“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.”
— Tad Williams
MEMORY, SORROW AND THORN
“Welcome stranger. The paths are treacherous today.”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
“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.”
— Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower
“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.”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
“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.”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
“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.”
— Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower
“I know it pains you to hear me speak so, Willow-switch,” Amerasu said. “But you are dearest of all my young ones and you are strong. You can hear truth.” She shifted slowly in her chair, long-fingered hand settling on the breast of her white robe. “You, too, manchild, have known loss. That is in your face. But though every loss is grave, the lives as well as the losses of mortals appear and fade as swiftly as the seasons turn the leaves. I do not mean to be cruel. Neither do I seek pity — but not you or any other mortal has seen the dry centuries roll past, the hungry millennia, seen the very light and color sucked out of your world until nothing remains but juiceless memories.”
—Tad Williams, Stone of Farewell
“As he lay in his blankets one night, he realized he could no longer say for certain how long he had been among the Sithi. Aditu, when asked, claimed not to remember. Simon took the same question to Jiriki, who fixed him with a look of great pity and asked whether he truly wished to count the days. Chilled by the implication, Simon demanded the truth.”
—Tad Williams, Stone of Farewell
“If the bears do not eat you, it is home.”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
“Brave and foolish often live in the same cave.”
— Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
“When it falls on your head, then you know it is being a rock.”
— Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
“Ah. A small aversion to menial labor?” The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Understandable but misplaced. One should treasure those humdrum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered. Well, we shall strive to help you through your first day in service. I have thought of a wonderful arrangement.” He did a funny little jig step. “I talk, you work. Good, eh?”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
“A well-aimed spear is worth three.”
— Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
“Beyond the castle chapel the sea of roofs spread out in all directions: the Great Hall, the throne room, the archives and servants’ quarters, all pitched and uneven, repaired or replaced many times as the seasons in their passing licked at gray stone and lead shingle, then nibbled them away. To Simon’s left loomed the slender white arrogance of Green Angel Tower; farther back, protruding above the arch of the chapel tome, the gray, squat bulk of Hjelden’s Tower sat up like a begging dog.”
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive — which is knowledge — alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand around the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast — one that might otherwise die unseen.” Morgenes finished with a grand flourish, dropping the book back up on the pile with a loud thump.
— Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair
OTHERLAND
“Wicked Tribe, Rooling Tribe! is the mejor hacker tribe. Too small, too fast, too scientific!”
— Tad Williams, Otherland
“During its timeless hours of movement and inspection, as it floated on the number-winds and learned from their shape and force, it had become aware of something else, something so far from the conceptual map of the environment it had originally been given as to briefly constitute a new danger to the Nemesis program’s logical integrity.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: River of Blue Fire
“All people know the Greater Hunger… It is the hunger for warmth, for family, for connection to the stars and the earth and other living things…”
“For love?” Renie asked.
“Yes, I suppose that could be true.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: River of Blue Fire
“He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you’d never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you’d never really had.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“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?”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: Sea of Silver Light
“Every man is the hero of his own song.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass
“There is no such thing as an accident. That’s what science is all about… There are only patterns we don’t yet recognize.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“…Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“…Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build — but what happens when in all the world there are only termite hills left but no bush?”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Welcome to the Information Jungle.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Go down.” It seemed obvious. “You have to go down before you can come out — that’s how these things always work.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that’s my philosophy.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Confident. Cocky. Lazy. Dead.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Our lives aren’t even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we’ve never met, pretend to visit places we’ve never actually been to, discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age — Hell it’s the Imagination Age. We’re living in our own minds.
No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we’re living in other people’s minds.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass
“The man who lives beside the water hole does not dream of thirst.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“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.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“The more freedom you give people to do good, the more freedom they have to do bad as well.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
“Yes, look,” said Martine. “The Other has played his knight.”
— Tad Williams, Otherland: Sea of Silver Light
WAR OF THE FLOWERS
“We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.”
— Tad Williams, War of the Flowers
“You’re pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell.”
“Call me that name again and you’ll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe — from below. Just because we don’t get to your side of things much anymore doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. ’If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!’ If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?”
— Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers
“Stairs. This is Hell. Hell is stairs, was all Theo could think. I’d sell my soul for a goddamn elevator.
But I don’t have a soul, do I? I’m some kind of fairy.
Okay, settle for an escalator, then.”
— Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers
“It was only after they had left the bridge and its guardian far behind that Theo realized he had left Tansy’s telephone-brooch in the pocket of his jacket. He had no plans to go back for it, of course: as far as Theo was concerned, that piece of two-legged ugliness was welcome to blow out Tansy’s long-distance bill or download a ton of troll-porn and charge it to the Daisy commune.
Betray me, huh? Taste the Revenge of Vilmos!”
— Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers
SHADOWMARCH
“So we face our final hours… and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.”
— Tad Williams, Shadowheart
CALIBAN’S HOUR
“Since your father has escaped my justice, it is you who must hear my words.”
“Words. You keep saying…”
“Because that was the gift your father gave to me. And the curse that ruined me as well, changed my life to wretched misery. There are hours yet before the guard comes — nay, eons. An eternity, in fact. This is my time, Miranda. Now you will have your words back: before I kill you, you will hear my tale… and you will know what you have done.”
— Tad Williams, Caliban’s Hour