Absurdism

"When I first met you I thought you were gay." "Why? 'Cos I'm English?" "Uh-uh. Because you seemed to know so many people who were dead." "...That's not funny." "No. It's not, is it?"

"There were a lot of Moors and Africans in Spain and Italy in the old days. Remember Othello? Trust me, if Catherine of Aragon had been in Alabama in the 1950s they'd have made her ride in the back of the bus."

"We never even noticed the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a load of bloody Italians poncing around claiming to be the golden age of the Greeks come around again. Nobody in England had even heard of the Renaissance until it had been over for centuries."

"It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best."

"I'm not a young man anymore. I'm retired now. But I sometimes think that all the things in my life that have made it worth the living have been as a result of my connection to the dead gentleman."

"I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope. For dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes. And I am a creature of despair."

"The bonds of family bind both ways. They bind us up, support us, help us. And they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to extricate oneself."

"We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old."

"The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?" "Doesn't everyone?" "I don't."

"I am not here to mourn him. I mourned the loss of my love a long time ago. I am here to say goodbye to a stranger who once did me a good turn. And to the man who gave my son the death he craved."

"The state of his bathroom—I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life, but have in all probability by now evolved their own political systems."

"Eblis O'Shaughnessy: You were created and gifted by five of the Endless, but you can neither dream nor, ultimately, destroy, and that shall be your triumph and that shall be your tragedy."

"The family did not send to ask from whom the messenger had come; it was not the first time that messengers had visited them, after all. And there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply."

"Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered by the evening: You can be me when I'm gone."

"It's the same old story... whatever it turns into on the way, whatever it is you originally undertake to spin or knit or weave, keep it going long enough and, in the end, my lilies, it's always a winding sheet..."

"I had the hubris originally to regard myself as a collaborator, as a co-author... very rapidly I found myself reduced to the status of character, following something of a disagreement in the fundamental direction of the Creation."

"The poison spills into Loki's mouth and eyes; he writhes, and a city falls: and in the moment of pain he gains a certain clarity. The master manipulator realizes how, ultimately—how strangely, how elegantly—he too had been manipulated. Perhaps the sound he makes is laughter."

"You're crying." "Lord Shaper is in dire need, and he doesn't love me." "Would it be better if he was in dire need and did love you?"

"Sorry, sweetheart. I don't do funerals. Life is, as they say, too short. And I can't wear black. I'm an autumn." "Asshole, Hal. The word you're looking for is asshole."

"If you don't let me in, I will turn you into a demon half-face waitress night-club lady with a crush on her boss, and I'll make it so you've been that from the beginning of time to now and you'll never ever know if you were anything else and it will itch inside your head worse than little bugses."

"Alianora foretold that I would receive my scars, in my turn, like the one I left on her cheek, like the one I left on her heart. She knew it then."

"There was also in that room the Other Egg of the Phoenix. (For the Phoenix when its time comes to die lays two eggs, one black, one white: From the white egg hatches the Phoenix-bird itself, when its time is come, but what hatches from the black egg no one knows.)"

"Abel, the younger brother, had lots of sheep, and he had given the land's creator a sheep as present. Cain, who was the older, grew fruit and vegetables, and he'd given the land's creator some of them. But the creator liked the sheep best, because it was all funny and fluffy and white—" "Because it was warm, steaming meat. It was a bleeding sacrifice, you bloody idiot!"

"Thou hast made the Furies cry, Orpheus. They will never forgive you for that."

"I don't need to know the future. When the future's over, then it's me..."

"Herakles was full of it. He just got dead drunk for a couple of weeks in Phrygia and told everyone he'd been to the land of the dead."

"You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live."

"There are really patterns. It was a revelation, of a kind. Dreams and sand and stories. Deserts and cities and time."

"You look terrible. White as the man in the moon. Are you always that pale?" "That depends on who's watching."

"Forewarned is seldom forearmed. Not even in the shifting zones."

"Any view of things that is not strange is false."

"Do you know how long it's been since I mislaid a book? Well, let's just say the continents weren't in their current shapes, not that that means anything to you."

"You shouldn't trust the storyteller; only trust the story."

"Listen, blood of my blood. Although I'm a hard man to anger, and I love you deeply, if you interrupt me again so help me I'll rip out your throat with my teeth."

"Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian. All right?"

"The young man's mother had died bringing him into the world; she gave him life, a small wooden finger-ring, and the name Vassily. There have been worse legacies."

"I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear." "Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out."

"I've met a lot of kings, and emperors and heads of state in my time, Joshua. I've met them all. And you know something? I think I liked you best."

"They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints—36 unselfish men and women. Because of them the world continues to exist. They are the secret kings and queens of this world."

"Desire? You disappoint me. This evening's display: bringing back a dead man to offer Norton the pleasures of the world. It was not very subtle."

"His madness... his madness keeps him sane." "And do you think he is the only one, my sister?"

"I hesitate to tell you this, Sam, but there are certain individuals who have accused me of. Mm. Well, being mad." "You... shock me, Your Majesty."

"Dreams. What are dreams? Dreams are nothing, my brother." "Dreams are 'nothing', sister? Without dreams, there could be no despair."

"We write our names in the sand; and then the waves roll in and wash them away."

"From that Time on, the Song of Orpheus has always hovered at the Edge of my Perception; a Melody I can never fully recapture, try howsoever I will. And do not doubt that there are many in Authority to whom I would sing it, if 'twere within my Power."

"Will you kill all the poets, then, St. Just? Will you kill all the dreamers?"

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."

"It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt."

"And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can, and that's all."

"It's like, that people... well, that everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world—no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe."