Sinistmer > Sinistmer's Quotes

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice.”
― Chris Wooding, The Black Lung Captain

“Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.”
― Chris Wooding, The Black Lung Captain

“Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Libraries are our friends.”
― Neil Gaiman

“We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.”
― Charles de Lint

“If there was one thing worse than being cheated, it was being cheated by someone who referred to themselves in the third person.”
― Chris Wooding, The Iron Jackal

“Devil-boy Jack: "A higher power than ours directs us against the wych-kin. There is no turning back."

Thaniel Fox: "There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of."

Devil-boy Jack: "I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way.”
― Chris Wooding, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“She was spared the slow, steady droplets of blood that began to spatter the beds, drip, drip, drip, painting the white sheets in shocked flowers of red”
― Chris Wooding

“I wondered if the Demon that whispered "Why not be free?" was Freedom itself.”
― Inio Asano, Solanin

“Freedom without any purpose feels a whole lot like boredom.”
― ASANO INIO

“How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks and scream if I hear any strange noises.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.”
― Bruce Coville

“Think of all the stories you've heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed he sets out for vengeance. What next?"
Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. "He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of thing."
Kvothe nodded. "Exactly! He finds the mad hermit in the woods, proves himself worthy, and learns the names of all things, just like Taborlin the Great. Then with these powerful magics at his beck and call, what does he do?"
Chronicler shrugged. "He finds the villains and kills them."
"Of course," Kvothe said grandly. "Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Mere words cannot defeat a true hero. Unless they happen to be the words to some sort of Instant Death Spell. Magic is scary.”
― Christopher Healy, The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle

“We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Tolkien Reader

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...”
― Neil Gaiman

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“Harry — I think I've just understood something! I've got to go to the library!”
And she sprinted away, up the stairs.
“What does she understand?” said Harry distractedly, still looking around, trying to tell where the voice had come from.
“Loads more than I do,” said Ron, shaking his head.
“But why’s she got to go to the library?”
“Because that’s what Hermione does,” said Ron, shrugging. “When in doubt, go to the library.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“I'm telling you stories. Trust me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion