Jonathan Stroud Quotes
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Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.
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Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.
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In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through." I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry." "Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes." "What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?" "More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)
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A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.
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One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.
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Long ago I dreamed of being a hero in your company" Halli said Huskily "I'm sorry to say your reality disappoints me
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As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.
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The afrit batted his eyelashes with a ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?" "A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!" I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope never heard of you. Now if you'll just-
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Did Lovelace's forces find you? Did Jabor break in?" He spoke slowly through clenched teeth. "I went to get a newspaper" This is getting better and better! I shook my head regretfully. "You should leave such a dangerous assignment to people better qualified: next time ask an old granny, or a toddler-
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Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.
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That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.
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listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy --- let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it... --- ye-es... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going.
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When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.
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As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there's no rigour to it.
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Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.
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Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.
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Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.
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Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.
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Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions.
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So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by.
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Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies.
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What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?
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We grow up being told about great figures in our society, and as you get older you have to question the stories you've been told and decide if these great figures are indeed as great as you've been told.
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Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.
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Believe me, I know all about bottle acoustics. I spent much of the sixth century in an old sesame oil jar, corked with wax, bobbing about in the Red Sea. No one heard my hollers. In the end an old fisherman set me free, by which time I was desperate enough to grant him several wishes. I erupted out in the form of a smoking giant, did a few lightning bolts, and bent to ask him his desire. Poor old boy had dropped dead of a heart attack. There should be a moral there, but for the life of me I can't see one.
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Listen," I began, "this is an established,traditional form that-" "Traditional nothing.Where are your clothes?" "Clothes?" I said weakly. "I don't normally bother with them in this guise." "Well,you could put on a pair of shorts,at least.Your not decent." "I'm not sure they'd go with the wings..." The demon frowend,and blinked."Hold on,enough of this." "Lenderhosen would. They'd compliment the leather.
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The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough.
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He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).
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Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style." "That is a footstool.
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Oh, the boots were on the other eight feet now.
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