Tad Williams Quotes

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.

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.

You are only a prisoner when you surrender.

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?

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

The man who lives beside the water hole does not dream of thirst.

Learn a lot about the world and finish things, even if it is just a short story. Finish it before you start something else. Finish it before you start rewriting it. That's really important. It's to find out if you're going to be a writer or not, because that's one of the most important lessons. Most, maybe 90% of people, will start writing and never finish what they started. If you want to be a writer that's the hardest and most important lesson: Finish it. Then go back to fix it.

Weak dogs become bones for other, stronger dogs.

I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that's my philosophy.

When your teeth are gone, learn to like mush.

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

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

Every man is the hero of his own song.

A well-aimed spear is worth three.

Sleep. To lie down and shut out the noise, the fear, the unceasing misery.

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.

Confident. Cocky. Lazy. Dead.

As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.

Every time we tell a lie, the thing we fear grows stronger.

Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.

I mean, you could lie here day after day, if you wanted to, and think about nothing but waterbugs. Not chase waterbugs, mind you, just think about them. You could spend your whole day, every day, just wondering and pondering about waterbugs, and talking to others about waterbugs . . . and before you realized it, you'd be old. One day you'd realize that you'd never actually seen a waterbug . . . but by then you wouldn't want to, because it would spoil all your beautiful ideas.

You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)

If the bears don't get you, it's home.