Malazan Empire: Quotes Thread - Malazan Empire

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Quotes Thread Possible spoilers!

#1 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 21 October 2018 - 03:35 PM

I'm surprised we don't have a dedicated thread for this already. Share your favorite quotes, poems, paragraphs, passages, dialogue, and so on here.

Include the book name and author. Label potential spoilers!
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#2 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 21 October 2018 - 03:37 PM

A simple one to start:

Quote

He stumbled, and those who were not gods helped him to walk along the road.


The Word For World Is Forest, Le Guin

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 17 December 2018 - 01:50 PM

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#3 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 21 October 2018 - 03:49 PM

Simpsons did it!
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#4 User is offline   Zeto Demerzel 

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Posted 22 October 2018 - 08:20 AM

Aral Vorkosigan to Miles in A Civil Campaign:


Quote

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

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#5 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 22 October 2018 - 09:19 AM

LOTR - there's so many potentially, but this has always been one of my favourites (and I do love this whole sequence in the films, from here through the Ride of the Rohirrim. Still makes me well up a bit.

Quote

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 22 October 2018 - 09:24 AM

- Wyrd bið ful aræd -
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#6 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 22 October 2018 - 05:57 PM

Here is an entire page of Harry Dresden quotes. https://www.goodread...g/harry-dresden



Do not click unless you have time to read all 228 of them.

You're warned welcome.
THIS IS YOUR REMINDER THAT THERE IS A
'VIEW NEW CONTENT' BUTTON THAT
ALLOWS YOU TO VIEW NEW CONTENT
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#7 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 22 October 2018 - 07:50 PM

""Relaxed and ready, he waits for me to start the Walk: the long slow measuring stroll where we both psych ourselves into the killing zone. He knows there has to be a Walk; he knows I have a profound respect for tradition."
— Caine, Blade of Tyshalle, Matt Stover.
THIS IS YOUR REMINDER THAT THERE IS A
'VIEW NEW CONTENT' BUTTON THAT
ALLOWS YOU TO VIEW NEW CONTENT
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#8 User is offline   Salt-Man Z 

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Posted 22 October 2018 - 08:13 PM

View PostMacros, on 21 October 2018 - 03:49 PM, said:


^ Macros posted it in a particularly obscure fashion, but this is the link to the original quote thread.
"Here is light. You will say that it is not a living entity, but you miss the point that it is more, not less. Without occupying space, it fills the universe. It nourishes everything, yet itself feeds upon destruction. We claim to control it, but does it not perhaps cultivate us as a source of food? May it not be that all wood grows so that it can be set ablaze, and that men and women are born to kindle fires?"
―Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch
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#9 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 23 October 2018 - 07:17 AM

+rep if you can get the quote that the link was nested in
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#10 User is offline   Traveller 

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Posted 23 October 2018 - 07:40 AM

I have so many stored on my kindle. Mostly from the Aubrey/Maturin series, as they are so perfectly worded. Some from Shogun, some from Neil Gaiman, plus all the others I haven't recorded.

As true then as now...

"Everyone knows that on a large scale democracy is pernicious nonsense – a country or even a county cannot be run by a self-seeking parcel of tub-thumping politicians working on popular emotion, rousing the mob."

The Yellow Admiral - Patrick O'Brian.

Oh and one more...

Stephen said, ‘There is another Frenchman whose name escapes me but who is even more to the point: La bêtise c’est de vouloir conclure. The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and loose ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent. Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.’"

This post has been edited by Traveller: 23 October 2018 - 07:02 PM

So that's the story. And what was the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge.
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#11 User is offline   Gintokian 

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Posted 23 October 2018 - 12:42 PM

View PostMacros, on 23 October 2018 - 07:17 AM, said:

+rep if you can get the quote that the link was nested in


South Park of course!
In the language of flowers corn stands for trust.
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#12 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 30 October 2018 - 01:12 PM

Quote

This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain...[T]o praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.


The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin

After hearing about this story my entire life, I've only just read it — this is probably the first story I can recall that was spoiled for me long in advance of my consumption. That is to my detriment, as the impact of the story's central question was that of a feather instead of a bombshell. Still, the above-quoted section stood out to me as being ever-relevant and incisive.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 30 October 2018 - 01:16 PM

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#13 User is offline   Gorefest 

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Posted 30 October 2018 - 04:37 PM

"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Dune


"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
1984

"They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it is obscene."
Apocalypse Now

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Animal Farm
Yesterday, upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
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#14 User is offline   Zeto Demerzel 

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Posted 12 November 2018 - 05:32 AM

Very early in my first Malazan re-read and this gem from GotM was particularly ... snort-worthy:

Quote

'Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying.
'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her.
'Because Adjunct, it is futile.'

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#15 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 17 December 2018 - 04:50 AM

Quote

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


— T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding, quoted in Harlan Ellison's Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans
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#16 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 09 January 2019 - 01:42 AM

Quote

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


— Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 09 January 2019 - 01:43 AM

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#17 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 05 February 2019 - 08:41 PM

Quote

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.


— Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
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#18 User is offline   Gorefest 

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Posted 06 February 2019 - 11:45 AM

"All things considered, science is the best means of understanding almost everything around us. It works well on the human scale and stands as a stark counter-point to beliefs that by their very nature refute the notion of evidence. And I would be the last person to attack people encouraging the rest of us to use our ability to be rational, thereby defending the value and the necessity of science. But I will lift a querying hand when the notion of 'science' is held to be immutable, because 'science' as such does not exist. Science is a process to be sure, a way of thinking, but what science is above all is that which scientists do, and alas, scientists are people, too. As potentially fallible, irrational, biased, greedy, in short, as flawed, as the rest of us. So, by all means defend science as a process. But don't confuse it with the very human endeavor of science as a profession. Because they're not the same thing. And this is why when some guy in a white lab-coat says 'you can trust me, I'm a scientist,' best take it with a big bucket of salt, and then say 'Fine, now show me the evidence and more to the point, show me how you got to it."

Sam August - Rejoice! A knife to the heart

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 06 February 2019 - 10:58 PM

Yesterday, upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
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#19 User is offline   Whisperzzzzzzz 

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Posted 06 February 2019 - 06:28 PM

Quote

At about the same time, in the kingdom of Atrocitus, the sixth amphibious division forsook naval operations for navel contemplation and, thoroughly immersed in mysticism, nearly drowned.


— Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad
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#20 User is offline   John II 

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Posted 04 May 2019 - 09:45 AM

Doesn't really belong to OL, but I was reading DoD and this caught my eye:
Spoiler

Although somewhat cliche, this quote excited me in a way similar to a Sabaton riff.
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