Great Throughts Treasury

"I am as my creator made me."

"I am following my fishie. La la laaaa. Because my fish knows where to go. My fish is the Borghal Rantipole who I made look like a fishie because I am so clever and I can do things like that if I want... La la la... It knows many thingummies. The Borghal Rantipole that is. And now it is inconspicuous too as well."

"I am frightened of nothing. Nothing? Nothing. Are you extremely frightened of nothing? Absolutely terrified of it. I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it? No, I most definitely would not."

"I am remarkably likeable. Few people have ever been as likeable as I am. There is, frankly, no end to my likeability. People gather together in public assemblies to discuss how much they like me. I have several awards, and a small medal from a small country in South America which pays tribute both to how much I am liked and my general all around wonderfulness. I don't have it on me, of course. I keep my medals in my sock drawer."

"I am not in my gallery and neither do I hold your sigil. Will you speak to me?"

"I am hope."

"I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?"

"I am the most miserable person who ever lived, he said.... You are young, and in love, said Primus. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived."

"I am the most unhappy soul alive. I'd heard it said that fairies have no souls. Then do I ache, and bleed, and smart, elsewhere; still, call it soul for it is solely mine."

"I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert's dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them."

"I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck..... I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

"I am the only one of us who brings in any money. the other two cannot make money fortune telling. this is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. it is a bad thing and it troubles people, so they do not come back"

"I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust our legal system"

"I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

"I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in."

"I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies"

"I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing."

"I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too."

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that are not true. And I can believe things that nobody knows whether they are true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, Elvis and Mister Ed Listen carefully... I believe that people evolve, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret cartel of bankers and is regularly visited by aliens-legal ones, that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones about who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and it's too much, and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to go black and kick the ass of everyone. I also think that all men are nothing more than overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in the quality of sex in the United States coincides with the decline in drive-in theaters of one State to another. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled scoundrels, but still better than the other alternatives. I think that California will sink into the sea when the big earthquake comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness in alligators in toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we will all be wiped out by the common cold, as did the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a past life I was a Siberian shaman one arm. I think the fate of humanity is written in the stars, that the taste of the candy was even better when I was a child, which is aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, having a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they do not open the box some day and feed the beast, in the end he'll be killed only two ways), and that there are stars in the universe billions years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and cares about me and oversees everything I do in an impersonal goddess who set the universe in motion and went off to be with her ??friends and does not even know I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe, a universe with causal chaos, a tumultuous past and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated never made ??law, that anyone who claims to know what is happening can lie about small things. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in women's right to choose, the right to live babies, at the same time that all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system without restrictions, and that Nobody, except a fool would trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and the best is to relax and enjoy."

"I can get away before the storm hits. Away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses."

"I believe... that while all human life is sacred there?s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system."

"I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are."

"I couldn't get you to the ocean, but there was nothing stopping me bringing the ocean to you."

"I cried until I was all cried out."

"I cross two fingers, a binary precaution against hex, effective as superconductor or simple superstition."

"I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work."

"I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy."

"I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle showed up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them."

"I don?t ever remember being afraid of oldness. There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didn?t know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years ago? but that stuff feels pretty trivial. I?m happier than I?ve been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favorite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, I?ve made art I?m proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and I?ve been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries. Sometimes I?ll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself. I miss friends who have died, but then, I?m glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jones? do you know how lucky that makes me? Ah, I?m rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than I?m intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71. I wish the time hadn?t gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish I?d enjoyed it more on the way, and worried about it less."

"I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader."

"I don't believe in Apocalypses. I believe in Apocatastases. I think it may be the title for The Film. It's a bitch to pronounce, and no-one knows what it means, but otherwise it's a great title."

"I don?t just randomly kill people..... I kill people when it?s funny."

"I don?t think that I?ve been in love as such Although I liked a few folk pretty well Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch for brave men died and empires rose and fell For love, girls follow boys to foreign lands and men have followed women into hell In plays and poems someone understands there?s something makes us more than blood and bone and more than biological demands For me love?s like the wind, unseen, unknown I see the trees are bending where it?s been I know that it leaves wreckage where it?s blown I really don?t know what I love you means I think it means don?t leave me here alone."

"I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?"

"I don't miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled."

"I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws."

"I don't know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn't know then I can't put into words."

"I don't know what it's like to be God ? obviously ?until that very first moment when you get to sit down and type the words in your script: INTERIOR. TARDIS. ? Suddenly I got a very good idea of what it must feel like. I went: "I'm writing it now this scene in the Tardis. I'm writing it!" And that was amazing, it was wonderful."

"I don't really like driving in the snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars."

"I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?"

"I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children? do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer,"

"I don't think I'm mainstream. I think what I am is lots and lots of different cults. And when you get lots and lots of small groups who like you a lot, they add up to a big group without ever actually becoming mainstream."

"I don't think it would be fun to write after inhaling art fumes. (What are art fumes?) No, I just make stuff up. It's easier that way."

"I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?"

"I feel like I am involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell me the rules, and who smiles all the time."

"I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening"

"I feel like I'm in a world with its own sense of logic. Its own rules. Like when you're in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn't break. Even if you don't know what they mean. I'm just going along with it, you know?"

"I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge."

"I felt very much like a hooker who had just been told she was a lady of the evening."

"I felt safe. It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into that one place, that one time."