Linda > Linda's Quotes

“Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“The only languages which do not change are dead ones.”
― David Crystal

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.”
― Terry Crowley, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics

“Language death is like no other form of disappearance. When people die, they leave signs of their presence in the world, in the form of their dwelling places, burial mounds, and artefacts - in a word, their archaeology. But spoken language leaves no archaeology. When a language dies, which has never been recorded, it is as if it has never been.”
― David Crystal, How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates

“Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Daniel J. Boorstin

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”
― Howard Nemerov

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin

“Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!

(from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)”
― Russell T. Davies

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“We are our own dragons and our own heroes. We must rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Peter S. Beagle

“there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis