Derek Aalerud > Derek's Quotes

“I will love you with too many commas,
but never any asterisks.”
― Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage: Poems

“Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes over and over, and you don't get any closer to Carnegie Hall.”
― Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage: Poems

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
― Robert Frost

“Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Billy Ray knew scary men and they didn’t wear visors. This man had never been in a fight in his life. Billy Ray could feel it, it was like a smell: the bravery of ignorance. This man had never been dominated by another. He’d never known the crude intimacy of violence, never felt the fear of laying on his back wondering if the boot would come to his temple or his throat. He was weak, of a generation of false vipers.”
― Sam Tallent, Running the Light

“Do you remember before we forgot how to love each other? When you were my everything? Do you remember me when I was me? Because I remember you and you were beautiful. We were beautiful.”
― Sam Tallent, Running the Light

“we all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever," she said. "Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone. And we truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement."
"You and George didn't go back on your promises."
She laughed. "Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men." She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, "They've all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole lot different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and - well, the rest is none of your business."
"But people change," he said quietly.
"Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit. Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we've had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people." She flopped back against her chair. "Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever. Okay. Okay! I'm figuring something out now." She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didn't have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing he'd learned in a long time or the most discouraging. "Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priest's vows by jeering at him when he can't live up to them, always and forever." She shivered and slumped suddenly, "But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren't human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God's will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn't it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances," he continued with academic exactitude, each word etched on the air with acid, "is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“do you know what the greatest expression of regard for a race or civilization is?” “No, what?” “Annihilation. That’s the highest respect a civilization can receive. They would only feel threatened by a civilization they truly respect.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Those with the least always lose the most in war.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“An open mind is like to an open wound,' growled Glokta. 'Vulnerable to poison.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Work fast."
"Yeah." I point at the screen. "First I have to wait for my computer to wake up."
"Hurry."
"Okay, I'll wait faster."
"Sarcasm.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“He puts his claw against the divider. “Fist my bump.”

“Fist-bump. It’s just ‘fist-bump.’”

“Understand.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.” He points to the breeder tanks. “Check tanks!”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Usually you not stupid. Why stupid, question?”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Time is the cruelest force of all.”
― Cixin Liu, Death's End

“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to become as grand as their thoughts.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem