Thomas Harris

When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.

I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Nothing made me happen. I happened.

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.

I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

Hello Clarice...

I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.

There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

David Guterson

None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime.

I know you'll think this is crazy, but all I want to do is hold you, and I think that if you'll let me do that just for a few seconds, I can walk away, and never speak to you again.

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.

The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.

That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty.

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet--on the other hand--what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt. . .”

Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.

John Connolly

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be

Being scared isn't the problem. It's not running away that's the hard part.

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

He would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books. And some of the children understood, and some did not.

He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun.

Each man dreams his own heaven.

I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?

Arthur Golden

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.

He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

Lian Hearn

The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence.

I believe the test of government is the contentment of the people.

It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this?

When illusions are shattered by truth, talent is set free.

How was it possible for the world to be so beautiful and so cruel at the same time?

But just as the river is always at the door, so is the world always outside. And it is in the world that we have to live.

It's what you do to yourself when you go mad with rage. You have no idea how much you can hurt yourself with your own strength.

She entered a state where prayer and poetry became one and the everyday world seemed full of holiness and significance.

The best way is to be strong enough to make your enemy think twice about attacking you, yet not so aggressive that he feels threatened. Keep your sword sheathed as long as you can, but once it is unsheathed, use it without hesitation.

Marisha Pessl

Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.

Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.

Always live your life with your biography in mind.

May you walk a lighted path. May you fight for truth - your truth, not someone else's - and may you understand, above all things, that you are the most important concept, theory, and philosophy I have ever known.

Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.

Happiness is a hound dog in the sun. We aren't on Earth to be happy, but to experience incredible things.

Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery!

He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.

Michael Flynn

Any fool can hope when success lies plainly in view. It wants genuine strength to hope when matters are hopeless.

Peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war.

But what is hope? When all else is lost, it is the one thing you may keep.

The body's ills are the least of ills, for they end only in death, which is but a little thing. But if the spirit dies, then all is lost.

For what purpose have you prayed?"
"For thanks. If I must die, at least I have lived. If my companions have perished, at least I have known them. If the world is cruel, at least I have tasted kindness. I had to cross to the far side of the sky to taste it but, as you say, the world is full of miracles.

When princes flee battle, and knights turn free-lance, and barons rob pilgrims, what value has honor? Why, all the more, seeing how rare it has become.

Dirac found that the ratio of the electric force to the gravitational force of an electron-proton pair is roughly equal to the ratio of the age of the universe to the time it takes light to traverse an atom.

Vince Flynn

I have a history of disregarding orders.

People who think God is on their side are capable of the most inhumane acts.

Revenge is more wild, less calculated...deeply personal. Retribution is a punishment that is morally right and fully deserved. 

Have you ever heard the phrase, it is better to keep your mouth closed and have people wonder if you are stupid than open it and remove all doubt?

People, especially successful people, are habitual creatures. They're organized. This makes them productive.

Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake --- one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both.

I don't want to hear another word about my attitude. i don't want anyone looking over my shoulder, and I sure as hell don't want anyone second-guessing what I do.

I don't need men like Ross on my side. I just need them to get out of my way.

Abu, torturing guys and breaking them down is not something I look forward to, although your case is a little different. I think you're such a despicable fuck that I might actually enjoy our little session.

It was not possible to reason with unreasonable people.

Frederik Pohl

They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.

On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story.

That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have.

Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains
barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate.

You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?

Jo Walton

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

If you love books enough, books will love you back.

There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.

I care more for people in books than the people I see every day.

There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.

One of the things I've always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you'd never have thought about before.

The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.

Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. 

I don’t think I am like other people. I mean on some deep fundamental level. It’s not just being half a twin and reading a lot and seeing fairies. It’s not just being outside when they’re all inside. I used to be inside. I think there’s a way I stand aside and look backwards at things when they’re happening which isn’t normal.