Chronicles Of Amber Quotes

I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.

Nobody steals books but your friends.

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.

I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.

There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.

Good-bye and hello, as always.

When I said I wanted to die in my sleep, I meant I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.

On his first hand he wore rings of stone, Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone. There were rings unseen on his second hand, One blood in a flowing band, One was air all whisper thin, And the ring of ice had a flaw within. Full faintly shone the ring of flame, And the final ring was without name.

Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great pleasures which need not be of short duration.

...the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.

Strygalldwir is my name. Conjure with it and I will eat your heart and liver." "Conjure with it? I can't even pronounce it, and my cirrhosis would give you indigestion.

I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket," Wil said. "And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake.

We fought.' 'A duel?' 'Nothing that formal. A simultaneous decision to murder one another is more like it.

Her eyes were luminous gold. I wondered if that was the last color a bug saw when it was trapped in amber—and if the bug thought, wow, that's beautiful, right before it was frozen forever.

All I want is someone who likes me." "All I want is a clear sign," I said. "All I want is a magical horse that fits in my pocket," Wil said. "And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake.

Of course it does not apply to me. I am the soul of honor, kindness, mercy and goodness. Trust me in all things.

In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils; and on that great Day of which the prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on the day the world is utterly cleansed of evil, then I too will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.

Thus did I bear Sir Lancelot de Lac to the Keep of Ganleon, whom I trusted like a brother. That is to say, not at all.

It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you.

There are none of you, good doctors, could cope with my family anyway.

Personal feelings don't make for good politics, legal decisions, or business deals.

Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when don't want them to.

In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...

While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.

Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.

I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably manlike, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice-sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother. I felt like the dee-jay of your choice.

I would never rest until I held vengeance and the throne within my hand, and good night sweet prince to anybody who stood between me and these things.

When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.

Wishes, wishes. Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true

The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls.

Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it. Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?' A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.' You enjoy this duty?' He nodded. I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.

I could see the widening of his pupils, and the pale blue fire of his irises. He'd told me my eyes would change too, would go lighter until they looked like amber. I couldn't imagine they'd be half as beautiful as his. He was gentle and self-deprecating and way tougher than people gave him credit for. And twin or not, he was even hotter than Quinn, in my humble opinion.

It was my turn to be silent while a small family of moments crossed my path, single file, from the left, sticking their tongues out at me.

The most difficult thing about Time, I have learned, is doing it.

Tonight I will suck the marrow from your bones!” it said. “I will dry them and work them most cunningly into instruments of music! Whenever I play upon them, your spirit will writhe in bodiless agony!” “You burn prettily,” I said.

Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me.

Winter shook her head, apology swimming in her amber eyes. Scarlet would have wanted to hug her if she hadn’t simultaneously wanted to strangle her.

While sex heads a great number of lists, we all have other things we like to do in between.

Time, too, is a function of Shadow, and even Dworkin did not know all of its ins and outs. Or perhaps he did. Maybe that is what drove him mad.

And the man clad in black and silver with a silver rose upon him? He would like to think that he has learned something of trust, that he has washed his eyes in some clear spring, that he has polished an ideal or two. Never Mind. He may still be only a smart-mouthed meddler, skilled mainly in the minor art of survival, blind as ever the dungeons knew him to the finer shades of irony. Never mind, let it go, let it be. I may never be pleased with him.

Blood!" I called out. Give me blood and vengeance this day, my warriors, and you will be remembered in Amber forever!" And as a man. they raised their weapons and cried out, "Blood!

As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and set it on its way. The note said "I am coming," and it was signed by me. A black bird of my desire came and sat upon my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west. It said, "Eric- I'll be back," and it was signed: Corwin, Lord of Amber. A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.

Добре. Още един ден и ние продължаваме да сме живи. Може дори мъничко бяхме помъдрели. Достатъчно, за да осъзнаем, че все още съществуват много неща, които трябва да научим. Да не губим надежда. Това е то.

I was willing to die fighting, but it was senseless for all these men to go down with me. Perhaps my blood was tainted, despite my power over the Pattern. A true prince of Amber should have had no such qualms. I decided then that my centuries on the Shadow Earth had changed me, softened me perhaps, had done something to me which made me unlike my brothers.

I have always found that hell is other people.

However confused I become, I will always hold close the notion that I could find freedom. I could leave this prison if I liked, if I wanted to … or if I didn’t see any other way. And if I did, I would not give you the satisfaction of burying me under a priest.

I tako, kad se već činilo da imam cijelu kuću na raspolaganju, odlučih se vratiti u knjižnicu i vidjeti što mogu otkriti. Osim toga, volim knjižnice. Osjećam se ugodno i sigurno okružen sa svih strana zidovima od riječi, predivnih i mudrih. Uvijek se osjećam bolje kad mogu vidjeti da postoji nešto što rastjeruje tamu.

Ill met by moonlight,' said Deirdre. 'You could still be tied to a stake,' said Random, and she did not reply.

I loved him like a brother - which is to say, not at all.

You leap too quickly to his defense. It reveals his true attitude, of which he has doubtless made you aware.

Death is the only limit to the road you travel.

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

Are you going to do it?" he asked. "Maybe," I said. Don't 'maybe' me, baby. It's written all over you. I'd almost be willing to go along, you know. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least." I lit a cigarette, while I considered.

Wishes, wishes," I told him, "Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true.

Before you are fully aware of anything else, you are aware whether you are awakening in your own bed.

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story.

We talked the moon out of heavens before either of us grew tired.

Did you just mentally pistol whip that guy, with his own gun? Nice, Amber. I would have just killed him.

Power is like money... You can usually get it if you're competent and it's the only thing you want in life.

Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen. …waters,where the stars shone like bonfires at night and the green of day was always the green of spring. Youth, love, beauty-I knew them in Avalon. Proud steeds, bright metal, soft lips, dark ale. Honor…

I was not always that way, but perhaps the shadow Earth, where I spent so many years, mellowed me a bit, and maybe my hitch in the dungeons of Amber reminded me somewhat of the quality of human suffering. I do not know. I only know that I could not pass by the hurt I saw on the form of someone much like someone who had once been a friend.

there is Shadow and there is Substance, and this is the root of all things. Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real.

Amber casts an infinity of shadows, and my Avalon had cast many of its own, because of my presence there. I might be known on many earths that I had never trod, for shadows of myself had walked them, mimicking imperfectly my deeds and my thoughts.

Heredity or environment? I wondered wryly. We were all of us, to some degree, mad after his fashion. To be honest, it had to be a form of madness, to have so much and to strive so bitterly for just a little more, for a bit of an edge over the others. He carried this tendency to its extreme, that is all. He was a caricature of this mania in all of us. In this sense, did it really matter which of us was the traitor?

What do you hunt with, then?” I ask. She fixes her wild amber eyes on me. “My teeth.” She smiles widely, displaying her long, white, glistening canines. The hairs on the back of my neck go up in alarm. “Oh,” I say, swallowing nervously. “You mean when you turn into a wolf?” “Not necessarily,” she says, still smiling dangerously. Holy

And again, damn. Of troubles I considered myself amply possessed. But those who have do seem to get. Some spiritual form of compound interest, I suppose.

While it shows the gods as no better than the rest of us," she said, "at least, it shows them as no worse. See here the sources of human morality.

We crossed a small but sturdy wooden bridge a little later, but no trolls were taking tolls.

Понимать себя и властовать над собою - это не одно и то же.

Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least.

Thus did I bear Sir Lancelot du Lac to the Keep of Ganelon, whom I trusted like a brother. That is to say, not at all.

The day was not yet over and it was already my most memorable Walpurgisnacht ever.

Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happened

All roads lead to Amber," he said, as though it were an axiom.

Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happend

The thing had been quite unpremeditated on my part. I had not even thought of her as a woman until she came into my arms and revised my thinking on the subject.

Ali gotovo uvijek idemo najkraćim putem, ravno, pa zaboravljamo da čovjek može napredovati čak i kad ide u krug.

I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms, hovering above a row of poplars. The

Most of the time he was simply Wolf: clever, inquisitive, and fiercely loyal. Sometimes he was the guide, with mysterious certainty in his amber eyes. Always he was a pack-brother.

My books were all on their shelves. Nobody steals books but your friends.

Only a fool believes that life has but one meaning.

He called the place Amber, and said that it was run by a half-mad family, with the city itself peopled by their bastards and folks whose ancestors they brought in from other places ages ago.

Yes,” he said. “But I wonder . . . I’ve a peculiar feeling that I may never see you again. It is as if I were one of those minor characters in a melodrama who gets shuffled offstage without ever learning how things turn out.” “I can appreciate the feeling,” I said. “My own role sometimes makes me want to strangle the author. But look at it this way: inside stories seldom live up to one’s expectations. Usually they are grubby little things, reducing down to the basest of motives when all is known. Conjectures and illusions are often the better possessions.

It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself.

Most people who daydream of transforming themselves into some vicious beast and going about tearing people's throats out, dismembering them, disfiguring them and perhaps devouring them tend mainly to dwell upon how much fun it would be and generally neglect the practicalities of the situation.

Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.

Spavati, možda i sanjati...

Foolish man, the woman spat coldly. A stronger, smarter generation is coming. They will walk the earth as the ashes of your organization rain from the skies.

Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true.

People who work in slaughterhouses know that there is a spot on an animal’s forehead to be found by drawing an imaginary line from the right ear to the left eye and another from the left ear to the right eye. They aim the killing blow an inch or two above the junction of this X. My uncle taught me that. He didn’t work in a slaughterhouse, though. He just knew how to kill things.

Stubama i dolje. Ni zvuka odozdo. Znači kasno je. Dobro. Još jedan dan, a još smo živi. Možda čak i malo mudriji. Dovoljno mudri da bismo shvatili da mnoge stvari još ne znamo. Doduše, imamo nadu.

Yes,' it announced then. 'You are the one.' 'The one what?' I said. 'The one I will accompany. You've no objection to a bird of ill omen following you, have you, Corwin?' It chuckled then, and executed a little dance.

In a room the size of a ballroom the Pattern was laid. The floor was black and looked smooth as glass. And on the floor was the Pattern. It shimmered like the cold fire that it was, quivered, made the whole room seem somehow unsubstantial. It was an elaborate tracery of bright power, composed mainly of curves, though there were a few straight lines near its middle. It reminded me of a fantastically intricate, life-scale version of one of those maze things you do with a pencil (or ballpoint, as the case may be), to get you into or out of something. Like, I could almost see the words “Start Here,” somewhere way to the back. It was perhaps a hundred yards across at its narrow middle, and maybe a hundred and fifty long. It made bells ring within my head, and then came the throbbing. My mind recoiled from the touch of it. But if I were a prince of Amber, then somewhere within my blood, my nervous system, my genes, this pattern was recorded somehow, so that I would respond properly, so that I could walk the bloody thing.

Pijesak, kamenje, vjetar, još narančastije nebo, gomila plosnatih oblaka prema kojima je padalo sunce... Potom duge sjene, umiranje vjetra, mir... Samo zvuk kopita na kamenju i zvuci našeg disanja... Prigušeno svjetlo kad se sunce sudarilo s oblacima... Zidovi dana potresani grmljavinom... Neprirodno jasni obrisi udaljenih predmeta... Hladan, električno plavi osjećaj u zraku... Opet grmljavina... Sad - uzbiban, staklasti zastor kiše koja mi se približava zdesna... Plave pukotine u oblacima... Temperatura pada, naš korak i dalje stalan, svijet sad posve jednobojan...

This is not intended as a record or a chronicle, but the poetry of fossils, a reminiscence of the end of civilization. The dinosaurs left behind almost no trace of themselves. A few bones preserved in the amber, the contents of their stomachs, their waste. I only hope that we may leave behind something more than they did.

Excuse me, please. You do not understand. You do not really understand who it was we talked with in the tent that night. He may have seemed an ordinary man to you – a handicapped one, at that. But this is not so. I fear Benedict. He is the Master of Arms for Amber. Can you conceive of a millennium? A thousand years? Several of them? Can you understand a man who, for almost every day of a lifetime like that, has spent some time dwelling with weapons, tactics, strategy? All that there is of military science thunders in his head. He has often journeyed from shadow to shadow, witnessing variation after variation on the same battle, with but slightly altered circumstances, in order to test his theories of warfare. He has commanded armies so vast that you could watch them march by day after day and see no end to the columns. Although he is inconvenienced by the loss of his arm, I would not wish to fight with him either with weapons or barehanded. It is fortunate that he has no designs upon the throne, or he would be occupying it right now. If he were, I believe that I would give up at this moment and pay him homage. I fear Benedict.

Sve dok nisam došao do čarobne riječi. Amber. (...) Riječ bijaše nabijena strahovitom čežnjom i golemom nostalgijom. Imala je, zamotan u sebi, osjećaj zaboravljene ljepote, grandioznih dostignuća i moći užasne i gotovo konačne. Nekako, ta je riječ pripadala mom rječniku. I nekako, ja bijah dio nje, a ona dio mene. Bijaše to ime mjesta, znao sam, mjesta koje sam nekoć poznavao. Ali nije izazivala nikakve slike, samo osjećaje.

Later, much later, I was to see this for the rationalization it was; my real reason for denying her the answers she desired was that I was not ready to trust her, or anyone, so close to me as I really am. Had I known her longer, better -- another year, say -- I might have answered her. I don't know. We never used the word "love," though it must have run through her mind on occasion, as it did through mine. It was, I suppose, that I didn't love her enough to trust her, and then it was too late. So, "I can't tell you," were my words.

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.