Barry Tomasini > Barry's Quotes

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“The men in my family are strong because the women in my family kill and eat the weak ones.”
― Robert Jordan

“The fact that the price must be paid is proof it is worth paying.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“          Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus        and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,        hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls        of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting 5     of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished”
― Homer, The Iliad of Homer

“This and this and this.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I guess this is a bad time to mention I hung a dummy and painted Seneca Crane's name on it...”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“Are we going in?” Cuthbert asked. “Let the Recording Angel note that I'm against, although I'll offer no mutiny.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Such lack of understanding was frightening. He’s right, the gunslinger thought. We are broken. Gods help us.”
― Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla

“The town of Ritzy, nearly four hundred miles west of Mejis, was anything but.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“I’d have you see them like this; I’d have you see them very well. Will you? They are clustered around Suzie’s Cruisin Trike, embracing in the aftermath of their victory. I’d have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle—they know better than that, every one of them—but because now they are ka-tet for the last time. The story of their fellowship ends here, on this make-believe street and beneath this artificial sun; the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that’s gone before. Because when katet breaks, the end always comes quickly. Say”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“All is silent in the halls of the dead. All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead, Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin. These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“To stand against the Shadow so long as iron is hard and stone abides.
To defend the Malkieri while one drop of blood remains.
To avenge what cannot be defended.”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.”
― Stephen King, The Wind Through the Keyhole

“No man can walk so long in the Shadow that he cannot come again to the Light.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“If SARS had conformed to the perverse pattern of presymptomatic infectivity, its 2003 emergence wouldn’t be a case history in good luck and effective outbreak response. It would be a much darker story. The much darker story remains to be told, probably not about this virus but about another. When the Next Big One comes, we can guess, it will likely conform to the same perverse pattern, high infectivity preceding notable symptoms. That will help it to move through cities and airports like an angel of death.”
― David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

“She did not sing it at bedtimes because all small boys born to the High Speech must face the dark alone,”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Oy sat by Jake’s head, now silent, knowing his howls could no longer be heard by the one for whom he grieved. What the gunslinger feared most had come to pass. While he had been talking to two men he didn’t like, the boy whom he loved more than all others—more than he’d loved anyone ever in his life, even Susan Delgado—had passed beyond him for the second time. Jake was dead.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“The turtle couldn't help us.”
― Stephen King, It

“Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August