Tad Williams Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

Neither War nor Violent Death, Morgenes had written, have anything uplifting about them, yet they are the candle to which Humanity flies again and again, as complacently as the lowly moth. He who has been upon a battlefield, and who is not blinded by popular conceptions, will confirm that on this ground Mankind seems to have created a Hell on Earth out of sheer impatience, rather than waiting for that original to which—if the priests are correct—most of us will eventually be ushered.

Tad Williams
Binabik had taught him to do only what he could at any given time. You cannot catch three fish with two hands, the little man often said.

Tad Williams
Perhaps he was a bumpkin; at least he was an honest bumpkin.

Tad Williams
Strangely, although the world is already full of fearful things, mortals seems always to hunt for new worries.

Tad Williams
She had been dressed in her sky-blue gown and had been suddenly almost terrible in her completeness—so different from the ragged serving girl who had slept on his shoulder. And yet, the very same girl had been inside that blue dress.

Tad Williams
Miriamele was dismayed by her own willful ignorance. How could she, with all her native good fortune, be so consumed with the few inconveniences that God or fate had put in her way? It was shameful.
She tried to tell Duke Isgrimnur something of her thoughts, but he would not let her slide too far into self-loathing.
Each one of us has our own sorrows, Princess, he said. It's no shame to take them to heart. The only sin is to forget that other folk have theirs, too—or to let pity for yourself slow your hand when someone needs help.

Tad Williams
There was nothing he could do unless he accepted what was real.

Tad Williams
Damn everyone to Hell. And damn the bloody forest. And God, too, for that matter.
He looked up fearfully from his chill handful of water, but his silent blasphemy went unpunished.

Tad Williams
There is nothing like the ocean to remind you of what is important, she said quietly, and smiled. Cadrach's returned smile was weak.
Ah, by the Good Lord, that's true, he groaned. I am reminded that life is sweet, that the sea is treacherous, and that I am a fool.
Miriamele nodded solemnly, staring up at the bellying sails. Those are good things to remember, she said.

Tad Williams
The spider hung motionless, like a dull brown gem in an intricate necklace. The web was complete, now, the last strands laid delicately in place; it stretched from one side of the ceiling corner to the other, quivering gently in the rising air as though strummed by invisible hands.
For a moment Isgrimnur lost the thread of talk, important talk though it was. His eyes had drifted from the worried faces huddled near the fireplace in the great hall, roving up to the darkened corner, and to the tiny builder at rest.
There's sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That's the way it's meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time.

Tad Williams
A king's son has nothing but inferiors, each one a potential assassin.

Tad Williams
Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden.

Tad Williams
This fellow, he indicated the woodsman with a sweep of his stick, will reliably not become more alive, but he may have friends or family who will be unsettled to find him so extremely dead.

Tad Williams
It was impossible to see warfare as anything other than what Morgenes had once termed it: a kind of hell on earth that impatient mankind had arranged so it would not have to wait for the afterlife.

Tad Williams
I gave up the love of learning for the love of oblivion—the two cannot live together.

Tad Williams
Are these things you all say magical charms to chase me away? If so, they do not seem to be working.

Tad Williams
The wise man is not waiting for the realness of the world to prove itself to him. How can one be an authority before the experiencing of this realness? My master taught me—and to me it seems chash, meaning correct—that you must not defend against the entering of knowledge.

Tad Williams
The fear was all he had left, but even that was something—he was afraid, so he must be alive! There was darkness, but there was Simon, too! There were not one and the same. Not yet. Not quite...

Tad Williams
Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one's words before opening one's mouth.

Tad Williams
She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.

Tad Williams
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.

Tad Williams
Tangaloor, fire-bright Flame-foot, farthest walker Your hunter speaks In need he walks In need, but never in fear.

Tad Williams
Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away, the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, lest otherways ye'll be a girl afore ye're a man.

Tad Williams
In times of badness, gold is being worth more than beauty.

Tad Williams