers and myself were both virgins, in every possible meaning of the word.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties