Rafael > Rafael's Quotes

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I'm quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“You're a very difficult person to manipulate, you know."
"Nonsense," he said. "You just have to promise me that I won't have to do a thing, and then I'll do anything you want."
"Anything?"
"Anything that doesn't require doing anything."
"That's nothing, then."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's something.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
― Homer, Iliad

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.”
― China Miéville

“[…] detective novels are not novels of detection, still less of revelation, still less of solution. Those are all necessary, but not only are they insufficient, but they are in certain ways regrettable. These are novels of potentiality. Quantum narratives. Their power isn’t in their final acts, but in the profusion of superpositions before them, the could-bes, what-ifs and never-knows. Until that final chapter, each of those is as real and true as all the others, jostling realities all dreamed up by the crime, none trapped in vulgar facticity. That’s why the most important sentence in a murder mystery isn’t the one starting ‘The murderer is…’ – which no matter how necessary and fabulously executed is an act of unspeakable narrative winnowing – but is the snarled expostulation halfway through: ‘Everyone’s a suspect.’ Quite. When all those suspects become one certainty, it’s a collapse, and a let-down. How can it not be? We’ve been banished from an Eden of oscillation.”
― China Miéville

“Imagine if one of them were turned. Imagine if one could be bought.'
'But they're chosen just so's they can't be bought...'
'History...' Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. 'Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible.”
― China Miéville, Iron Council

“The Creator made women to please the eye, and to boggle the mind.”
― Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time: Boxed Set

“The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else--word one--I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.”
― Jerry Holkins

“Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
― Winston Churchill

“You were a hero round these parts. That's what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“But that was civilisation, so far as Logen could tell. People with nothing better to do, dreaming up ways to make easy things difficult.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“It always amazes me, how swiftly problems can be solved, once you start cutting things off people.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”

“Idiots?”

He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”

“Optimists.”

“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”

“How’s it working out for you?”

“Not great, but I keep hoping.”

“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.”
― China Miéville, King Rat

“We should have just killed him, that's a lesson, don't get creative with revenge”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces.

Every intention, interaction, motivation, every colour, every body, every action and reaction, every piece of physical reality and the thoughts that it engendered, every connection made, every nuanced moment of history and potentiality, every toothache and flagstone, every emotion and birth and banknote, every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web.

It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind. It is a work of such beauty that my soul wept...

..I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.”
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

“My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.”
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

“The Weaver is a really godlike power. It's not even a blind idiot god, a sort of Lovecraft thing, it's just a purely capricious god. It's an intelligence you can't understand, so you can't trust it."

-Amazon.com interview”
― China Mieville

“Hurray', shouted Glokta. 'Porridge again!'He looked over at the motionless Practical. 'Porridge and honey, better than money, everything's funny, with porridge and honey!”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“The trouble with running is wherever you run to, there you are.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.”
― Robert Jordan

“Duty is heavy as a mountain, death is light as a feather.”
― Robert Jordan