20 quotes
The power to kill becomes the ultimate power in the hands of a man who has no reservations about employing it.
Water Sleeps (1999)
You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don’t realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Time is the most wicked of all villains.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Asking a storyteller not to embellish is like asking a fish to give up water.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Desperate people will do what they must to survive. Only a fool would expect the results to be pretty.
Water Sleeps (1999)
I sped a prayer heavenward. God needs to be reminded.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Like most villains, he was wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.
Water Sleeps (1999)
I picked up my five cards from the next deal. “This ain’t a hand, it’s a foot.”
Water Sleeps (1999)
Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired.
Water Sleeps (1999)
You might have noticed that the human animal is fond of forming and clinging to prejudices, remaining their steadfast curator in the face of all reason and contradiction.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Peace had broken out and was being enthusiastically exploited on the presumption that it could not possibly last.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Leadership tip: Sound confident even when you have no idea. Just do not make a habit of it. They will find you out.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may pivot on personal considerations like that, not on the pursuit of ideals dark or shining.
Water Sleeps (1999)
I must be alive. Otherwise I wouldn’t hurt so much.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Soldiers live. And wonder why.
Water Sleeps (1999)
Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to me. My fault for being a woman.
Water Sleeps (1999)
“I don’t get the Kina story. If she died back at the beginning of the world, how could she be giving us trouble for the last twenty or thirty years?”
“It’s religion, dimwit,” Goblin barked. “It don’t got to make sense.”
Water Sleeps (1999)
That was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable, supposedly. And for ordinary people that was mostly true. But not so at a level where men began to believe that they existed outside the usual rules.
Water Sleeps (1999)
And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy. We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the most inconvenient time.
Water Sleeps (1999)
The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. But Fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess.
When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man can conjure simply by existing.
Water Sleeps (1999)