Tad Williams

“What's the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it's so beautiful it's embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever.”

“It was strange how the future seemed tied inseparably to the past, so that both revolved through the present, like a great wheel...”

“After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?”

“They were all becoming brothers, in the manner he had seen before: facing death together was the greatest of levelers.”

“...Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.”

“Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered.”

“People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?”

“Never make your home in a place. 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. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.”

“A well-aimed spear is worth three.”

“I haven't met that many women, human or angelic, who actually like to drive. In my experience they seem to be much more pragmatic about the whole thing than we are. For most males, driving is an extension of their masculinity; they have little fantasy scenarios going all the time - races, chases, and dramatic combat with other drivers. Females, on the other hand, generally seem to view driving as something you do to get somewhere. I know, crazy.”

“I thought... I thought you might..." "Help you? By my grove, I am helping you. You're not starving anymore, are you? <…> You had a dry night's sleep, too, and you're no longer coughing your liver and lights out. Some might count those as mighty gifts indeed.”

“Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. 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.”

“We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.”

“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.”

“Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once.”

“If you're writing fantasy or science fiction, it's really hard to do if you don't know a lot, at least in a basic way, about how the real world works.”

“For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.”

“Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman’s tongue? What good was beauty — a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless — if it cloaked such a viperous soul?”

“Sometimes people need reasons for things, even when there are no reasons. That's what makes people believe in conspiracies or religions - if there is any difference. The world is just too complicated, so they need simple explanations.”

“A wolf is clever-clever-clever, and they are as faithful as a debt unpaid.”