“Does it work? Are they happier dead?”
“Sometimes. Mostly, no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you, if you see what I mean.”
Genre: Fiction
Miguel de Cervantes — Don Quixote (1615)
“I must remind you that there is no memory to which time does not put an end and no pain that death does not abolish.”
“Well,” said Panza, “what greater misfortune could there be than that of having to wait on time and death?”
Miguel de Cervantes — Don Quixote (1615)
There are other small details that might be mentioned, but they are of little importance and have nothing to do with the truth of the story—and no story is bad so long as it is true.
Robert Jordan — Winter’s Heart (2000)
A man who trusts everyone is a fool, Lews Therin said, and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools, if we live long enough. He almost sounded sane.
Robert Jordan — The Path of Daggers (1998)
Whether or not what you do has the effect you want, it will have three at least you never expected, and one of those usually unpleasant.
Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book
2008“Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.”
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Robin McKinley — The Hero and the Crown (1984)
Luthe looked at her thoughtfully, cradling it in his hand. “If you bound it into your Damarian Crown, it would make whoever wore it invincible.”
Aerin shook her head violently. “And be forever indebted to the memory of Maur? Damar can do without.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. A dragon’s bloodstone is not for good or wickedness; it just is. And it is a thing of great power, for it is its dragon’s death—unlike its skull, which your folk treated like a harmless artifact. The bloodstone is the real trophy, the prize worth the winning; worth almost any winning. You’re letting your own experience color your answer.”
“Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for.”
Robin McKinley — The Hero and the Crown (1984)
She had been climbing forever; she would be climbing forever. She would be a new god: the God That Climbs. It was no more improbable than some of the other gods: the God That Isn’t There, for example (more often known as the God That Follows or the God That Goes Before), which was the shadow-god at midday.
Robin McKinley — The Hero and the Crown (1984)
Luthe snorted with laughter, tried to turn it into a cough, inhaled at the wrong moment, and then really did cough. “Truly,” he said at last, “the poor surka can be a useful tool. You cannot blame it for the misfortunes of your childhood. If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”
Robin McKinley — The Hero and the Crown (1984)
“If it was so important, and the Black Dragon, even in death, so insidious, why did you not come and fetch me?”
There was a little pause, and Luthe smiled faintly. “I shan’t try to bully you again.”
“You have not answered my question.”
“I don’t wish to answer it.”
She could not help herself, and she laughed: he sounded so much like a sulky child. And her laugh rang out, clear and free, as it had not done since she had first heard the name of Maur.