Catalyst (novel) Quotes

There is no one truth.

Even the brightest of dreams-come-true had shadowy recesses.

“Mathematics isn’t just science, it is poetry—our efforts to crystallize the unglimpsed connections between things. Poetry that bridges and magnifies the mysteries of the galaxy. But the signs and symbols and equations sentients employ to express these connections are not discoveries but the teasing out of secrets that have always existed. All our theories belong to nature, not to us. As in music, every combination of notes and chords, every melody has already been played and sung, somewhere, by someone—”

The Jedi were certainly aware of the tremendous potential, but they restrained themselves.” “Precisely what they did with the Force, as some have said. If they had made use of their full powers, the war would have ended in a heartbeat. And the galaxy would be in a different state entirely. For all their purported objectivity, they weren’t scientists, they were mystics. For a thousand generations that sufficed. Notions of right and wrong can no longer be dictated by a select group to safeguard some personal vision of the truth.

We’ll get this sorted out,” Galen said, trying to sound optimistic. “You’re not through with us yet.

Normalcy has taken leave of the galaxy.

I refuse to live my life under terms dictated by the Empire.

I guess research isn’t for everyone.” “Certainly not for the faint of heart or the unfaithful.

The Empire values dedication. Especially when it’s unswerving.

Well, could even a Jedi know the future?

Science doesn’t take sides, does it?

I don’t work for the Republic, and I’m certainly not about to work for Count Dooku.” “Science doesn’t take sides, is that it?

You don’t mind that the war will go on and on?” “Palpatine could have prevented it. Now it’s up to people like you to end it.” Tarkin nodded. “And so we shall.

And the Jedi?” Lyra asked. “Also doing what they can. But remember, Dooku is one of their own, and he’s a crafty opponent. At times he seems to be able to read our minds, if not simply outguess us.

You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.

The Empire was quickly becoming the other, a featureless grey enemy that species of varied sorts would be able to stave off only if they united, all differences set aside. It was almost heartening to witness the dawn of hope, as cautious and fragile as it was.

There was an art to learning what individuals were made of, to analyzing how they were put together, and then—when the moment was right—lining them up just so and driving the point home, breaking them along predicted lines; faceting them like one of Galen’s kybers. Obitt one way, Tarkin the other.

Some relationships are like glass its better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put the pieces back together again. When you start reading the Bunna Man, most of my readers hate Dre and then they realize that Dre doesn't really have any power. The only power he has is the one Saf gave him. What happens now is that by you reach the middle of the story, your anger turns from Dre to Saf cause you realize that Saf is the catalyst behind her own misery. If she'd leave Dre alone. Her suffering would end

Computer modeling showed the lasers’ twin collimating beams racing away from the Star Destroyer. Then, captured by gravity, the beams become one, changing vector and accelerating beyond lightspeed as it disappeared into the mask’s churning accretion envelope. Krennic watched the monitor in naked awe, wishing there was some way he could screen the results for Galen without sending him into cardiac arrest or fleeing for the farthest reaches of the galaxy. His legacy, in any case, his contribution to the greatest weapon ever constructed, was now assured.

Did it work?” “Did what work?” “Defiance. Was that enough?” “That wasn’t the point.” “What was?” “Believing that your actions mattered, and believing that a good end would come of them, even if you didn’t live to see the results.” Has snorted. “Cheery thought. Throw dirt in your enemy’s face, get crushed underfoot.” Saw stopped what he was doing and walked over to him. “Look at it this way, Has. If we can persuade enough people to start throwing dirt…” Realizing that he was supposed to finish the thought, Has considered it, then said: “Eventually we bury them.

You look at the history of any sentient species and what do you find but tableaux of violence and slaughter. It’s finger-painted on the ceilings of caves and engraved into the walls of temples. Dig a hole deep enough on any world and you’ll find the skulls and bones of adults and children fractured by crude weapons. All of us were fighting long before we were farming and raising livestock.” He held up a hand before anyone could voice an objection. “All of you are exceedingly well educated, and you’re going to start rattling off the names of species and societies where that isn’t the case. And my answer is that those aren’t the beings or the star systems we need to worry about. It’s the rest of them. Violence is hardwired into most of us and there’s no eliminating the impulse—not with an army of stormtroopers or a fleet of Star Destroyers. That’s why we’ve embarked on a path to a different solution. We have a chance to forge a peace that will endure for longer than the Republic was in existence.” “Peace through fear,” Reeva said. “Yes,” Krennic told her, and let it go at that.

Even if we fall apart, even if we don't stay together, even if we Die there is this beauty about Love that keeps us alive in each others' heart, acting as a catalyst for beating the heart.

He gazed around in near despair. Where he had never had an issue with so-called free time, he was suddenly lost without his research; torn between uncompromising tenderness for Lyra and Jyn and a sense of burden in being able to provide a flawless future for them. The Vallt he missed no longer existed; nor did the Coruscant he and Lyra had left more than a standard year earlier. Despite the changes war had brought to the Core it might still be possible for them to ride out the conflict here. Even if it meant avoiding HoloNet news reports and steering clear of conversations about war and politics. Surely they could manage that much. Perhaps the war would end as abruptly as it had begun and life would return to normal—or at least to what had been considered normal beforehand.

They had discussed it endlessly, and while he had never been less than encouraging and enthusiastic, she had begun to wonder whether he *wanted her gone*. And maybe that was actually the case; that at this stage of the research he felt that he needed to devote himself fully to it without having to concern himself with her contentment or Jyn's development -- precisely the way she often felt at at social occasions, worrying about whether he was having a good time.

For a brief moment he glimpsed a new destiny opening before his eyes, a window into a future he had never imagined for himself, a path to an entirely different life, and yet just as quickly as the window opened it closed, slammed shut as much by long years of training as by a feeling of trepidation.

What hope is there for freelancers like myself if the Empire is determined to vanquish every independent system?” he said. Glancing at Saw, Molo, and Yalli, he added: “All of us will end up Imperial employees, imprisoned, or dead.” Saw clapped him hard on the back. “That’s the spirit, Has. But there’s more to it than that. To the Empire we’re nothing more than clots of dirt they’d kick from their boots. Even Salient is nothing more than a trial run. Not when the goal is subjugation on a galactic scale. And that’s where we come in, even if it’s just to rattle them some: to rebel against injustice.

You have no idea what you’re fooling with. This is much bigger than me. This is much bigger than all three of us. I warned you not to go down this path.

Fiction can sway, suggest, inspire, push back, disgust, magnetise, tempt, or bore. While novels can be a springboard for advocacy and a catalyst for action, they can only indirectly lead to real change. Choosing to take action falls with the reader. Whatever happens after the book is read is out of the writer’s hands.

You look at the history of any sentient species and what do you find but tableaux of violence and slaughter. It’s finger-painted on the ceilings of caves and engraved into the walls of temples.

Mathematics isn’t just science, it is poetry – our efforts to crystallise the unglimpsed connections between things. Poetry that bridges and magnifies the mysteries of the galaxy. But the signs and symbols and equations sentients employ to express these connections are not discoveries but the teasing out of secrets that have always existed.

Providing power is the only way forward.” She

If in the end Erso’s research moves us closer to engineering a weapon for the battle station, then you will have not only my gratitude, but also that of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and the Republic itself.” Krennic restrained a smile. “We all play our part, Vice Chancellor.

For Galen,” Easel said. “The Separatists want his research. Phara must have promised to deliver him into their custody.

The central command computer,” he sputtered, his eyes leaking tears. “Republic forces took it out. That’s the only explanation.” Lyra pressed herself against his back while Jyn cried softly in the carrier. “I don’t even need an explanation.” What neither of them knew or could have known was that the war, so abruptly begun three years earlier, was just as suddenly over.

on an actual kyber, which Zerpen had gone to great lengths and cost to acquire. Relatively rare, the so-called living crystals were almost exclusively the property of the Jedi, who seemed to regard the kyber as sacrosanct. Finger-sized ones powered their lightsabers, and larger ones were rumored to adorn the ornate façades of their isolated temples.

The synthetic gem had been modeled on an actual kyber, which Zerpen had gone to great lengths and cost to acquire. Relatively rare, the so-called living crystals were almost exclusively the property of the Jedi, who seemed to regard the kyber as sacrosanct. Finger-sized ones powered their lightsabers, and larger ones were rumored to adorn the ornate façades of their isolated temples.

All of us were fighting long before we were farming and raising livestock.

THE SAVE THE CAT! SHORT SYNOPSIS TEMPLATE PARAGRAPH 1: Setup, flawed hero, and Catalyst (2–4 sentences) PARAGRAPH 2: Break Into 2 and/or Fun and Games (2–4 sentences) PARAGRAPH 3: Theme Stated, Midpoint hint and/or All Is Lost hint, ending in a cliffhanger (1 to 3 sentences)

From my recent blog tour interview: I recently spent time updating my Goodreads page to include the names of authors whose works inspire me, and as I thought about it, the characters in the books I liked all share certain traits in common. The heroes of the novels were highly competent men in the world of work. They had great families and friends. They were experienced with women. Everything was great, but something was missing. They were adrift in that their relationships with women didn't fulfill them emotionally. It was something they were actually aware of, or something acted as a catalyst that brought them face to face with their reality. I especially liked when the heroes were introspective enough to realize that they needed to do something about their lives.

Galen didn’t know anything about Tarkin, other than that he had served in the Republic Navy before being appointed adjutant general. A tall man some ten or fifteen years older than Galen, he had sunken cheeks, a high brow, and a look of penetrating intelligence.

You don’t mind that the war will go on and on?” “Palpatine could have prevented it. Now it’s up to people like you to end it.” Tarkin nodded. “And so we shall.

They stood together at the base of a sheer wall four meters high without ledges or toeholds and with nowhere to go. Below, battle droids advanced from both ends of the street, killing the few Lokori that remained standing, painting the street green with their blood and joining forces at the bottom of the fall. Everyone Galen and Lyra had run with was on the ground, dead or wounded.

In a hushed but serious tone, she said: “Galen, you know where these came from.” “Mygeeto, perhaps,” Galen said, distracted and still fascinated by the colorless kyber. “Possibly Ilum or Christophsis.” “Not their source world,” she said. “The size of them, the shape…” He finally turned to meet her wide-eyed gaze. “These could only have come from Jedi lightsabers.

EFFORTS HAD BEEN MADE BY Coruscanti who cared about such things to preserve some of the structures the B’ankora had built and lived in for more than fifty generations. In the rush to relocate the species’ sole survivors and complete the construction of the Celestial Power facility, the request to create a museum had been denied. Regardless, some of the B’ankora’s original paths remained, winding through gardened parcels, around landscaped areas, and past totemic sculptures and geometric assemblies of wood and stone. Since he rarely ventured outdoors, the paths were new to Galen, and he followed them without really taking notice, his feet and legs merely carrying him along. Neither was he aware of the day’s heat, the slight breeze tousling his long unkempt hair, the tiers of horizontal traffic above him, the faint roar of the city-planet. Ten thousand beings might have been observing him from the surrounding monads and arcologies, but he gave them no thought. He moved somnambulantly.

Sibil is a remarkable achievement, and this museum is the envy of galleries and spaces around the world because you have made your home here with us. Sincerity speaks steadily, taking a breath at each pause: You are being kind, Fernand. It is a great honor for me to work in this beautiful and prestigious building, which so captured my imagination when I was a little girl even before I saw it in mesh. It gives me deep satisfaction that my project will continue to be hosted by the European Museum, and that the museum will be a guardian of its development. Sibil will be the catalyst for a new era in the study of art. Through Sibil, we will rediscover aspects of our culture, and nature, that progress has made us forget. What better place for her to be than here? More

It was Supreme Chancellor Palpatine himself who had presented the schematic to the Strategic Advisory Cell at the second briefing. But in fact the battle station wasn’t a product of Republic research and development; it had originated with the Separatists. The captive Geonosian leader, Poggle the Lesser, maintained that Count Dooku had provided Poggle’s hive with the basic plans, and that the Geonosians had merely refined them.

The only humans among the research group, they were a long way from the Core, and even farther from the conflict that had recently erupted between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the so-called Separatists.

Forgotten secrets lie dormant...like a cancer of the soul, dependent only on the smallest of catalysts to devour one from within

Sometimes Lyra couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and at other times Galen wouldn’t speak for days on end, preferring instead to seclude himself and write or sketch. He was continually organizing and reorganizing his equipment, and yet he struggled to keep his footing on steep grades. Sometimes when they spoke she would feel as if she were conversing with a droid, though she came to appreciate the breadth of his knowledge and his facility for sustained attention. She began to recognize, too, that what she interpreted as hostility was actually a ploy that allowed him to maintain a safe distance from her while he sorted out what she wanted from him and solved the calculus of their relationship. The

The oracle has foreseen a chain of events which will lead either to our ruin or our salvation. But only you can set these events in motion. You are, of course, one of the catalysts.