Tad Williams Quotes

As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it- memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.

You are only a prisoner when you surrender.

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever.

She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.

Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm.

...Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.

Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once.

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had

Has everyone gone mad?” “Everyone was mad already, my lady,” Cadrach said with a strange, sorrowful smile. “It is merely that the times have brought it out in them.

A man who will not listen carefully to advice honestly given is a fool. Of course, a man who blindly takes any advice he receives is a bigger fool.

Tangaloor, fire-bright Flame-foot, farthest walker Your hunter speaks In need he walks In need, but never in fear.

Confident. Cocky. Lazy. Dead.

Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered.

You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)

Every man is the hero of his own song.

the road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work.

Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival.

People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?

Stairs. This is Hell. Hell is stairs, was all Theo could think. I'd sell my soul for a goddamn elevator. But I don't have a soul, do I? I'm some kind of fairy. Okay, settle for an escalator, then.

Just get up. What's your name, kid?" "G-man" "I don't mean your codename down at the Dickhead Club. What does it say on your driver's license?

What does that mean, 'real'? Amn't I real, you? If you cut me, do I not bleed? If you piss me off, will I not kick you up the arse?

I'm tired of being lost and I'm tired of dying, so I'm going to try something different this time.

But our own selves are like pearls, created by layer after layer of present laid over past until the original thing is completely hidden.

A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good.

-You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell. -Call me that name again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe--from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?

There is no such thing as an accident. That's what science is all about. (...) There are only patterns we don't yet recognize.

Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman’s tongue? What good was beauty — a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless — if it cloaked such a viperous soul?

It's amazing the stupid things I say sometimes. I mean, you could start an entire branch of scientific research about the stuff I say that gets proved wrong while I'm still busy saying it.

So we face our final hours...and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.

If you wish to carry a hungry weasel in your pocket, it is your choice.

After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?

Sometimes I talk about baseball just to annoy people who don’t understand it.

See, vodka, that’s drinking. Beer—well, beer is just getting the inside of your mouth wet.

Experience came easily enough, learning how not to suffer would have proved much more practical.

When it falls on your head, then you are knowing it is a rock.

If your enemy comes to speak bearing a sword, open your door to him and speak, but keep your own sword at hand. If he comes to you empty-handed, greet him the same way. But if he comes to you bearing gifts, stand on your walls and cast stones down on him.

All people know the Greater Hunger...It is the hunger for warmth, for family, for connection to the stars and the earth and other living things..." "For love?" Renie asked. "Yes, I suppose that could be true.

God gives us all youth, and the takes it away again. What have you gained to offset that loss? Patience? Perhaps a little wisdom? Then be patient, and perhaps you'll also be wise. (Miriamele)

Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth

There were more problems with solitude than just being horny and bored. If you didn't have anyone to talk to for days on end, you didn't have anyone to let you know whether you were going nuts or not.

but sometimes when things go very wrong and even the highest are frightened, innocence is not enough for salvation.

If we do not reach our hands will always be empty.

Because love does not do sums, but instead make choices, and then gives its all.

A man whose wisdom is true does not sit in waiting for the world to come at him piece by piece for proving its existence!

Now I end my death song. I give my farewell to mountain and sky. It has been good to be alive.

Fight and live, fight and die, God waits for all.

Fear goes where it is invited.

But that is enough of such worrying. The river is waiting, and our hearts must be light, so we can faster travel.

If the road to Hell is paved in good intentions, a friend of mine used to say, the road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work.

I haven't met that many women, human or angelic, who actually like to drive. In my experience they seem to be much more pragmatic about the whole thing than we are. For most males, driving is an extension of their masculinity; they have little fantasy scenarios going all the time - races, chases, and dramatic combat with other drivers. Females, on the other hand, generally seem to view driving as something you do to get somewhere. I know, crazy.

In bad times, a king or a queen can be a rock for the waters to crash against, so those less strong are not washed away. I will be such a rock. Only give me a chance, sweet Zoria, and I will be a rock for my people.

Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that's my philosophy.

Go down." It seemed obvious. "You have to go down before you can come out - that's how these things always work.

What, you don’t have a sofa gun? I thought everyone did.

But remember this lesson, Simon, one fit for kings... or the sons of kings. Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.

... Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build--but what happens when in all the world there are only termite hills left but no bush?

Thank God for, as I posted earlier, the glow of work accomplished. Because a few seconds later, someone on the internet mentioned pie. I don’t blame them. It’s a good subject. But pie was mentioned and I remembered there was strawberry-rhubarb pie in the refrigerator. So I went there. And pie there was none. I suspect the teenaged boy has inhaled it. And now I cling to life and hope as best I can, because my world is dark and pieless.

To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind... but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless—except the one we’re fighting now?

Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds. No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds.

Every time you open your mouth,” Clarence said, “you just seem older and weirder.

You see, that is the secret of history, little Briony—who tells the last story.

So that's what--one "yes," one "not sure," and one "I had had a dream about a bug.

Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden.

Piercing My Hearte there is A Golden Dagger; That is God Piercing God's Hearte there is a Golden Needle; That is me

When you were old, did your memories crowd out your other thoughts? Or did you lose them—your childhood, your hated enemies, your friends?

Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.

... those people who believe in previous lives always think they were dukes or queens or something, ignoring the fact that most people back then spent their whole lives up to their knees in shit before dying of toothless old age at thirty.

It's always difficult when people compare me unfavorably with other contemporary writers. It's much easier when they use examples from earlier eras of fiction. Because then I can say, "Well, I may not be talented, but at least I'm not DEAD.

Theo knew enough about women and their clothes to recognize she was trying to strike an appropriate balance between... what? Between liking him and hating him? Between wanting to look good and not wanting to look too available? Just because he knew a mixed message when he saw one didn't mean he knew exactly which messages were being mixed

What's the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it's so beautiful it's embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever.

Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old god who had lost His grip.

Sometimes people need reasons for things, even when there are no reasons. That's what makes people believe in conspiracies or religions - if there is any difference. The world is just too complicated, so they need simple explanations.

The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make.

We survive. But when survival is the only goal, what do the survivors become? This

He turned up the car radio and punched buttons until he found something loud and thumpingly exultant, some piece of jolly stupidity from AC/DC.

He was a figurehead - an aging CEO of his own family who only showed up for the board meetings and wondered how so much got done without him.

Im Schlamm fing es an, wie so vieles.

He has about him still a kind of terrible beauty, as dangerously beguiling as the grandeur of a storm rushing across the sea.

Why were men so caught up with their honor, their solemn word, their promises? Half the time the promises were never asked of them in the first place. And yet the wars that were fought over such things, the hearts broken and the lands ruined..!

Do you listen to the wolves, Seoman?” Jiriki asked. “It’s hard n-not to.” “They sing such fierce songs.” The Sitha shook his head. “They are like your mortal kind. They sing of where they have been, and what they have seen and scented. They tell each other where the elk are running, and who has taken whom to mate, but mostly they are merely crying ‘I am! Here I am!’

When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort. The

It was frighteningly close to what he believed of his father at the worst moments - that he really was the kind of man who would send a letter signed "Sincerely, Cpl. Peter Vilmos" to someone he'd seen naked.

Music really did mean something to him, he realized, and it always had. It called to him, although there were no words to describe what it promised. It was like a secret language he never forgot how to speak, a hometown he could always return to when he tired of what life was throwing at him.

A part of me, of course, was reminding myself over and over and over again that I should never have tried to lie to the higher angels of the Ephorate. Hubris, the Greeks called that. “A dumbshit move,” might be a more contemporary way of putting it.

COME AWAY, dreamer, come away. Soon you will witness things that only sleepers and sorcerers can see. Climb onto the wind and let it bear you—yes, it is a swift and frightening steed, but there are leagues and leagues to journey and the night is short.

Dear Diary Went out shopping today. Picked up half a dozen sheep, two pigs, and a princess. The sheep are rather depressingly thin, the pigs and princess only slightly less so. Dear Diary Went out shopping today. Picked up half a dozen sheep, two pigs, and a princess. The sheep are rather depressingly thin, the pigs and princess only slightly less so.

Welcome to the Information Jungle.

How can you care for a rough man like me?' he asked me. 'How can you love a man who can bring you no lands but the farm a soldier's pension can buy? Who can give your children no title of nobility?' Because love does not do sums, I should have told him. Love makes choices, and then gives its all. Had he seen himself as I first saw him though, he could have had no questions.

It was only after they had left the bridge and its gaurdian far behind that Theo realized he had left Tansy's telephone-brooch in the pocket of his jacket. He had no plans to go back for it, of course: as far as Theo was concerned, that piece of two-legged ugliness was welcome to blow out Tansy's long-distance bill or download a ton of troll-porn and charge it to the Daisy commune. Betray me, huh? Taste the Revenge of Vilmos!

Johnny Battistini had gone to Japan once as a replacement drummer for a metal band past its prime ... a one-shot gig that he had talked about for years afterward. At the time, Theo had been frustrated by Johnny’s inability to describe Tokyo and why it had made such an impression on him. Although he spoke about it frequently ... he could never explain his fascination more clearly than: ‘It was just ... weird. It’s like a regular city, but then it’s all different and shit. But to them it’s not different. And that’s the really weird part!

Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course . .

Since your father has escaped my justice, it is you who must hear my words." "Words. You keep saying..." "Because that was the gift your father gave to me. And the curse that ruined me as well, changed my life to wretched misery. There are hours yet before the guard comes - nay, eons. An eternity, in fact. This is my time, Miranda. Now you will have your words back: before I kill you, you will hear my tale... and you will know what you have done.

During its timeless hours of movement and inspection, as it floated on the number-winds and learned from their shape and force, it had become aware of something else, something so far from the conceptual map of the environment it had originally been given as to briefly constitute a new danger to the Nemesis program's logical integrity.

I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they live there. Everybody else is just a tourist. Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away from the big hotels, and the residents pretty much have it to themselves when tourist season slows during the winter. Jude has character - everybody agrees on that. It also has that thing I like best about a city: You can never own it, but it you treat it with respect it will eventually invite you in and make you one of its true citizens. But like I said, you've got to live there. If you're never around after the bars close, or at the other end of the night as the early workers get up to start another day and the coffee shops and news agents raise their security gates, then you don't really know the place, do you?

I don’t get it,” Clarence whispered to me. “We’re the only ones in the place. When are your friends supposed to get here?” “Why, bab?” asked the cream pitcher, its top opening and closing like a tiny silver mouth. “Are you thinking about asking one of the waitresses out instead?” The chuckle that followed was a little coarser than the silvery-bell variety one usually expects from invisible spirits. Clarence let out a yelp like a dog whose tail has just found its way under a foot and was halfway to the front door before I could convince him to come back. At the other end of the long room the waitresses looked up without interest, then went back to discussing particle physics or whatever else was keeping them from bringing me a glass of water