Zach Laengert > Zach's Quotes

“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king […] White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning. For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“I do bad at school because sometimes I think when I should be learning.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“Even monsters seek companionship. Or an audience, anyway.”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Stratagem

“All communication is manipulation,” Jedao said. “You’re a mathematician. You should know that from information theory.”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Are you always a smartass?'

Nope. Sometimes I'm asleep.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“We are not going to die."

Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?"

"No. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on the shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“But for a society buit on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity,” he recited, all in one breath. “Correct?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“Choose again.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
― Angela Davis

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Whatever the fuck might you be talking about, Carolyn dear?”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
― G. M. Gilbert

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?"

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings