Tad Williams: Trending 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.”

Tad Williams

Lie , Fear , Thinking , Time

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

Tad Williams book River of Blue Fire

Source: River of Blue Fire

“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

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 718).
Context: “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...”

Love , Way , Home , Learning

“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

Hell , Evil

“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 Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

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

Tad Williams

“You are only a prisoner when you surrender.”

Tad Williams book Shadowplay

Source: Shadowplay

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

Tad Williams book City of Golden Shadow

Source: City of Golden Shadow

Religion , Wine

“Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once.”

Tad Williams

Source: Shadowrise

Light

“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 book City of Golden Shadow

Source: City of Golden Shadow

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

Tad Williams

Source: Shadowrise

“Sometimes doing the gods’ bidding required a hardened heart.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 4, “The Silent Child” (p. 145).

God , Heart

“Fear goes where it is invited.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 7, “Spreading Fires” (p. 171).

Fear

“Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,” the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, “lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 31, “The Councils of the Prince” (p. 502).

Girl

“Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 10, “King Hemlock” (p. 142).

“To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John’s kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind…but isn’t that what we always think? That all wars are useless—except the one we’re fighting now?”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 13, “The Fallen Sun” (p. 314).

War , Thinking , Fight

“She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 13, “The Nest Builders” (p. 406).

People , World

“We trolls say: “Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.””

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 17, “Binabik” (p. 260).

Night

“When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort.”

Tad Williams

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 724).

Life , Stupidity , Thinking , Effort

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams

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 about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life , People , Books , Age