Favourite quotes from Jade Walker‘s site. I started to hand pick some but I was going to end up cutting and pasting more than I was leaving untouched. So, here they are, in full. Jade picks good quotes.

“My darling girl, when are you going to understand that ‘normal’ isn’t a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.” –Robin Swicord

“You don’t have to be a house to be haunted.” –Emily Dickinson

“I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do — by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.” –Pere Henri, “Chocolat”

“I wish I could Buy Time — just write a cheque, and a few days later a brown cardboard box would arrive at the door containing three months (along with an extra bonus sunny weekend for being a good customer).” –Neil Gaiman

“At first, I didn’t recognize the majesty in these moments, but then in this age where bigger is always better, people rarely do. That, I think, is the challenge. To know true greatness when we see it. To appreciate it when we have it. To embrace it while it lasts.” –Ben Sherwood

“It’s wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown.” –Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”–William Dement

“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” –George Carlin

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” –Epicurus, BCE 341/270

“If you’ve never walked into a parking meter, you’re wasting valuable reading time.” –Eloise Beltz-Deck

“I think if you live in a city like this, where the windchill can get to be 50 to 70 below zero, and you walk out without the proper coat and you don’t say the word ‘fuck’ out loud? Then you have anger issues.” –Lewis Black

“‘Never make your home in a place,’ the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. ‘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.’ Morgenes had grinned. ‘That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home — unless you lose your head, of course…'”–Tad Williams

“Stuff your eyes with wonder…live as if you’d drop dead within ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that…shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on its ass.” –Ray Bradbury

“Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings.” –Helen Keller

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” –Margery Williams Bianco. “The Velveteen Rabbit”

“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.” — Peter S. Beagle, “The Last Unicorn”

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” –Albert Einstein

On Love

“Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who’ll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I’m not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you’ll come back. Because the truth is, there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love — well, you haven’t lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.” –William Parrish, Meet Joe Black

“Nothing makes you feel more stupid than finding out you were wrong when you thought you were loved.” –A. L. Kennedy

“It’s come to my understanding that I’ll never recover from him. I’ve tried for a few years or so to pretend it wasn’t there, but during this season, all illusions fall away like the leaves.” –Kay Wren

“You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It’s brighter than the fire … blinding. That’s why you pull away from it … Love is pain … Love … give … forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature.” –First Slayer, Jane Espenson

“When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.” –R. Pirsig

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” — Emily Bronte

“I don’t care if I burn in hell. I don’t care if you burn in hell. The past and future is a joke to me now. I see that they’re nothing. I see they ain’t here. The only thing that’s here is you. And me. I want you to come upstairs. Now. I tried to take everything last night, like you told me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t take everything in a hundred years. It’s the way we are. We compound each other.” –Ronny Cammareri

“Come upstairs. I don’t care why you come. No, that’s not what I mean. Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is and I didn’t know this either. But love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We’re not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die! The storybooks are bullshit. Come upstairs with me, baby! Don’t try to live your life out to somebody else’s idea of sweet happiness. Don’t try to live on milk and cookies when what you want is meat. Red meat just like me. It’s wolves run with wolves and nothing else. You’re a wolf, just like me. Come upstairs with me and get in my bed! Come on! Come on! Come on!” –Ronny Cammareri

“I was sad the time passed so quickly, but it was good to return home and curl up into the arms of the woman I love. ‘This is where I want to be,’ I told myself. ‘This is where I belong.’ I knew I would have to leave the next morning, but treasured my second night curled up next to her. As much as I love her, I am constantly amazed to find just how much my love for her deepens with each passing day. This past week has made me realize, more than anything, that I can’t picture my future without her.” –Fenwyck Rysen

“Angie wasn’t just my partner. She wasn’t just my best friend. And she wasn’t just my lover. She was all those things, sure, but she was far more. Ever since we’d made love the other night, it had begun to dawn on me that what lay between us — what, in all probability had lain between us sin
ce we were children — wasn’t just special; it was sacred. Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended. Without her — without knowing where she was or how she was — I wasn’t merely half my usual self; I was a cipher.” –Patrick Kenzie

“You know how someone’s appearance can change the longer you know them? How a really attractive person, if you don’t like them, can become more and more ugly; whereas someone you might not have even have noticed… that you wouldn’t look at more than once… if you love them, can become the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. All you want to do is be near them.” –Brian, “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.” –Matt Groening

On Work

“If you let yourself sink into a narrative, the tragedy will leave a tiny but real scar deep inside.” –Aaron Ashley

“Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison.” –Ursula K. Le Guin

“If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” –Isaac Asimov

“Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.” –Erica Jong

“People have writer’s block not because they can’t write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.” –Anna Quindlen

“Once I got started I wanted the life of a writer so fiercely that nothing could stop me. I wanted the intensity, the sense of aliveness, that came from writing fiction. I’m still that way. My life is worth living when I’ve completed a good paragraph.” –Lynne Sharon Schwartz

“I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn’t, I would die.” –Isaac Asimov

“A writer can’t just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I’m not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.” –Lynn Flewelling

“What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.” –Isaac Asimov

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” –Neil Gaiman

“I am not really a writer. I am just someone who is haunted, and I will write the hauntings down.” –Janet Frame

For Fun

“A broken spoon may be a fork in disguise.” –Stephen King

“I don’t kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, ‘Whoa, I’m way too high!'” –Bruce Baum

“A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. ‘You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?’ she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, ‘I didn’t know there were any witnesses. Now I’ll have to kill you too.'” –Jake Johansen

“Living hell is the best revenge.” –Adrienne E. Gusoff

“Your work is only as good as your concentra– Hey look! A cloud shaped like Snoopy!” –Martell Stroup

“If and when I finally have kids and they ask me what they should do for a living, my only advice will be — ‘Son, follow your heart, but just make sure that you can wear a cape and be taken seriously.'” –Brian Gage

“It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but that’s the weather for you.” –Terry Pratchett

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …'” –Isaac Asimov

“If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell — a level they reserve for child molesters, and people who talk at the theatre.” –Shepherd Book, “Serenity”