The Jacka Quotes

I've heard of a guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard",though that's probably a urban legend.

If you can’t have another ally,” I said at last, “next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.

Has anybody ever told you you’re a remarkably cynical person?” “I like to think of it as learning from experience.

Starbreeze doesn't rest, doesn't sleep and can hear anything carried on moving air. It'd make her the perfect spy, except that most of what she hears goes in one ear and out the other. "I'm looking for a Precursor relic, a new one" "What's a relic?" Starbreeze said curiously. "A powerful magical thing. It would have been found a week or two ago" "What's a week?

Those of us who do like visitors have to advertise, and it’s tricky to find a way of doing it that doesn’t make you sound crazy. The majority rely on word of mouth, though younger mages use the Internet. I’ve even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under “Wizard,” though that’s probably an urban legend.

I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I cannot sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.

As I walked, I started making a list of everyone in the mage world whom I’d opposed, fought with, or otherwise irritated. After I ran out of fingers to count on I decided to limit the number to people I’d pissed off relatively recently.

As a general rule anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice [...]

If you write down someone’s life, do they live for ever?

I’ll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I’m seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train’s going to come. And after that, another train’s going to come. Here, I’ll let you guess what’s going to happen afterwards. I’ll give you a hint—there’s a train.

I suppose I should look on the bright side. I might be going to an indictment, but at least it wasn’t mine. Yet

It wasn’t a passing shower but a steady drumbeat of water, the kind of rain that settles in, puts its feet up and makes it clear that it’s not going to leave.

Do not mistake my courtesy for weakness.

Whoever had designed the block of flats had obviously worked to a clear set of priorities. Unfortunately, while cost, size, and low-maintenance had made it to the top of the list, aesthetics, good escape routes, and shelter from gunfire hadn’t.

If there’s one thing all diviners share, it’s curiosity. We really can’t help it; it’s just part of who we are. If you dug out a tunnel somewhere in the wilderness a thousand miles from anywhere and hung a sign on it saying, ‘Warning, this leads to the Temple of Horrendous Doom. Do not enter, ever. No, not even then’, you’d get back from lunch to find a diviner already inside and two more about to go in. Come to think about it, that might explain why there are so few of us.

Maybe you’ve already guessed by now, and you’re sitting there wondering how I could take so long to figure it out. If you are, all I can say is that it’s a hell of a lot harder to step back and look at the big picture when you have to keep watching your feet for land mines.

It’s so easy to believe that today’s going to be the same as yesterday, and most of the time it is the same as yesterday, and so it just goes on, one day after another, blending into a comforting sameness. Until it stops. I

Human beings tend to react better to good-looking people. It’s called the halo effect—someone’s attractive, so you trust them more. It’s natural, which makes it a hard habit to break, but once you start dealing with magical creatures you’d better learn to break it, and fast, because some of the most vicious things out there can make themselves look like absolute angels. Like unicorns. Don’t get me started on unicorns. For some reason everyone has this idealised image of them as beautiful innocent snowflakes. Beautiful, yes. Innocent, no. After you’ve had one of the little bastards try and kebab you, you wise up quick.

For years I'd been trying to forget..., locking it up and burying it deep in my memory. The journey... had shattered that, bringing it all back - but now that I'd faced it, I found to my surprise that the fear had been worse than the reality.

Other mages have an odd attitude towards diviners. By the standards of, say, elemental mages. We can't gate, we can't attack, we can't shield, and when it comes to physical action our magic is about as useful as a bicycle in a trampolining contest. But we can see anywhere and learn anything and there's no secret we can't uncover if we try hard enough. So when an elemental mage looks at a diviner, the elemental mage knows he could take him in a straight fight with no more effort that it would take to tie his shoes. On the other hand, the elemental mage also knows that the diviner could find out every one of his most dirty and embarrassing secrets and, should hi feel like it, post copies of them to everyone the elemental mage has ever met. It creates a mixture of uneasiness and contempt that doesn't encourage warm feelings. There's a reason most of my friends aren't mages.

Congrats, you’ve just had your first assassination attempt.

I suppose I should be grateful there isn’t any slash fiction. On second thoughts, I’m not going to look too closely just in case there is.

I suppose I’m . . . just less interested in the far future? The present seems more important.

Tricking people who want to hurt or manipulate me? Something I’m good at. Getting people to like and trust me? Something I’m bad at.

Richard is a far worse enemy to me than you will ever be. If I were in a room with you, Richard and a gun with two bullets, I'd shoot Richard twice.

Power doesn’t need a purpose: Power is its own purpose. It is the only goal that has value in itself, because it is the means by which all other goals are achieved.

It's the things with no price tag that ends up costing you the most.

Reluctantly, she promised to be there and not to try to run away. As soon as I was out of sight, Meredith tried to run away.

If this is how you guys run your ops,’ Kyle said, ‘I’m starting to seriously wonder how you’re still alive.

The noise makes your heart jump, but hearing a sniper bullet is a good thing. The bullet outruns the sound wave; if it’s on target, it kills you before you ever hear the sound of the shot.

I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I can not sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.

If there’s one thing all diviners share, it’s curiosity. We really can’t help it; it’s just part of who we are. If you dug out a tunnel somewhere in the wilderness a thousand miles from anywhere and hung a sign on it saying, Warning, this leads to the Temple of Horrendous Doom. Do not enter, ever. No, not even then, you’d get back from lunch to find a diviner already inside and two more about to go in. Come to think about it, that might explain why there are so few of us.

Someone who’s amoral and selfish can be a threat to you, but they’re also a threat to everyone else, and that tends to limit how much time they can spend on you personally. But someone who believes in what he’s doing can convince other people that opposing you is the right thing to do. In the long run, that’s a lot more dangerous.

You’re worse than a warlord. You’re a bad teacher.

she’d learned to bring the kinds of things he asked for. Which, apparently, mostly consisted of tea, good food and high explosives.

don’t want to spend my afternoon picking you off the pavement.

I've been waiting for this a long time."-Martin "Let me guess that you're wishing for your IQ to break double figures?"- Alex V.

My would-be assassin was a very good shot.

The worse things got, the more you needed to keep calm. Figure out what you had going for you.

What’s so urgent anyway?’ Johnathan asked. I stepped out into the summer night. ‘Meetings.

Humans have a habit of thinking in two dimensions rather than three. We remember to guard the back door and the front door; we don’t usually guard the roof.

Sorry, Sarque. Well, actually, I’m not sorry at all. I’d say it was nothing personal, but it really is.

You weren’t using that hand at the restaurant either.’ ‘That’s because it doesn’t work.’ ‘You’re doing an op like this with only one hand?’ ‘Yes.

Somehow, though, neither her clothes nor her features seemed to matter—they were the adornments of a painting or a picture, not the real thing. What made her so captivating was something else, not so easily named: the way she moved, the glance of her eyes, the manner and sound and form. All I wanted to do was sit and gape. If I’d let myself fall into her eyes, I think an army of constructs could have battered down the door and I wouldn’t have noticed.

I once read an article which made the argument that modern Western schools have a good deal in common with modern prisons, and I’ve always thought it was pretty accurate. With both schools and prisons, the ones running the system have a very simple set of priorities for their inmates: they want them to stay on the premises, they want them to stay healthy and watered and fed, and they want them not to be gratuitously violent in a way that’ll draw public attention.

So?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes, Talis. Well, I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have his severed head delivered to Levistus in the middle of their drinks and canapés. That would be wrong. Not to mention quite time-consuming to arrange.

You’re lucky you didn’t know him back in his tech phase. There was this time in our second year when we were living in the same house. Kitchen table kept wobbling so Landis shoved this metal saucer under one of the legs. Wasn’t until two weeks later we found out it was a land mine.

agricultural economy based upon farming, to an industrial economy based upon factories,” Charles told me. “Factory workers must possess very specific skills. They must be educated to a basic minimum standard of literacy and numeracy, and they must be reliable, nondisruptive, and good at following instructions. Most importantly, they must do exactly what they are told, when they are told to do it. Industrialising countries lacked such workers, therefore institutions were set up to produce them. Replaceable parts for a machine.” I

Ale to, co naprawdę mnie przyciągnęło. to cecha, która pociąga większość dziewczyn - był emocjonalnie martwy. A ja wierzyłam, że mogę go naprawić. Myślałam, że potrafię się przebić przez twardą fasadę i odnaleźć prawdziwego Jacka, wrażliwego mężczyznę, ukrywającego się pod tymi wszystkimi tatuażami.Właśnie dlatego, że nigdy nie pokazał po sobie krztyny wrażliwości czy emocji, wierzyłam, że jest najbardziej czułym i wrażliwym człowiekiem na ziemi. Wierzyłam, że ja - i tylko ja - jestem w stanie skruszyć jego pancerz i zamienić go w niegrzecznego ukochanego, o jakim zawsze śniłam. Jakże niedorzeczne! Teraz wiem, że jeżeli umawiasz się z kimś, by go ulepszyć, nie jesteś wcale w związku miłosnym. Jesteś po prostu pielęgniarką. Prosta prawda, a jednocześnie najtrudniejsza lekcja, której doświadcza kobieta - dostajesz to, co widzisz.

Okay, next one’s . . . a little figure of a cat.” “Can you tell what it is?” “Kind of . . . It feels like it’s something for talking. Communicating? Does it let you talk to cats?” “Not bad,” I said. That had been right on target. “It’s a summoning focus. Toss it over and I’ll show you.” Luna slid the figurine across the desk and I picked it up. It was made of alabaster, and I traced a finger across the smooth surface to the cat’s chest and tapped it. “See this point? When you channel your magic there, it sends out a call to the nearest feline within range of about the right size and draws it to you.” “So it summons a housecat?” “As long as there’s one around.” “That sounds cool. So what, you can get it to spy on people and stuff?” “No, it acts like a normal cat. It checks to see if you’ve brought it anything to eat, and if not it buggers off.

En händelse utmärker sig. En gång när vi var ute tillsammans hade Marit på sig en ullig rosa tröja som fällde som en collie om våren. Jag måste ha hållit henne tätt intill mig när vi sa godnatt, för nästa morgon upptäckte jag att tröjan hade luddat av sig på min jacka som nästan var alldeles skär. Under den halvtimme som det tog mig att få bort luddet vällde det upp en överväldigande känsla av ömhet inom mig, den sortens ömhet som uppslukar en helt och hållet och gör kroppen svag. Om jag fick veta att jag bara kunde spara en enda minnesbild ur livet och att alla de andra måste försvinna, skulle jag välja denna, inte så mycket av romantiskt nostalgiska skäl utan för att händelsen markerade ett betydelsefullt ögonblick i livet. Den pekade framåt mot vårt giftermål, mot de två barn vi skulle få tillsammans, det hem vi skapade och den glädje och sorg vi skulle dela. Jag tänker mig far sitta på sängkanten eller på en stol i ett litet rum med jackan i knäet. När han tar de som troligen var angoraludd mellan tummen och pekfingret och kastar det i en papperskorg eller samlar ihop det till en boll att slänga senare, förstår han att han är förälskad. Det händer inte medan han tittar på den unga kvinnan eller kysser henne, inte ens när han senare den kvällen ligger i sängen och tänker på henne. Det händer följande morgon, när han upptäcker att hennes tröja har blandat sig med hans jacka. Tillsammans blir plaggen drivkraften i en metafor som jag anar att far bara upplevde subliminalt. Dolt bakom den "nästan skära" jackan finns löftet om två passionerade kroppar, den ena inuti den andra. Som gammal minns han intensiteten i sina känslor och förstår att saker och ting tog en ny vändning i det ögonblicket. Jag tror att det fanns mycket som far ångrade, mer eller mindre med rätta, men inte den halvtimme som han tillbringade med en luddig jacka ensam i sitt rum i Oslo. (180-181)

Crusaders decide to go public and accuse me of

There’s a feeling you get when you’re under pressure: a kind of nonstop anxiety, where it seems as if you’re spending all your time reacting to one crisis after another instead of doing anything yourself. I’ve had that feeling before, and one of the things I’ve learnt over the years is that when you get it, it means you’re doing something wrong.

Miłość to za skromne słowo, nie uważa pan? Mam przyjaciółkę w Fern Tree, która uczy gry na fortepianie. Ona jest bardzo muzykalna, a mnie słoń na ucho nadepnął. Ale pewnego dnia ta przyjaciółka powiedziała mi, że każdy pokój ma swoją nutę. Trzeba ją tylko znaleźć. Zaczęła przebierać palcami po klawiszach, tam i z powrotem, i nagle jedna nuta powróciła do nas, po prostu obiła się od ścian, uniosła nad podłogą i wypełniła cały pokój takim jakimś doskonałym pomrukiem. Pięknym dźwiękiem. Było to tak, jak gdyby rzucił pan śliwkę, a ona wróciła by do pana całym sadem. Nie uwierzyłby pan w to, panie Evans. To takie dwie kompletnie różne rzeczy, nuta i pokój, a jakoś się znalazły. Ten dźwięk brzmiał… dobrze. Nie mówię jak idiotka? Czy sądzi pan, że właśnie to mamy na myśli, mówiąc o miłości? Taką nutę, która do nas powraca? Która znajduje pana nawet wtedy, kiedy nie chce pan zostać odnaleziony? Że pewnego dnia znajduje pan kogoś, a potem wszystko czym ten człowiek jest, powraca do pana jakimś dziwnym pomrukiem? Który pasuje. Jest piękny. Nie potrafię dobrze wytłumaczyć, o co mi chodzi, prawda? Nie jestem zbyt elokwentna. Ale tacy właśnie byliśmy, Jack i ja. Właściwie się nie znaliśmy. Nie wiem, czy wszystko w nim mi się podobało. Pewnie miał w sobie coś, co mnie irytowało. Ale ja byłam tym pokojem, a on tą nutą, i teraz Jacka nie ma. I wszędzie panuje cisza.

There are some things so horrible you never really get over them; they make a kind of burnt-out waste-land in your memory, and all you can do is try to move on.

She didn’t look like a monster last time,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘More like a victim.’ ‘A lot of monsters start out that way.

It's easy to say there's another way of you're not the one who has to find it.

Loving someone is a warm feeling, like having a small well-banked fire burning steadily inside you

He looked at Luna. “You got that cube? Maybe that’d do it.

Not everything is about you.

Czy nieproporcjonalność polskich reakcji na wystąpienie szefa FBI pokazuje, że wciąż jesteśmy w tym samym miejscu? W jakimś sensie nie jesteśmy. W powstających od lat pracach Barbary Engelking, Jacka Leociaka, Jana Grabowskiego, Dariusza Libionki czy Aliny Skibińskiej mordowani lub wydawani przez polskich sąsiadów odzyskują swoje imiona i swoje historie. Z tych prac wynika jednoznacznie, że mord w Jedwabnem i pogrom w Kielcach nie były incydentami. Że zabijanie Żydów na polskiej wsi podczas okupacji niemieckiej, nawet jeśli – jak to ujął kiedyś Krzysztof Persak – nie było zjawiskiem powszechnym, to było zjawiskiem powszednim. Z drugiej strony, tyle o tym w III RP napisano, a przecież za każdym razem, kiedy ukazywała się nowa książka Jana Tomasza Grossa, kiedy w kinach pokazywali „Pokłosie” czy „Idę”, ba: nawet kiedy świadek tej rangi, co zmarły w dniu pisania tego tekstu Władysław Bartoszewski, mówił w jednym z wywiadów, iż podczas okupacji na warszawskiej ulicy nie musiał się bać niemieckiego oficera, tylko sąsiada-Polaka, który zauważył, że kupił więcej chleba niż zwykle – można było odnieść wrażenie, że wracamy do punktu wyjścia.

Russell Square is one of the odder areas of London.

Maybe this was how rich people stayed on top. They didn’t run around doing things themselves—they made sure their position was better than everyone else’s, then got other people to do stuff for them.

Educational institutions exist to serve the needs of those who operate and fund them,” Charles said. “In the case of this country’s elite universities, the way they serve those needs is by functioning as a finishing school for the ruling class.

You know I never profess to be a lady, Raff.

Will you quit following me, Raff? There must be criminals out there you need to arrest, or shoot, or . . . something.

European history is one very long study in conflict, violence and rule-breaking.’ ‘Haven’t we advanced beyond that?

It's because I've screwed things up so badly," I told the blink fox. "When things go a little bit wrong, you want to fix it. When they've gone this wrong, you just want to quit. I don't want to go back and pick up the pieces. I mean, I already tried once. Why would it be any different?

You think I should stop feeling sorry for myself and go do something?" Blink. I gave a wan smile. "Direct and to the point.

I did have a choice. I'd always had a choice. Richard had been trying to teach me that, in a way. It was just that accepting that lesson would have meant giving up things I cared about.

But there’s a certain point where trying to choose the lesser of two evils is just an exercise in futility.

There hadn’t been a moment where I’d had a clear choice between good and evil. I’d just had to choose between bad options, over and over again, and things had kept getting worse.

If you can’t get another ally, next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.

My bank accounts were getting low—weeks on the run will do that to you—but I knew I could build them up again with a little time.

Haken sighed. “World doesn’t always work the way we want it to, Verus.” Haken was maybe in his midthirties, but all of a sudden, in the flashing police lights, he looked much older and very tired. “Just have to live with

depressed person might gain more stomach fat than a non-depressed person even if their diet and exercise were the same.

This book tells the story of that journey and explains how and why we should consider our food as the basis of our mental and brain health throughout our lives.

Those who lack purpose are pawns to those that do

Those who lack purpose are pawns to those that do not

Maybe that scrawny animal she passes as a dog was attacked by a chicken and she intends to request you arrest the chicken's owner. Or the chicken.

Elsewhere is a world, but it’s not a place. It’s empty, yet you seem to meet someone no matter where you go. You can’t travel to it in the flesh, only in dreams, but the things that happen can be real, and the creatures you meet play by rules you can’t understand.

Why do we do what we do? I think the reasons run deeper than we can know, and often we can only guess at the truest one.

If you can’t have another ally,’ I said at last, ‘next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.’ Luna

Eisenhower Matrix, a method of ordering tasks by importance and urgency. The idea is that you file every task into one of four quadrants: important and urgent; not important but urgent; important but not urgent; and neither important nor urgent. Depending on which of those four a task is in, you do it, delegate it, schedule it or ignore it.

Resentment is an unproductive emotion,

There’s a saying that the chances of a secret leaking is proportional not to the number of people who know, but to the square of the number of people who know.

There was a tree a few steps away; I stalked towards it and kicked it, hard. Pain jolted up my leg. The tree didn’t move. I

AN AVALANCHE BEGINS A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. (blades of grass beneath the stone. ask the rock why it falls.)

Arachnophobia’s no match for shopping, huh?

Oh, come ON. It was Jarnaff, and he was being followed by a whole strike team. Was there a single mage in Britain who hated me who wasn’t in this place?

If you have one problem, you have to solve it yourself. If you have lots of problems, sometimes you can get them to solve each other …

Vihaela is like a dancer, darting and graceful. Landis is the only Light mage I’ve seen who can match her; he’s not as fast, but his technique is so perfect he doesn’t need to be. Morden almost doesn’t fight at all; he just overwhelms opponents with single crushing attacks which end the battle before it ever really starts.

If you want to go to a hamburger restaurant, why not pick a decent one?’ ‘Some of the food here isn’t bad,’ I said. ‘Like what?’ ‘Fries,’ Cinder said. I pointed at Cinder. ‘What he said.’ ‘They’re just oil-fried potatoes doused in about ten different chemicals.’ ‘Yes, but they’re thin oil-fried potatoes. Do you know how hard it is to find decent-quality thin fries in the UK?

If you’re competent, then violence is your first option and last resort.

Everything changes. Pick any constant about your life and wait long enough, and it’ll be different. We all know that, but for some reason, it’s a hard lesson to remember. I suppose it’s because to do anything, we have to assume that things won’t change – you can’t make plans without assuming a certain degree of permanence. And for the most part, that assumption turns out to be true. Until it isn’t.

f a t e d BENEDICT JACKA

I’ve even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under “Wizard,” though that’s probably an urban legend.

Use your phone,’ Cinder said. ‘Mind-to-mind is quicker.’ ‘Yeah, and it’s creepy as shit,’ Cinder said. ‘Phone.

At the end, in the light of the stars, trust in your friends and forgo the greater power for the lesser.

But what we do have is knowledge, and applied in the right way that can be some pretty impressive leverage.