Phil > Phil's Quotes

“When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“What the hell kind of name is Kitty for a werewolf?”
― Carrie Vaughn

“If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
(a Shin'a'in saying)”
― Mercedes Lackey, Owlknight

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“I blame it on Twilight. In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire.”
― Larry Correia, Monster Hunter Vendetta

“Some people are like Slinkies. They aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to my face when I push them down a flight of stairs.”
― Patricia Briggs, Iron Kissed

“The vampire stared at me, his mouth slack as Ghastek assessed his options. I took a couple of forms from my desk, put them into the vamp's mouth, and pulled them up by their edges.
"What are you doing?" Ghastek asked.
"My hole puncher broke."
"You have no respect for the undead.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Burns

“There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't.”
― Ian Stewart, Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities

“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever

“An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo!”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“The thing to recall about Dragons is that it takes a special person to deal with them at all. If you lie to them they will steal from you. If you attack them without cause they will dismember you. If you run from them they will laugh at you.

It is thus best to deal calmly, openly and fairly with Dragons: Give them all they buy and no more or less, and they will do the same by you. Stand at their back and they will stand at yours. Always remember that a Dragon is first a Dragon and only then a friend, a partner, a lover.

Never assume that you have discovered a Dragon's weak point until it is dead and forgotten, for joy is fleeting and a Dragon's revenge is forever.”
― Sharon Lee

“The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal - or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog

“You haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where gravity has failed twice in different directions.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“I've heard of a guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard",though that's probably a urban legend.”
― Benedict Jacka, Fated

“He's probably out there in the hallway right now, composing bad poetry in his head." Michi cleared her throat, her voice taking on a breathless lilt:

"Pale Fox's Daughter,
Her cherry lips haunt my dreams.
Something, something, breasts...”
― Jay Kristoff, Stormdancer

“I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“Pretty please. With sugar.”
― Jim Butcher, Death Masks

“Eric: But you already know...

Greta: Well, yeah, but I still want us to have The Talk. All daughters get to have The Talk.

Eric: Fine. You remember the book "If you give a Mouse a Cookie"?

Greta: Ye-es.

Eric: It's like that.

Greta: No it isn't.

Eric: No. It absolutely is...

Eric: If you give a boy a kiss, he'll want to touch your cookies. If you let him touch your cookies, he'll want to unwrap them. If you let him unwrap them, he'll want to put them in his mouth. And THEN, if you let him put them in his mouth, the boy will want to pet your kitty. But if you let him pet your kitty, he'll want to see your kitty. And of course, if you let him see your kitty, then he'll want to feed it. And if you let him kiss you, touch your cookies, unwrap your cookies, put them in his mouth, pet your kitty, see your kitty, and feed your kitty, you'll get pregnant unless you make him wear a raincoat on his banana. So it's better if you just kick the boy in the nuts and run over him with the car.

Greta: I don't think that's how The Talk usually goes.

Eric: No?

Greta: No, but it's okay, Dad. I like your version, too.”
― J.F. Lewis

“In Life’s name and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe’s end. I will look always toward the Heart of Time, where all times are one, where all our sundered worlds lie whole, as they were meant to be.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“It’d be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things. ---Rhiow”
― Diane Duane, To Visit the Queen

“But the trouble with sainthood these days is the robe-and-halo imagery that gets stuck onto it." Carl got that brooding look again. "People forget that robes were street clothes once... and still are, in a lot of places. And halos are to that fierce air of innocence what speech balloons in comics are to the sound of the voice itself. Shorthand. But most people just see an old symbol and don't bother looking behind it for the meaning. Sainthood starts to look old-fashioned, unattainable... even repellent. Actually, you can see it all around, once you learn to spot it.”
― Diane Duane, A Wizard Alone

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“Further up and further in”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”
― Konstantin Josef Jireček