There is beauty that soothes like the warm kiss of the spring sun upon the cheek, and then there is beauty that terrifies, like the cry of Ozymandias, inviting despair.
As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can't help loving you, so I choose to hate you...to make my love bearable.
Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it.
The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long.
But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important.
For true beauty—beauty, as it were, with a capital —is terrifying; it puts us in our place; it reflects back to us our own ugliness. It is the prize beyond price.
Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune’s slings and arrows.
There are some we cannot help but take an instant dislike to.
Madness is a wholly human malady borne in a brain too evolved—or not quite evolved enough—to bear the awful burden of its own existence.
I’ve always thought, if heaven is such a wonderful place, why is entering it so absurdly easy? Confess your sins, ask forgiveness—and that is all? No matter what your crimes?
I have a very low tolerance for boredom and often think I would have missed out on books entirely if I'd grown up in the Internet and video game age. Now I enjoy books for people of all ages, including children.
Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well.
You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.
It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!
How would you rather die?" she snapped. "Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?
It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans.
We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.
Is this how humanity waves good-bye? Hell no.
When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone. And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me. The Cassie who kills.
Time for the world to end.
I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. “‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise ...
