61 quotes
Filidor marveled at the intransigence of adolescence, not remembering that he had possessed an abundance of the same quality not many years since.
Fool Me Twice (2001)
I realized that Chumblot’s brief had told only the official story which, as in many sophisticated societies, departed starkly from the practical facts.
Hespira (2009)
Half the miseries of humankind’s history have originated in those who think they see in the fellow next to them virtues and vices that exist only in the mind of the beholder.
Hespira (2009)
Insanity was not unknown among the wealthy. Indeed, some forms of madness had sometimes been cultivated as fashionable accessories.
Majestrum (2006)
“Your remarks demonstrate how proximity narrows perspective,” said Gaskarth. “Events in and of themselves are less pertinent than the effects and interpretations to which they give rise.”
Fools Errant (1994)
The young man glanced at the document. His first thought was that its author must have learned penmanship from a seismograph.
Devil or Angel & Other Stories (2015)
The fate that befell the Mail happened for one reason, and one reason alone: it's terrible, and by banning it, Wikipedia sends a message that it values its credibility.
Persons who disguise themselves when they go out into the world rarely do so for innocent purposes. At best, they mean to pull some merry prank; all too often, they intend a considerably deeper mischief.
The Spiral Labyrinth (2007)
The combined effect of so many ambulatory sticks and balls, each of whom wore an expression of complete self-satisfaction, added strength to my longstanding belief that the profession of couturier required only a good knowledge of fabric and a malicious sense of humor.
Hespira (2009)
But from its inception, the labor movement had attracted the same range of opportunists and self-servers as would any activity that offered the unscrupulous an avenue toward power and self-enrichment.
Devil or Angel & Other Stories (2015)
Filidor was becoming more and more convinced that he had recently been inhabiting a reality that was at sharp variance to the rest of the world’s.
Fool Me Twice (2001)
Into the Zeelotic ethos, we have injected the philosophical axiom—well known to the field of fashion—that the outmoded only remains so until it becomes unremembered, after which it may justly return as the avant-garde.
Fools Errant (1994)
She could be—he hoped would be—what he had always lacked: a center to the map of his life, that one, necessary fixed point from which he could navigate out into the world and by which he could always find his way back home again.
Fool Me Twice (2001)
Talking was only one of the uses to which Chalivire liked to put her large and loose-lipped mouth; another was filling it with the products of The Braid’s renowned kitchens.
Majestrum (2006)
“That is unfair,” said Filidor.
Gavne shrugged. “Things are as they are. If you quest after justice, young women are the wrong continent to explore. They run more to clemency or spite.”
Fool Me Twice (2001)
“I detected some quavers in his voice that indicated stress. But I would not say that he lied.”
“Though it was not the whole truth.”
“It never is. The ‘whole truth’ starts with the beginning of the world and its telling takes an inordinately long time.”
The Spiral Labyrinth (2007)
“I disagree,” said Jenbo Lal.
“Disagreeability is your forte,” said Gaskarth.
Fools Errant (1994)
It is as hugely irrelevant to us as the literary outpourings of a poet are to a bacterium living in his lower bowel. Indeed, to an even tinier mite living in the bacterium’s vacuole. It just doesn’t matter.
Hespira (2009)
The insane had a tendency to cloak others in the strange garments they found hanging in the backs of their own mental wardrobes. So, for that matter, did the rest of us, but the consequences of error were usually less drastic.
Hespira (2009)
“Knowledge can be a hindrance to right action,” answered the little man. “There are those who hold that, if we but knew the full ramifications of even our least deeds, the ensuing concatenations of cause and effect would paralyze us with indecision.”
Fools Errant (1994)