Top 80 Tad Williams Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread – and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.”

— Tad Williams

52. “You see, that is the secret of history, little Briony – who tells the last story.”

— Tad Williams

53. “Were all these castle folk in their ornate finery no more than confused souls hiding inside costumes, as the hard shells of snails protected the helpless, naked things that lived within them?”

— Tad Williams

54. “A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive – which is knowledge – alive forever.”

— Tad Williams

55. “Oh, please, Barrick, sweet angry Barrick, don’t fall in love with Death.”

— Tad Williams

56. “Perhaps a heart was indeed like a piece of dry birchwood, and could only take fire and burn brightly once – that any fire that came after would be only an ember, smaller and cooler.”

— Tad Williams

57. “And what about lovers, like in the stories? Do they get married?” “Oh, yes. And sometimes they stay in love, but sometimes they don’t. I would say it’s one of the more untrustworthy reasons for marriage.”

— Tad Williams

58. “Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: ’what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.”

— Tad Williams

59. “John Wulgaru, she thought when she got back. Her hands were shaking. Is that his name, then? Am I the only person who knows that? Or the only person still alive?”

— Tad Williams

60. “When your teeth are gone, learn to like mush.”

— Tad Williams

61. “But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat.”

— Tad Williams

62. “ATTORNEY: “When you sign one of our contracts, it says very clearly on page one hundred and seventeen that all crimes that occur onsite must be immediately and accurately reported to the company.”

— Tad Williams

63. “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. The.”

— Tad Williams

64. “You dream too much, child. Our kind, we make our way with strong backs and closed mouths.”

— Tad Williams

65. “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

66. “Kind of like I suspect things are at night in the It’s A Small World ride, when all the little figures come to life and whisper about how they’d like to torture and murder all those screaming children and grinning grown-ups in the boats.”

— Tad Williams

67. “He has about him still a kind of terrible beauty, as dangerously beguiling as the grandeur of a storm rushing across the sea.”

— Tad Williams

68. “When it falls on your head, then you are knowing it is a rock.”

— Tad Williams

69. “Now, ten or more years later, far away from her home or even any thought of having a home, she again touched the feeling from that long ago day, being alone but not lonely, of being solitary yet sufficient.”

— Tad Williams

70. “Every time you open your mouth,” Clarence said, “you just seem older and weirder.”

— Tad Williams

71. “But that is enough of such worrying. The river is waiting, and our hearts must be light, so we can faster travel.”

— Tad Williams

72. “The manchildren, the mortals, have many ideas of what happens after they die, and wrangle about who is right and who is wrong. These disagreements often come to bloodshed, as if they wished to dispatch messengers who could discover the answer to their dispute. Such messengers, as far as I know of mortal philosophy, never return to give their brethren the taste of truth they yearn for.”

— Tad Williams

73. “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.”

— Tad Williams

74. “Yes, look,” said Martine. “The Other has played his knight.”

— Tad Williams

75. “Always choosing one side of the coin, instead of simply choosing the coin itself. Both have so strongly rejected the other’s side that they will regret it one day.”

— Tad Williams

76. “If the bears don’t get you, it’s home.”

— Tad Williams

77. “If the devil’s work out here among the stars has a face, it is the handsome, narrow-chinned visage of Keeta Januari, leader of the Rationalists. And if God ever wanted someone dead, she is that person.”

— Tad Williams

78. “Still, a fanatic heart will ignore what it does not want to know,” said Minasao. “It will excuse even that which cannot be excused in the need to find someone to share its bitterness.”

— Tad Williams

79. “Jongleur’s eyelids slid up and he turned to regard them. Renie wondered if her own sim face would register a guilty flush. “If you have the energy to whisper like schoolchildren,” he said, “then you no doubt have the strength to begin walking again.” He pushed himself upright and began to limp down the path.”

— Tad Williams

80. “No better sauce there is being than hunger.”

— Tad Williams

81. “Even the most unpleasant inhabitants of the Edwin Meese Gardens housing project had never tried to shove a basilisk into Ramsey’s codpiece.”

— Tad Williams

82. “Men do not manage well with too much peace. Someone will find a quarrel.”

— Tad Williams

83. “It’s a lot harder being smart than it is being stupid.”

— Tad Williams

84. “I am a scholar. My only monarch is truth.”

— Tad Williams

85. “I asked that goddess for help, and all we got were these stupid monkeys.”

— Tad Williams

86. “Falling to a low estate can do that – you see so much more of the world than you did before. You become very aware of how thin the line is, of how little safety exists.”

— Tad Williams

87. “Read books? That’s like eating mielie pap – it start out bad, then it get no better.” Joseph took a deep breath and let it out slowly, overburdened by the mere thought of literature.”

— Tad Williams

88. “Listen. We have always had Sacrifices and they have always done their duty without question. But in the days and years ahead, we need something different. We need Builders.”

— Tad Williams

89. “I pray that I lose my voice before my tongue ever shames me.”

— Tad Williams