Tayna Clemen > Tayna's Quotes

“shaky.”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Years ago, Re had raged against humans for violating Ma’at, so he had sent Hathor to destroy mankind. She transformed into the lion goddess Sekhmet and Egypt’s fields ran red with the blood of her rampage. Seeing this, Re realized his mistake and ordered Sekhmet to stop, but she was too gone with bloodlust to listen. Knowing he had to halt her some other way, Re stained seven thousand jugs of beer with pomegranate juice and poured the red liquid into her path. Believing the beer to be blood, Sekhmet gorged herself and passed out in a drunken stupor. When she awoke, her bloodlust had passed and she returned to being Hathor. Thus the goddesses of love and violence shared a common history.”
― Stephanie Thornton, Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

“The absolute truth is a wicked sort of rush. It's far more amusing than any lie. Both have the potential to empower and to hurt, but the truth is emotionally superior. Few people could fault you for it, not when you got ethics on your side. The truth is morally unassailable.

But is has no pity. It is merciless.”
― Tanya Thompson, Assuming Names: A Con Artist's Masquerade

“Religion is not the same as ethics. Religion in its fanatic state may be a passion devoid of morality that will take any means to an end.”
― Harold Schechter, Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“Being young's a sort of sickness,
Measles, mumps or chicken pox.
Gather all your toys together,
Lock them in a wooden box.
That means tolchocks, crasting and dratsing,
All of the things that suit a boy.
When you build instead of busting,
You can start your Ode to Joy.
Do not be a clockwork orange,
Freedom has a lovely voice.
Here is good and there is badness,
Look on both, then take your choice.
Sweet in juice and hue and aroma,
Let's not be changed to fruit machines.
Choice is free but seldom easy-
That's what human freedom means.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could it not? Flaminius was utterly gorgeous. But once she fell in love with him, she became happily enslaved.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“Never Give Up!”
― Michael Parker

“Ketal is not hell! It’s the K’tul homeworld. What is the difference?”
― Andri E. Elia, Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Adrian blew his whistle and shouted, “Attack and put too death all those who oppose the fatherland!”
― Michael G. Kramer, His Forefathers and Mick

“It has returned to us. Then the end has begun…”
― Cade Mengler, The Companions

“Will turned over the last words for a long time. Then he thought about the flashing message-light up in the kitchen.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life.
Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Day

“patience, prayer and turmeric; the foundation, the corner stones of my journey out of the darkness. Each one of these elements has played a critical role in the process. Since October, in addition to a diet replete in anti-oxidant rich foods, I’ve been ingesting cayenne pepper and turmeric four times a day. The cayenne I mix in a glass of water; the turmeric is hidden in lemon or blueberry yogurt.”
― Traci Medford-Rosow, Unblinded: One Man's Courageous Journey Through Darkness to Sight

“I went to Harvard for examination with two men not as well prepared as I. Both passed easily, and I flunked, having sat through two or three examinations without being able to write a word.'

The same happened at Yale, Both schools turned him down. He never forgot it.”
― Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City

“But let me begin with a statement of my own passionate and indignant belief--I do not care one goddamned thing about how James Dickey conducted his personal life. I care everything about what this man wrote on blank sheets of paper when he sat alone probing the extremities of imagination.”
― Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

“Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom.”
― Ammar Habib, Mary Edwards Walker: America's Only Female Medal of Honor Recipient

“Humans are designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort is not all that comfortable, even if they see clearly want for something better.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Your wish, my Qu—”
I press my finger to his lips. “Let us race.”
“You will not win.” Holden grabs my wrist and kisses it.”
― Tricia Copeland, To be a Fae Guardian

“It was the tone of a woman who wrapped needles in silk.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“Mary dashed the rain from her eyes with a frozen hand. Was that a knife buried in the man’s chest with the blood seeping up around it? Doesn’t that mean he’s alive? Although with the blade at that angle, it can’t be for long. Colors swam in the water coating Mary’s vision. She rubbed her face, and with every shuttering breath, even before she could see his features, she knew her son, George, the son she had never met, was dead.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Uncle was aghast. “You don’t know him! Well you’re the only one as doesn’t. They think the world of him in Listondale, I can tell you.” He lapsed into a shocked silence and applied a match to his pipe.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

“Gunter Grass said (in Dog Years) - 'It is dangerous to watch the staggering butterfly, there is a plan but it has no meaning.'
I think that pretty much sums up life.”
― Gunter Grass

“So many things are possible as long as you don't know they are impossible.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, The Land

“Eso lo dudo, porque dejarlo todo es un asunto difícil; sí, más difícil de lo que muchos creen.”
― John Bunyan, El Progreso del Peregrino

“Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your mind. Most people never get wealthy simply because they are not trained financially to recognize opportunities right in front of them.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad

“When each expects the other to live in his or her world, to always be there to join in his or her chosen activities, an ego battle inevitably develops.”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy