Insight Quotes

“Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).”
― Jess C Scott, The Other Side of Life

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.

MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.

CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.

MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.

CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.

MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.

CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.

MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.

CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating.

MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing.

CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?

MORPHEUS: I am hope.”
― Neil Gaiman, Preludes & Nocturnes

“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“There was no going back now. Rubber and metal could only take so much. The car could shatter and send its passengers into an elemental distillation of rock, flesh, blood, and ash. Alchemy, thought Mary, grimly. Too much bloody alchemy.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“The fire on the mountain.” That was Anna. “Alchemy,” she said. “I feel it singing in my bones.”
“Singing?” Mary would never understand Anna. The young woman turned away.
Wiseman’s reply was tinged with respect.
“That great pair of alchemists, Francis Ransome and Roberta Le More, believed the work they did affected the world’s spirit, the anima mundi. The Native Americans they met believed they too could and should interact with the Great Spirit. They lived with reverence for the land and all its peoples, the ancestors, the animals, the rocks, the trees, mountains.” 
Mary’s jaw dropped; Caroline glowed; Anna pretended not to listen. Wiseman nodded, then continued.
“You mean…?” began Mary.
“Yes, it could have been so different, a meeting of like-minded earth-based spiritualities. Just imagine, what could have been?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment? Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. ”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

“Bring me Mother Julian’s Scroll within two weeks, or I’ll get that guttersnipe Leni prosecuted for attempted murder. She won’t survive long in prison.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything--an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“You can’t escape me, I’m coming for you soon,” shrieked his hellish voice. Whether the beast was a man in a mask or a demon of his imagination, made little difference to Adam, He was petrified.”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“Waiting for the correct time to descend for cocktails, Mary sat on her bed and reviewed her impressions of the house party one by one. Belinda Choudhry M. P. she knew least. As mother of murdered Perdita, she was sure to be a volatile addition.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“Unbelievable and true. Anna Solokov is neither a frightened girl nor a criminal spider in the center of a huge web of drugs and god knows. No, that dangerous young woman could easily do both at different times, and to different people. No doubt that is part of George’s attraction to her. She is victim. Yet when necessary, or when it suits her, she is victimizer. Does he imagine he is battling for her soul?”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Falconers,” she continued, sternly. “Pull yourselves together. People are dying. The police don’t have the family history to solve murders forty years apart.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“A stumble may prevent a fall.”
― Thomas Fuller

“Never give advice unless you have walked the walk, because anybody can talk the talk.”
― Valencia Mackie

“Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you, that you didn't know about yourself.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“he couldn't entice me with his pills, hookers, guns or war mission”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...”
― Brian Greene

“Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Emotion is ‘recognition’. When treasured moments are identified in the jungle of our personal history during a visual or aural encounter, we capture magic sparks from our past, arousing flashes of insight and revealing an inner flare. These instants of recognition may kindle enthralling emotion and fulfilling inspiration. (“Those journeys of love”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Everyone knows that Africa is not reasonable place but if we can get
across that neither are we, we strengthen the bond with the continent.
People are not conscious beings, just ask any marketer. Irrationality
of the early explorers, irrationality of the new ones, irrationality
of the place we go into. What a great canvas we have to paint on...”
― Hendri Coetzee, Living the Best Day Ever