All Quotes by Tad Williams
“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.”
“A king’s son has nothing but inferiors, each one a potential assassin.”
“I shall endeavor to turn dross to purest Metal Absolute: in short, to teach you something.”
““Now, boy, now...” he said bewilderedly, “what is all this talk of glory? Have you caught the sickness, too? Curse me for a blind beggar, I should have seen. This fever has cankered even your simple heart, hasn’t it, Simon? I’m sorry. It takes a strong will or practiced eye to see through the glitter to the rotten core.””
“Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”
“Simon, there are more things you don’t know than there are things that I do know. I despair of the imbalance.”
“The fear was all he had left, but even that was something—he was afraid, so he must be alive! There was darkness, but there was Simon, too! There were not one and the same. Not yet. Not quite...”
“Damn everyone to Hell. And damn the bloody forest. And God, too, for that matter.He looked up fearfully from his chill handful of water, but his silent blasphemy went unpunished.”
““This fellow,” he indicated the woodsman with a sweep of his stick, “will reliably not become more alive, but he may have friends or family who will be unsettled to find him so extremely dead.””
“We trolls say: “Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.””
““It would please me your not being obsequious. That is a trait of marketplace people who are selling shoddy goods. I am sure to prefer endless, stupid questions to that.”“Obsequious. Flattering with oiliness. It is not liked by me. In Yiqanuc we say: ‘Send the man with the oily tongue to go and lick the snowshoes.’””
“The wise man is not waiting for the realness of the world to prove itself to him. How can one be an authority before the experiencing of this realness? My master taught me—and to me it seems chash, meaning correct—that you must not defend against the entering of knowledge.”
““Neither War nor Violent Death,” Morgenes had written, “have anything uplifting about them, yet they are the candle to which Humanity flies again and again, as complacently as the lowly moth. He who has been upon a battlefield, and who is not blinded by popular conceptions, will confirm that on this ground Mankind seems to have created a Hell on Earth out of sheer impatience, rather than waiting for that original to which—if the priests are correct—most of us will eventually be ushered.”
“Not being stupid is important.”
“Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.”
““Is this being in love?” he suddenly wondered? It was nothing like the ballads he had heard sung—this was more irritating than uplifting.”
““Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,” the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, “lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.””
“Perhaps he was a bumpkin; at least he was an honest bumpkin.”
“If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.”
““Thank you, Duke,” the troll said seriously. “May your god be blessing us indeed. We go into unknown places.”“As do all mortals,” Josua added. “Sooner or later.””
“Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere.”
“No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.”
““There is nothing like the ocean to remind you of what is important,” she said quietly, and smiled. Cadrach’s returned smile was weak.Miriamele nodded solemnly, staring up at the bellying sails. “Those are good things to remember,” she said.”
““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...””
“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.”
““I have not slept well since I first entered my brother’s dungeons. While my comfort has improved since then, worry has taken the place of hanging in chains as a denier of rest.”“There are many kinds of imprisonment,” Jarnauga nodded.”
““Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess,” he said quietly. “Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their conscience with the gift of survival.”Miriamele thought about the obvious truth of what Cadrach had said as they walked on, but could not understand why it made her so unutterably sad.”
“Fear goes where it is invited.”
“Things are not always as old songs tell them to be—especially when it is concerning dragons.”
“Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.”
“Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: “what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.””
“She knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner.”
“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.”
“Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.”
“He wanted a home desperately. He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil would lend him a pillow.”
“There are three kinds of people—the living, the dead, and those at sea.”
““Do you get tired, singing?” she asked.Gan Itai laughed quietly. “Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.””
““As with all dwellings,” she said, “of mortals and immortals both, it is the living that makes a house—not the doors, not the walls.””
“The manchildren, the mortals, have many ideas of what happens after they die, and wrangle about who is right and who is wrong. These disagreements often come to bloodshed, as if they wished to dispatch messengers who could discover the answer to their dispute. Such messengers, as far as I know of mortal philosophy, never return to give their brethren the taste of truth they yearn for.”
“She didn’t know which she liked less, having people tell lies about her or having people know the truth.”
“Sometimes doing the gods’ bidding required a hardened heart.”
“She had little doubt that whatever happened to her on this drifting ship was of scant interest to a God who could allow her to reach this sorry state in the first place.”
“If the strong can bully the weak without shame, then how are we different from the beasts of forest and field?”
“I gave up the love of learning for the love of oblivion—the two cannot live together.”
“The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.”
“It was impossible to see warfare as anything other than what Morgenes had once termed it: a kind of hell on earth that impatient mankind had arranged so it would not have to wait for the afterlife.”
“Tiamak closed his eyes to make a short prayer of thanks, hoping that the gods, like children, could be confirmed in good behavior by praise.”
“She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.”
“It was easy to hate if he did not think, Simon discovered.”
“You can never tell when princes will get squinty on you. You can never tell when they might suddenly feel their blood and go all royal.”
“She had been dressed in her sky-blue gown and had been suddenly almost terrible in her completeness—so different from the ragged serving girl who had slept on his shoulder. And yet, the very same girl had been inside that blue dress.”
““Why can nothing be simple?”Geloë shifted on her stool. The wise woman’s voice was surprisingly sympathetic. “Because nothing is simple, Prince Josua.””
“Are these things you all say magical charms to chase me away? If so, they do not seem to be working.”
“Perhaps it is fortunate that most heroes who die for their people cannot come back to see what the people do with that hard-bought life and freedom.”
“Everyone at the Hayholt had seemed obsessed with the empty ritual of power, something Miriamele had lived with for so long that it held no interest for her. It was like watching a confusing game played by bad-tempered children.”
“Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more...”
“Strangely, although the world is already full of fearful things, mortals seems always to hunt for new worries.”
“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?”
“In times of badness, gold is being worth more than beauty.”
““You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power—something that in fact brings both in its train.”The count leaned forward. “Knowledge.””
“Binabik had taught him to do only what he could at any given time. “You cannot catch three fish with two hands,” the little man often said.”
“There was nothing he could do unless he accepted what was real.”
““In my experience,” he said with more than a touch of bitterness, “the gods do not seem to care much what their servants deserve—or at least the rewards they give are too subtle for my understanding.””
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”