Karl Drinkwater > Karl's Quotes

“When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like the real thing as possible, and anything from 18 inches to 3 foot long; he shows it to each guest in turn, and says: "Look upon this body as you drink and enjoy yourself; for you will be just like it when you are dead."
[Herodotus ‘Histories’, II 82]”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“Sad-looking brown eyes, they wrenched his heart like a gut punch. Worse – hell, worse – a bloke could punch him in the head but he’d stay up, and grin through the bloody split lip, intimidating his attacker; but there was no honour in wounds inside, wounds that only you could deal with.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Turner

“These rare mini mind-blanks always seemed to occur when he needed perking up, creative jolts as if his brain had temporarily overclocked its processor to light-speed frequency, but with the side effect of shutting his consciousness down to protect it from overheating. That theory certainly fit the observable phenomena.

Then again, the competing theories included: he was nuts; he had a brain tumour; aliens had temporarily abducted him.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“He wondered where his mind had wandered this time, what life it had lived as a trail of neurons sped through networks of possibilities particle-fast, too rapid to catch without a hadron collider, causing super quarks of weirdness and leaving him with only a vague after-image like a melting dream. He had to accept that he couldn’t catch all his thoughts, all the things going on in his body, the processes which slipped by in the background just leaving a shadow, an itch, the grain of sand that probably wouldn’t become a pearl, a blazing after-trace that lives a second then is gone forever. All those possibilities occurring in a second of frantic life: it never ceased to amaze him. The world was an incredible and beautifully constructed thing.

However, there wasn’t really time for a wank.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Alex decided the stakes were high enough to justify one of his advanced psychological theories. He knew all women liked cats. People liked things that resembled themselves. Therefore applying some of the rules for interacting with cats to the reality of interacting with women could only help.

Most rules were straightforward:

• Admire their grace.
• Don’t interrupt them when they’re grooming.
• Back off if they hiss.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“She wandered almost at random, zigzagging streets, following a canal for a bit, stopping to admire the towering red brick buildings that channelled her along, manufacturing heritage trailing along the water. Some were more than eight stories tall, solid behemoths that would outlast whatever food outlet had set up shop on the ground.

Looking up changed things, it revealed all the details on the old buildings: secret towers, spires, turrets. They were castles in the city. Rewards for those that saw beyond their shuffling footsteps. This was a city made for looking up, she thought.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Scrawled in the album’s white space, in an angry deeply-pushed biro that indented even the next page, were some words paraphrased from Tennyson’s Locksley Hall:

I’m mad.
She bears but bitter fruit.
She never loved me.
Love is love forever more.
Fucking traitorous bitch.

The last three words were purely Alex’s addition.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Maybe he could get used to this ‘being a superhero’ thing. The Ginger Avenger.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Natalie was one of the confident skaters weaving in and out of bodies, natural movement that succeeded because there wasn’t too much thought put into it. Relaxed. It reminded him of wild particles pulled and repelled into a rapidly curving orbit. Pattern within apparent chaos.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“He felt that he perceived the shape within, just for a second. She had hope. It spread; he could almost witness electrons moving through the magnetic field between them, following lines of force, beautiful things everywhere, sharing, changing both of them in the process, the covalent bonding of life.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Maybe we should go on a holiday. What do you think? Can we go on a holiday next summer? Go away together? Greece, like some of those musty philosophers you write about? You get to see all those crumbling things from the past. And I get sun, beaches, bikinis, cocktails.”

“Greece is a bit far. What about Wales?”

“Wales!”

“I’ve never been abroad. I need to start slowly.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Note to self: don’t get captured.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Lost Solace

“Memories don't all have to be good.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“A twelve-year-old boy he could relate to. A wife who closely resembled someone he fell in love with, he could deal with. But a fifteen-year-old girl was like an alien species.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Harvest Festival

“The blood on his chest looked like war paint. So be it.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Harvest Festival

“We all have a black box inside us, and maybe one day another being vastly more powerful than we are will open it and understand it and judge us on it.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Lost Solace

“Command isn’t just giving orders. It’s knowing the minds of those below you,”
― Karl Drinkwater, Lost Solace

“Vampires, real vampires, didn't nibble on the necks of nubile young virgins. They tore people to pieces and sucked the blood out of the chunks. ”
― David Wellington, 99 Coffins

“I will not negotiate with the undead!”
― David Wellington, Monster Island

“A man. A dead man. A dead man with no arms.”
― David Wellington, Monster Nation

“I like the look of you and the feel of you, and that's enough for any man. It ought to be enough for a woman too.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

“If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken."

[on Twitter, July 17, 2012]”
― Scott Lynch

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“The bodies in my floor all trusted someone. Now I walk on them to tea.”
― Victoria Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables