Quotes by Editors - Page 21

...and on some nights in bed, in that moment before sleep erased the day, I would picture the way the sky in Lapland looked the morning I left, how the train had sped south beneath a sky that was brighter than it had been in weeks. It had pulsed with reds and oranges, as though hiding a beating heart.
Vendela Vida
Tana would sit near the door to the basement with fingers in her ears, tears and snot running down her face as she cried and cried and cried. And little Pearl would toddle up, crying, too. They cried while they ate their cereal, cried while they watched cartoons, and cried themselves to sleep at night, huddled together in Tana's little bed. 'Make her stop' Pearl said, but Tana couldn't.
Holly Black
Everyone, at nineteen, is dumb and beautiful in equal parts...
Raphael Kadushin
Paul needed to come out, not as gay or straight, but as human.
Christopher Bollen
Qui-gon shook his head. 'No,' he said firmly. 'I'm not testing you, Obi-wan. Life tests you! Every day it brings you new chances for triumph or defeat. And if you pass the test, it doesn't make you a Jedi. It makes you human.
Dave Wolverton
It means that the things that make us human often make us ill.
Jonathan Rosen
Having contact sheets for all sorts of episodes in your life seemed to me intriguing and desirable. So much of my own history is beclouded by time, but a few sharp rays, in the form of pictures, falling upon a given day would resuscitate whole contexts. And from this archipelago of moments, scenes, episodes, you could see the larger tectonic movements of your life forming and unforming. You would be reminded of who you are. Or at least of who you were.
Thomas Beller
I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
Will Schwalbe
Heroes in fact die with one's youth. They are pinned like butterflies to the setting board of early memories—the time when skies were always blue, the sun shone and the air was filled with the sounds and scents of grass being cut. I find myself still as desperate to read the Sussex score in the stop-press as ever I was; but I no longer worship heroes, beings for whom the ordinary scales of human values are inadequate. One learns that as one grows up, so do the gods grow down. It is in many ways a pity: for one had thought that heroes had no problems of their own. Now one knows different!
Alan Ross
In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior.
Leora Tanenbaum
I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?
Frank Herbert
Logic is not a sure enough defense against moral bankruptcy.
Mark Sappenfield
I'm not a robot. I'm a freak of the universe ... a thinking animal ... and I'm trying to see my way clear through this morass.
Alfred Bester
...the proper response to a lousy idea is not to stop thinking. It is to come up with a better idea.
Kevin Kelly
In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.
Ford Madox Ford
The test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.
Frank Herbert
I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy.And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal.
Charles G. Finney
It was different than all the rest because I say it was. I felt it was.
Katie Heaney
The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.
Holly Black
There are four things that make a man fight as you just did," the duke explained to Rumbold. "Love, despair, anger, or insanity."Erik counted them off on his fingers. "Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone's taken it, or you've lost it.
Alethea Kontis
All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities--even merely with the velvet.
Ford Madox Ford
No matter how fierce the enemy seems--when fear cripples us, anger enrages us, or selfishness possesses us; when adversity crushes us, opposition hounds us, or temptation plagues us--God is greater.
Katy Kauffman
I never liked telling war stories. Some men love to tell them. Hell, some men need to. They need to convince themselves that the war is over. But I'm not one of them.
Paul Allor
How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
Frank Herbert
Rebellion is all we'll be talking about. Love is revolution, a kind of coup d'état and cultural reprogramming in its own little way.
The Harvard Lampoon
The Hmong never had any interest in ruling over the Chinese or anyone else; they wanted merely to be left alone, which, as their later history was also to illustrate, may be the most difficult request any minority can make of a majority culture.
Anne Fadiman
Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music.
Philip Zaleski
Religion in art was a subtle business, best handled indirectly.
Philip Zaleski
American culture, perhaps more than any other, prizes individualism. Our narratives of art, politics, and business idolize the person who triumphs against the odds, with only himself or herself to answer to. The lone wolf. The stranger in town. The maverick. The plucky kid. The Final Girl. You've only got yourself, in the end. It's all up to you.
Andi Zeisler
Being postmodern, however, is about being complicit rather than virtuous, it is about approaching categories like Good and Evil with a certain ironic skepticism.
Veronica Hollinger
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
Frank Herbert
Sooner or later our souls find their centre of gravity in a hot, salt-tasting kiss and a trembling touch. Trembling is a good sign: it means you're open to a world that knows you're coming.
Louise Carey
I'm going to stay a little uptight and anxious.
Katie Heaney
I am obviously not a patient person.
Katie Heaney
But what I do believe is that if you're a girl who was born in Homsea, a girl who lives in a nothing kind of house with an ordinary kind of family, then you can't know everything about the world and that it's probably good to keep an open mind about things, just in case.
Karen Tayleur
... I don't believe in ghosts - not the scary white sheet, boogie-woogie type of ghost anyway. And yet ... I don't disbelieve either. I'm kind of sitting on the ghost fence, dangling my legs on both sides, not sure which way to jump. I think I might be here for a while.
Karen Tayleur
Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying
Holly Black
Have confidence in God's character, love, and power.
Katy Kauffman
Some things exist whether you believe in them or not
Holly Black
Believe nothing. Try everything.
Sally Brampton
But we who remain shall grow oldWe shall know the coldOf cheerlessWinter and the rain of Autumn and the stingOf poverty, of love despised and of disgraces,And mirrors showing stained and aging faces, And the long ranges of comfortless yearsAnd the long gamut of human fears...But, for you, it shall forever be spring,And only you shall be forever fearless, And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs,And only you, where the water-lily swimsShall walk along the pathways thro' the willows Of your west. You who went West, and only you on silvery twilight pillows Shall take your restIn the soft sweet gloomsOf twilight rooms...
Ford Madox Ford
Her tragedy, if she had one, was to be as normal and average as any child ever born.
Holly Black
I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don't know how to be this kind of villain.
Holly Black
The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.
Holly Black
If our minds can hold us back, then they can push us forwards too.
Sally Brampton
I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.
Sol Stein
Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.
William Zinsser
Languages, symbols and universals do not change, they cannot by virtue of what they – thus, with the passing of the Ages, Tradition does not change, but the form in which it decides to manifest does – thus some religions succeed whilst others fail and become extinct. Tradition itself can never cease to exist, but the religions which are its voice perish with the rise and fall of civilizations
Gwendolyn Taunton
The English language is simply not logical. It is strong, free, and beautiful.
Edward Nelson Teall
A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.
Philip Zaleski
The authors disclose that in less than a century the word "tension" grew from signifying a literal electric charge to a metaphor for emotional stress between two people. Writes Owen Barfield, "The scientists who discovered the forces of electricity actually made it possible for the human beings who came after them to have a slightly different idea, a slightly fuller consciousness of their relationship with one another.
Philip Zaleski
You are the language so universalyou are forgottenBe my linguistTurn meinto your words.
Bänoo Zan
You don't learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you're not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.
Bill Buford
Even without a kiss, this moment is perfect, and you wouldn't trade it for anything.
Jill Santopolo
Novels are readOr their authors are blue.Support Indie writers:Buy their books, post reviews!
Cheri Gillard
The first stanza of Eyes In Moonlight Drown, a poem from DeadVerse.With your face framed in a halo of stars,your hair melts into trailing clouds,and your eyes in moonlight drown.A man could lose himselfin those freckled irises,reflecting the galaxies above;surely he could fall into their promiseof eternity, of Heaven, of love.Your lips glisten, part, and beckon,a smile of warm invitation,a suggestion of sweet intensity,a loss of self in addictive agony.For we translate these aestheticsinto something mystical;ideas of fantasy, of fiction,obscuring the clinical truthof chemical reactions,electric sparks, responsesas sure as gravity,measurable yet beyond cold,above philosophy and below truth.
Scott Kaelen
He was of the mold from which great men are made. Having said of anything 'Let it be done' he at once felt not only that it was accomplished, but that he had done it himself.
Heywood Broun
It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
Frank Herbert
The art of fiction has not changed much since prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful story has remained the same: create a strong character, a person of great strengths, capable of deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a weakness. Set him in conflict with another powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let his exterior conflict be the mirror of the protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his desires, his own strength against his own weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking the world's knowledge and power -- the stories that stand out in the minds of the reader are those whose characters are unforgettable.To show other worlds, to describe possible future societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not enough. The writer of science fiction must show how these worlds and these futures affect human beings. And something much more important: he must show how human beings can and do literally create these future worlds. For our future is largely in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the actions of billions of human beings. This is a point that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a point that science fiction makes constantly: the future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it, our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is when we fail even to try.Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity.
Ben Bova
By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead.
Damon Knight