Fran > Fran's Quotes

“He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.

-from The Dragon Reborn. By Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age.”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“You can never know everything. Part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of knowledge lies in going on anyway.”
― Robert Jordan

“You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Fortelling?"
"No..."
"To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Here is your flaw, Shaitan, Lord of the Dark, Lord of Envy, Lord of Nothing, here is why you fail. It was not about me. It’s never been about me.”
It was about a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet. A woman who had crawled when she had to. That woman still fought.
It was about a man that love repeatedly forsook. A man who found relevance in a world that others would have let pass them by. A man who remembered stories and who took fool boys under his wing when the smarter move would have been to keep on walking. That man still fought.
It was about a woman with a secret, a hope for the future. A woman who had hunted the truth before others could. A woman who had given her live, then had it returned. That woman still fought.
It was about a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall in his sorrow and protected those he could.
It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not heal those who had been harmed.
It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.
It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shown with a light for all who watched, including Rand.
It was about them all.
~Rand al Thor”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“By the way, I saved Moiraine. Chew on that as you try to decide which of the two of us is winning."
-Mat”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“The Empress will follow where you go," she said.
"So she will," Mat said. "As I'll follow where she goes, I suppose. I hope that doesn't lead us in too many circles.”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“p.s. In case you don't know what "Do what needs to be done" means, it means that I want you to go bloody slaughter as many of the Sharan channelers as you can. I'll bet you a full Tar Valon mark-it's only been shaved on the sides a little-that you can't kill twenty.-MC

missive from Mat to Galad”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“How would you feel," Elayne said softly, "if you saw your queen trying to kill a Trolloc with a sword as you ran away?"
"I'd feel like I needed to bloody move to another country," Birgitte snapped, loosing another arrow, "one where the monarchs don't have pudding for brains.”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there. -Cyrin”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle. I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you. When you opened your gates to me, I was home.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“What do you think love is- a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you choose into your darkness, but you will see me always beneath you, no matter how far away, with my face turned to you. My heart is in your heart. I gave it to you with my name that night and you are its guardian, to treasure it, or let it whither and die. I do not understand you. I am angry with you. I am hurt and helpless, but nothing will fill the ache of the hollowness in me where your name would echo if I lost you.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“One man sees a riselka: his life forks there.
 Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die.
 Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her.
 Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child.
 Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"

"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“Will we be extinguished? What difference does it make then, the ones of us who had plans, what does it matter the work we’ve done? The children we’ve raised? He looked pointedly at Olhado. “What will it matter then, that you have such a big happy family, if you’re all erased in one instant by that … bomb?
“Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted,” said Olhado quietly.
“But the point of it is to go on, isn’t it? To connect with the future?”
“That’s one part, yes,” said Olhado. “But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There’s fruition, Grego. There’s the happiness we’ve already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there’s no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn’t erase the beginning.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“And did I pass?" The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left the younger woman said, "You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories