Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Joy is in the ears that hear.”
― Stephen R Donaldson

“It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever

“Gradually, the night stumbled as if stunned and wandering aimlessly into an overcast day -- limped through the wilderland of transition as though there were no knowing where the waste of darkness ended and the ashes of light began. The low clouds seemed full of grief -- tense and uneasy with accumulated woe -- and yet affectless, unable to rain, as if the air clenched itself too hard for tears. And through the dawn, Atiaran and Covenant moved heavily, unevenly, like pieces of a broken lament.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane

“I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse. ”
― Stephen R. Donaldson

“We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane

“There is no life which does not possess its own importance, no life which may not be touched by greatness at any time -- Yes, be touched by greatness and have a hand in it.


(from The Mirror of Her Dreams)”
― Stephen Donaldson

“The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care. She was beautiful from the auburn hair that crowned her head to the tips of her white toes. He was handsome and courageous. She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments.

As in all the fables, they were made for each other.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, The Mirror of Her Dreams

“Part of him wanted to weep... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever

“Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?"
Absently he replied, "I was, once."
"And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?"
... Unconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. "I live."
"Another?" Foamfollower returned. "In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more -- with one word you will make me weep.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.”
― Stephen King, Storm of the Century

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”
― Stephen King, Night Shift

“There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.”
― Stephen King

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”
― Stephen King

“You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts' deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?”
― Stephen King

“Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her~is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him..”
― Stephen King, It

“First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“A coward judges all he sees by what he is.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower