Novelists From Wales

"All of it is physics, though, whether you are studying starlings or quarks."

"“Imagine a permanent, shivering gloom, and never a moment without hunger, thirst and exhaustion. Imagine the constant fear of suffering illness or injury.” “You’ve just described nine-tenths of human history.”"

"“Something worse.” After a silence Dreyfus said: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there’s always something worse.” “Yes. Odd that that should be what keeps us going, but there it is. We take our comforts where we may.”"

"In its purest distillation beauty had always been merciless."

"“Are you sharpness personified?” Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking. “I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.”"

"“It’s all in the fine print. You should read it sometime.” “When I’m gripped by existential boredom,” Khouri said, “I might try it.”"

"She wondered if she could put a dart in his eye. It would not kill him, but it might take the edge off his cockiness."

"The new regime which had succeeded his after the coup had become as fragmentary as the old, in the time-honoured way of all revolutions."

"“You can hardly blame them.” “Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can’t.”"

"“How long have we been friends, Dan?” “I wouldn’t exactly call it friendship; more a kind of mutual parasitism.”"

"I was going to call it a mistake, but you could argue that there are no mistakes in war, only fortunate and less fortunate events."

"It seemed that she had not so much misjudged the woman as assigned her to completely the wrong species."

"“A splendidly inept thing,” Sylveste said, nodding despite himself. “What?” “The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.”"

"“You look older, son.” “Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.”"

"“I don’t know.” That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed."

"Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window."

"I guessed life was like that. You gained and you lost, and if you saved anything from the ruins, even if only a shred of self-respect, it was enough to take you through the next bit."

"Some are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them."

"Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't."

"You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things — yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet — I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."

"The psycho-analyst infers the monstrous and abnormal from a trifle; it is often safe to reverse the process. If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress."

"Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes."

"Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when- exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself."

"It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible."

"Mr. Machen, with an impressionable Celtic heritage linked to keen youthful memories of the wild domed hills, archaic forests, and cryptical Roman ruins of the Gwent countryside, has developed an imaginative life of rare beauty, intensity, and historic background. He has absorbed the mediæval mystery of dark woods and ancient customs, and is a champion of the Middle Ages in all things—including the Catholic faith. He has yielded, likewise, to the spell of the Britanno-Roman life which once surged over his native region; and finds strange magic in the fortified camps, tessellated pavements, fragments of statues, and kindred things which tell of the day when classicism reigned and Latin was the language of the country."

"Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen; author of some dozen tales long and short, in which the elements of hidden horror and brooding fright attain an almost incomparable substance and realistic acuteness. Mr. Machen, a general man of letters and master of an exquisitely lyrical and expressive prose style, has perhaps put more conscious effort into his picaresque Chronicles Of Clemendy, his refreshing essays, his vivid autobiographical volumes, his fresh and spirited translations, and above all his memorable epic of the sensitive æsthetic mind, The Hill Of Dreams, in which the youthful hero responds to the magic of that ancient Welsh environment which is the author's own, and lives a dream-life in the Roman city of Isca Silurum, now shrunk to the relic-strown village of Cærleon-on-Usk. But the fact remains that his powerful horror-material of the nineties and earlier nineteen-hundreds stands alone in its class, and marks a distinct epoch in the history of this literary form."

"I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played in our day and in dim London streets instead of amidst the vineyards and the olive gardens. We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish, silly tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be? How is it that the very sunlight does not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?"

"We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them."

"The spirit of religious persecution is not the special failing of any particular faith, but springs eternal in the human breast."

"Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind."

"To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect."

"There is something very intimate and personal about one's books. They reveal so much of one's private soul."

"All gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator."

"Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand—an extended application of its powers."

"The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind."

"The driving forces of the universe, the framework upon which it is built up in all its parts, belong to another phase of manifestation than our physical plane, having other dimensions than the three to which we are habituated, and perceived by other modes of consciousness than those to which we are accustomed."

"We will sing to you, Doctor. The universe will sing you to your sleep. This song is ending. But the story never ends."

"Five million Cybermen, easy. One Doctor? Now you're scared."

"Gone with the Wind, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, they all should have had the hero cut down by a Dalek, and they would've been vastly improved really."

"There's nothing better than a party that turns into a death trap."

"Because it's the best idea ever invented in the history of the world!"

"The computer makes it posible to create a central information centre of all human achievements; and for any individual, from the comfort of his own home, to interrogate that information. For example, you would like to see a picture of the tallest horse? Then before your last finger clicks the last button that photograph will be up on your screen, in your own home."

"The effectiveness of my actions are unimportant. Total success is unimportant. The only element of importance is that I - slave to my surroundings - did everything I could... Two minutes to go. Indoctrination?"

"Not one single action you voluntarily make - in body or soul - stays within itself. It lasts forever. A full-stop can't be placed at the end, for there is no end."

"fratolish hiang perpetshki"

"Let government legislate so as to restore to the Welsh speaker that most elementary of human rights - the right to use one's own language in one's own country on all occasions; without this, there can be no true democracy."

""Let the language which is on the tongues of our children be treated by our people with that reverence, that love and that care which civilized communities bestow on the most precious of their national treasures.”"

"Canys mae tystiolaeth ein pobol wedi'i Phrydeinio - gan gofio mai cyfystyron yw "Seisnig" a "Phrydeinig," bellach. Yn gyfrwys, yn graff, yn gwbl fwriadol, Prydeiniwyd tystiolaeth ein pobol."

"Enillwn y Fro Gymraeg, ac fe enillir Cymru, ac oni enillir y Fro Gymraeg, nid Cymru a enillir.'"

"It is only the right of conquest (derived from military success) which gives the Crown of England any illusion of sovereignty over Wales and the north of Ireland."