Natalie > Natalie's Quotes

“When in doubt, shoot the wizard.”
― Tamora Pierce

“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“He spoke for an hour on the nonviolent road to independence. The crowd loved it so much they rioted and killed twelve people.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which... is at home at the moment.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I comfort myself with the knowledge that if Duval ever feels smothered by me, it will be because I am holding a pillow over his face.”
― Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“It is this kindness of his that unsettles me most. I can dodge a blow or block a knife. I am impervious to poison and know a dozen ways to escape a chokehold or garrote wire. But kindness? I do not know how to defend against that.”
― Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“So.... You are well equipped for our service.'
'Which is?'
'We kill people.”
― R.L. LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“I stare at him coldly. "I do not care for needlework." I pause. "Unless it involves the base of the skull.”
― R.L. LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“I am left with the conviction that an avalanche would be easier to dissuade than that man.”
― R.L. LaFevers, Dark Triumph

“He flashes a grin that is two parts death and one part humor.”
― Robin LaFevers, Dark Triumph

“That's very kind of you," she said bitterly, for she no longer believed in kindness. "And you're willing to do this...why? Because you're fond of helping others?"

"I'm fond of revenge," the dragon answered.”
― Vivian Vande Velde, Dragon's Bait

“Ginny!" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.”
― Cormac McCarthy, 로드

“The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? … The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to th waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“In the deep glens where they lived, all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back” (210)”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn before battle.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road