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W Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All W Quotes

“Why do you bear Merripen such ill will? Is it his charming disposition, or the fact that he’s a Roma? Or is it because he was taken in by your parents and raised as one of you?” “None of that. I despise Merripen because he refused the only thing I ever asked of him.” “Which was?” “To let me die.” Cam pondered that. “You must mean when he nursed you through the scarlet fever.” “Yes.” “You blame him for saving your life?” “Yes.” “If it makes you feel any better,” Cam said dryly, settling back in his seat, “I’m sure he’s had second thoughts about it.”

“Why do you care what happens to her? I thought we humans were vapors to you, here today and gone tomorrow.” “Caspida is . . . different. She reminds me of someone, someone I’d give my life for if I could.” “The queen?” he asks. “The one who died?” “Roshana. My dear Ro.” My voice is soft as a ripple on the water. “She once ruled the Amulens, and Caspida is her descendant. She has Roshana’s strength of spirit, and I cannot look at her without thinking of my old friend. If she were to come to harm on my account . . . I could not bear that through the centuries.” I already carry a mountain of shame, a constant reminder of that day on Mount Tissia. Aladdin lifts a hand and brushes the hair back from my face. “You truly are remarkable, Zahra of the Lamp.”

“Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects? I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice? Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters have differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters, and what we find there usually develops into some sort of sideline. The accountant may also be a photographer. The astronomer may collect coins. The school-teacher may do gravestone rubbings in charcoal. The sludge caught in the mind's filter, the stuff that refuses to go through, frequently becomes each person's private obsession. In civilized society we have an unspoken agreement to call our obsessions “hobbies.” Sometimes the hobby can become a full-time job. The accountant may discover that he can make enough money to support his family taking pictures; the schoolteacher may become enough of an expert on grave rubbings to go on the lecture circuit. And there are some professions which begin as hobbies and remain hobbies even after the practitioner is able to earn his living by pursuing his hobby; but because “hobby” is such a bumpy, common-sounding little word, we also have an unspoken agreement that we will call our professional hobbies “the arts.” Painting. Sculpture. Composing. Singing. Acting. The playing of a musical instrument. Writing. Enough books have been written on these seven subjects alone to sink a fleet of luxury liners. And the only thing we seem to be able to agree upon about them is this: that those who practice these arts honestly would continue to practice them even if they were not paid for their efforts; even if their efforts were criticized or even reviled; even on pain of imprisonment or death. To me, that seems to be a pretty fair definition of obsessional behavior. It applies to the plain hobbies as well as the fancy ones we call “the arts”; gun collectors sport bumper stickers reading YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN ONLY WHEN YOU PRY MY COLD DEAD FINGERS FROM IT, and in the suburbs of Boston, housewives who discovered political activism during the busing furor often sported similar stickers reading YOU'LL TAKE ME TO PRISON BEFORE YOU TAKE MY CHILDREN OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD on the back bumpers of their station wagons. Similarly, if coin collecting were outlawed tomorrow, the astronomer very likely wouldn't turn in his steel pennies and buffalo nickels; he'd wrap them carefully in plastic, sink them to the bottom of his toilet tank, and gloat over them after midnight.”

“Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter.”

“Why do you decry the world we live in? There are good people in it. Isn't muddle a better breeding ground for kindliness and individuality than a world order that's imposed, a world order that may be right today and wrong tomorrow? I would rather have a world of kindly, faulty, human beings, than a world of superior robots who've said goodbye to pity and understanding and sympathy.”

“Why do you dream? - because there are so many desires unfulfilled, and to live with unfulfilled desires is painful. In dream you try to fulfill them; in dream you create a false feeling of fulfillment. Hence your dreams show much about you: what your desires are, what you want to become. But if you want to become anything in life, you are asleep.”

“Why do you feel so powerless? Go spend an hour with ants. Each of those black specks you see is a life. One whole life that you can save, take, or affect in some way. You have the power to make so many lives better. It is within you. Don’t lose sight of that.”

“Why do you follow him? What can he offer you? Knowledge, child. There is no keener mind in the galaxy than that sour chunk of meat that occupies his skull. He has forgotten more about the inner workings of man and xenos alike than any Apothecary has ever known. I came to him to learn how to craft new and better contagions, so that Grandfather's blessings might be shared more freely. There are secret plagues from Old Night in these containers and virulent infections culled from crumbling bones of long dead aeldari. And with these raw materials and his aid, I have made wonders and horrors undreamt of by even the most glopsome of my brothers. Plagues that would devour even the rubbery flesh of Grandfather's children... Daemons are not susceptible to mortal plagues. No, they are not. And yet I have seen the results myself. That is what he offers me, child. In his shadow, I grow pleasingly feculent. And what does he get out of it? Were you not listening? Plagues, child. Swift plagues that can ravage entire systems at impossible rates. Oh, his mind is a thing of broken beauty. Even Abaddon cannot conceive of genocide on such a scale - it is not war to our Chief Apothecary, but simply...pest control. Imagine it. A great silence, falling all at once across a system. A sector. Every imperfect thing, snuffed out like a candle flame. And then... Ah, and then, a new beginning.”

“Why do you give so much of yourself to a person? Does this person really need it? Isn't it a contradiction of life that when you love someone so much that you overwhelm them with too much of yourself? You want to spend more time with this person. You want to keep messaging this person. You want to know what they are doing every minute of their life! If you truly love someone then you should set them free. Give them the freedom to be themself!”

“Why do you give so much of yourself to a person? Does this person really need it? Isn't it a contradiction of life that when you love someone so much that you overwhelm them with too much of yourself? You want to spend more time with this person. You want to keep messaging this person. You want to know what they are doing every minute of their life! If you truly love someone then you should set them free. Give them the freedom to be themselves.”

“Why do you give so much of yourself to a person. Does this person really need it? Isn't it a contradiction of life that when yoy love someone so much that you overwhelm them with too much of yourself? You want to spend more time with this person. You want to keep messaging this person. You want to know what they are doing every minute of their life! If yoy truly love someone then you should set them free. Give them the freedom to be themself!”

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”