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Tad Williams

69 quotes

“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A king’s son has nothing but inferiors, each one a potential assassin.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall endeavor to turn dross to purest Metal Absolute: in short, to teach you something.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Simon, there are more things you don’t know than there are things that I do know. I despair of the imbalance.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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...”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We trolls say: “Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.” “Ob...obseek...?” “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.’”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not being stupid is important.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ambitious men never believe others aren’t the same.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is this being in love?” he suddenly wondered? It was nothing like the ballads he had heard sung—this was more irritating than uplifting.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps he was a bumpkin; at least he was an honest bumpkin.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No charm is proof against a dagger in the back.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing like the ocean to remind you of what is important,” she said quietly, and smiled. Cadrach’s returned smile was weak. “Ah, by the Good Lord, that’s true,” he groaned. “I am reminded that life is sweet, that the sea is treacherous, and that I am a fool.” Miriamele nodded solemnly, staring up at the bellying sails. “Those are good things to remember,” she said.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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...”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fear goes where it is invited.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things are not always as old songs tell them to be—especially when it is concerning dragons.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: “what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are three kinds of people—the living, the dead, and those at sea.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no promises in life, Sludig, but it seems to me smarter to take fewer chances.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She didn’t know which she liked less, having people tell lies about her or having people know the truth.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes doing the gods’ bidding required a hardened heart.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the strong can bully the weak without shame, then how are we different from the beasts of forest and field?”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I gave up the love of learning for the love of oblivion—the two cannot live together.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The last thing a drunkard loses, you see, is his cunning: it outlasts his soul by a long season.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old God who had lost His grip.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tad Williams (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source