Quotes Written In My 2004 Journal

Submitted by Jentle on Tue, 06/01/2004 - 04:12

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My Journals

'If it can't be good, it can at least be funny!' (jp 53)
'My food is problematic.' - River trying to eat dangly thing, Firefly (jp 58)
Chey -- 'I would *never* say I don't love you,'
'I love *you* more,'
'I didn't get to see you for Christmas. I got to see Da a little bit.' (jp 60)
'Pagan?'
'I honor the old gods, yes. And their philosophers. And believe with them that it is a mistake to attempt to circumscribe the infinite range of divinity into one - or even two or three - images, however potent they may be on a dome or a disk.' - Guy Gavriel Kay, The Sarantine Mosaic (jp 72)
'The numinous... is not to be directly apprehended. Indeed, if the gods wish to destroy a man they need only show themselves to him.' - TSM
'Dig dig, dig the tunnel..... Quick before the hyena commmmmmme!' - cartoon rodents on Disney channel
'You don't really have to close your crown, just open your feet more.' (jp 74)
'Never summon what you can't banish. That's why I don't have kids.' (jp 75)
'If God had meant us to be nude, we would have been born that way!' (jp 92)
'Yes, but I was just trying to keep her talking in case she turned violent,' said Maurice. 'She's gone in the head, if you ask me. she's one of those people like.... actors. You know. Acting all the time. Not living in the real world at all. Like it's all a big story. Dangerous Beans is a bit like that. Highly dangerous person, in my opinion!'
'He's a very kind and thoughtful rat!'
'Ah, *yes*, but the trouble is, see, that he thinks everyone else is like him. People like that are bad news, kid. And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
'Well, that's harmless, isn't it?' asked Keith.
'Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies.... it's just a word.' - Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents (jp 96)
'Still, I've never wondered "Why me," not really. I mean, why not me? Grief is random. So are blessings.' - Chez Miscarriage 3/23/04
'The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves' - C.G. Jung
'It is a world of so many possible risks that two miracles occur every day with most every child and most every parent: the kids survive, and the parents retain their sanity.' - Gavin De Becker, Protecting the Gift (jp 102)
'Throughout history, half of all children failed to reach adulthood. Half. The odds are far better for children in America today, but the truth remains that childhood is safe only when adults make it so.' - PTG
'After my daughter was born, the love I felt for her was so intense, so beyond anything I had ever imagined, that I knew I would not allow any harm to come to her. This made me feel, well, dangerous. If someone hurt her, or even tried to, I knew I would take justice into my own hands.' - PTG
'A good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, what am I choosing *not* to see right now?' - PTG
'Ask highly specific questions about a given dreaded outcome... ...Anytime we start to invent possibilities or find that the answer to most questions is "I don't know," we're not evaluating real or present risk.' - PTG
'...The most common age at which sexual abuse begins is three...
Nearly 100 percent of abuse is committed by heterosexual males...
The US Department of Justice estimates that on average, there is one child molester *per square mile*...
The average child molester victimizes between thirty and sixty children before he is ever arrested.' - PTG
'Deaths people describe as terrible have one thing in common: The deceased saw it coming. That forced acknowledgment of death, not the manner of death, is what we're really recoiling from. After all, being burned or crushed or trapped underwater is terrible even if the person survives. Such misfortune could be more accurately described as "a terrible way to live," because dying might be the easiest part of the experience.' - PTG
'Woman: You're right. I shouldn't be wary. I'm overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because we have to consider where we park, where we walk, and whom we talk to in the context of whether someone will kill us or rape us or merely scare us half to death; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that we're made to feel foolish for being cautious even though we live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards, and just because I'm with my daughter and have a duty and fervent desire to protect her as well as myself from harm DOESN'T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD NO.' - PTG
'People should learn to see and so avoid all danger. Just as a wise man keeps away from mad dogs, so one should not make friends with evil men.' - Buddha - PTG
'Judgements based upon untruths are not worthy of us.' - Sherri S Tepper, The Companions (jp 103)
'I'm on a low social cholesterol diet. No more fatheads.' - Utah Phillips (jp 107)
'This book is for those who said, "I don't know what those things are, but I want to make them. Show me how to do it or show me how to do it better."' - Susanna Oroyan, Designing the Doll (jp 108)
'Those of us interested in figure making are pretty much visually oriented hands-on people. We like studying human activities, emotions, and shapes. We like the texture of fabrics and the colors of paint. We get great satisfaction from putting things together so they work well.... We look at pictures of figures first.' - DtD
'I caught Easter eggs!!' - Cheyenne (jp 110)
Me - 'That sounds pretty.'
Chey - "No, they were COOL!'
'True openness is realizing that the guy across from me is not who I want him to be, but who he is.' - PTG (jp 114)
'I loved them because they weren't like people. They were different. We need things to be different. If everyone is alike, it narrows our world down, it makes us narrow, too. It makes us think human things are the only things, human ideas the only ideas...' - TC (jp 116)
'I addressed her as Sannasee, which means honored female.' - TC
'Killing females and young ones upsets the softskins greatly, but they forget as quickly. Kill their important men, they remember it forever, so we don't want to do that.' - TC
'Many of us are having such imprintings. It is being necessary for many creatures. One is finding one's way in the pack or herd by knowing where one is ranking, who to be groveling to and who to be dominating. One is learning very young the smell or sound of the higher-up, the lower down. It is continuing for most or all of a life. Also, when we are mating, we are being imprinted, each by the other. No matter how unsuitable or disagreeable the mate is being, some people are staying imprinted all their lives.' - TC
'In his heart, mankind has never been able to evolve past the tribal stage.....'.....
'Perhaps it's why we get on with dogs so well. We and they have the same societies.' - TC
'Oh, she was... A marvel. A wonder. A dear, dear otherness. An answer to the question of whether humans are any more important than any other creature.' - TC
NEWS: Nothing Educational or Worth Seeing. - PTG (jp 118)
Who takes the child by the hand, takes the mother by the heart. - German Proverb, PTG
Yes, it can be meaningful if your child has a terrible reaction to a particular person, but if a child has a good reaction, that fact is absolutely irrelevant to safety. Remember that many predators are exceptionally good at gaining trust and putting children at ease. Accordingly, YOUR intuition - which is more informed - is far more significant than your child's.
- PTG
I want to discourage parents from doing the most unnatural thing in the world: leaving their children with strangers. - PTG (He also says the most natural thing in the world is seeking help with raising children.)
Bottom line: the issue isn't strangers, it is strangeness. - PTG
Children who communicate with strangers are exercising their intuition. They learn what feels comfortable and what does not. That learning can be aided by a parent who watches a child communicate in a restaurant or store and then discusses the encounter afterward. - PTG
Teach children than if they are ever lost, go to a woman. - PTG
A commitment you can make to your child: "I will never send anyone you do not know to pick you up at school or anywhere else without telling you about it ahead of time. If anyone you did not expect ever says, 'Your mother or father sent me,' do not go anywhere with that person." - PTG
"Heritage is just as hard to escape as biology - though you can throw off the effects of either one with varying degrees of success." - Sharon Shinn, Heart of Gold (jp 123)
"Having children matters, if you do it right," he agreed, "If you raise them to be honest citizens with kind hearts and uncompromising ethics. Otherwise, you've made the world a worse place, not a better one." - HoG
"I think he is the most amazing man I have ever met," she said honestly. "I think he is so pure of heart that he makes other, ordinary men seem wicked by comparison. I think he is so generous that my own thoughts shame me by their selfishness. He is so kind that he makes me search my soul to find new ways to be compassionate to others. And brave. Not one man in ten thousand would do what he has done." - HoG
"I don't. I don't care for everyone. Sometimes I wonder if I love anyone as much as I should. I want to be a good son - a good husband - a good father, if the time ever comes. I try to be a good friend. But most of the time that just consists of being agreeable on the surface and keeping my thoughts to myself. That does not make me a kind man. It just means I manage to stay pleasant to most people most of the time." - HoG
"Yours is the spirit that formed me more than any other," he told her. "When I think of the last fifteen years of my life, everything will be colored by you. You taught me only the sweeter aspects of love. I never knew, till others told me, that love also can be careless and cruel. What I have become is something you would not want, but I did not become that because of anything you have done. Had I been given a choice about it, I would have remained who I was, and faithful to you. And I will always love you for the beauty you brought to my life."
She listened, but nothing about her softened.
"None of that helps," she said in a forlorn voice, and turned her back on him.
- HoG
How then was she to trust her heart? It fluttered now like a shy, rapturous bird, caged with uncertainty but breathless with hope, and she could not help but believe she would be a fool to follow it. The same heart had taken her down grand, giddy paths before, leading her straight to devastation and despair. Why was she to think it was any wiser now? She was not one who could differentiate the noble character from the base; she could not discern the black lie threaded through the gaudy truth. She could not love again; there was no safety in her judgment.
- HoG
"The worse a man is at thinking, the better he is at drinking." Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears p 98 (jp 132)
"With horses, as with many other things, sister, you often get what you expect to get." - SoT p 298
You are a girl, Richard thought, and she is a woman. But he couldn't say that. You are a pretty candle, he thought, and Kahlan is the sunrise. - SoT p 783
"Ann, it's just a word. It's the meaning of the word that matters, not an arrangement of letters. Do you think that when you call the Keeper the Nameless One, instead, that he would be fooled into thinking you weren't speaking of him? It's a mistake to assume your enemies are ignorant, and you are clever."
A hearty laugh rose from in her chest. "I have been waiting for a very long time for someone to figure that out."
- SoT p 852
"You are a child of balance. Wizards must balance themselves, the things they do, their power. War wizards rarely eat meat. Their abstinence is a balance for the killing they sometimes must do." - SoT p 861
[The Wizard's First Rule] states that people can be made to believe any lie, either because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it's true.
....
The Second Rule is that the greatest harm can result from the best intentions. It sounds a paradox, but kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding the First Rule. Even then, that is not always enough. - SoT p 886
This was a place of light and hope that would have stayed in a people's heart throughout all the dark centuries. It was not a place that belonged to them - it was they that belonged to this place. - SoT p 937
'What's mine is mine, and not anyone else's, even to look upon unless I decide it is so. Remove your eyes from my flesh at once, or have them removed.'
- Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold, p 17 (jp 136)
"What if we choose neither? It is against our principles to fight. We want to be left alone to go about our lives. What if we choose not to fight, to simply go about our business?"
"Do you arrogantly believe that we want to fight because we would stop the slaughter, and you are somehow better because you wish not to? Or that we will carry the load by ourselves so that you, too, may enjoy the freedom to live by your principles?
"You can contribute in other ways without taking up a sword, but contribute you must."
- BotF, p 116
He should never have trusted the man. Why was he always thinking people would see the side of reason and do the right thing? Why did he always think that people had good in them and, if allowed the chance, it would come to the surface? - BotF, p 164
I lost my friend because he couldn't be the way I thought he should be. I didn't lose him because of Lucy, I lost him because of me. I lost all the good things we had because I wasn't willing to let him be who he was. - BotF, p312
'You've been using devious tricks and sly deception to try to convince me you're a vile, contemptible, immoral malefactor, but you have failed to fool me. You are not the evil sort.' - BotF, p 414
"What's 'New Age'?"
"Oddball religions. Sappy boring music. Pathetic attempts to convince oneself of the superiority of anything connected with Indians. Non-Western medicine."
"But you don't like regular medicine."
"That's because doctors are always trying to tell me I'm crazy. If I had a broken arm I would be a big fan of Western medicine."
- Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife, p 64
One might deduce that I am a very inept criminal, but really the main problem is that it's so hard to be inconspicuous when you're naked. - TTTW, p 60
When Clare draws she looks as though the world has fallen away, leaving only her and the object of her scrutiny. - TTTW, p 104
I would sit in the upper reaches of the uppermost balcony (the best place to sit, acoustically) - TTTW p 117 (Good to know.)
Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. - TTTW p 151
"But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult part." - TTTW p 158
"Let's see, fourteen, from ninety-one, that makes them... Oh my god. They were born in 1977. I feel old. I need another drink." - TTTW p 203
"Some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops it." - TTTW p 205
"That's what I love you for: your inability to perceive all my hideous flaws." - TTTW p 240
The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing. A substance in a world of substances. - TTTW p 274
When you live with a woman you learn something every day......
When the woman you live with is an artist, everyday is a surprise. - TTTW p 275-6
Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel oblidged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff. - TTTW p 332
Spoiler: Highlight to view
I picture Alba, tiny and pink, culed inside me, eating pad thai with tiny delicate chopsticks. I picture her with long black hair and green eyes. She smiles and says, "Thanks Mama." I smile and tell her, "You're welcome, so very welcome." She has a tiny stuffed animal in there with her named Alfonzo. Alba gives Alfonzo some tofu. I finish eating.

- TTTW p 378

There are pages and pages of doodles, spirals and squiggles, black circles, marks like the feet of birds. Some of these have a sentence or phrase embedded in them. 'To part her hair with a knife.' And: 'couldn't couldn't do it.' And: 'If I am quiet it will pass me by.'

- TTTW p 327

Her hair falls across her shoulders and breasts in a very beautiful and touching way and I wish for the zillionth time that I was a painter.

- TTTW p 408

Spoiler: Highlight to view

I clip my paper to the drawing board and arrange my pastels next to me on the rug. Pencil in hand, I consider my daughter.

Alba is sleeping deeply. Her ribcage rises and falls slowly and I can hear the soft grunt she makes with each exhalation. I wonder if she's getting a cold. It's warm in here, on this June late afternoo, and Alba's wearing a diaper and nothing else. She's a little flushed. Her left hand is clenching and unclenching rhythmically. Maybe she's dreaming music.

I begin to rough in Alba's head, which is turned toward me. I am not thinking about this, really. My hand is moving across the paper like the needle of a seismograph, recording Alba's form as I absorb it with my eyes. I note the way her neck disappears in the folds of baby fat under her chin, how the soft indentations above her knees altar slightly as she kicks, once, and is still again. My pencil describes the convexity of Alba's full belly which submerges into the top of her diaper, an abrupt and angular line cutting across her roundness. I study the paper, adjust the angle of Alba's legs, redraw the crease where her right arm joins her torso.

I begin to lay in pastel. I start by sketching in highlights in white - down her tiny nose, along her left side, across her knuckles, her diaper, the edge of her left foot. Then I rough in shadows, in dark green and ultramarine. A deep shadow clings to Alba's right side where her body meets the blanket. It's like a pool of water, and I put it in solidly. Now the Alba in the drawing suddenly becomes three-dimensional, leaps off the page.

I use two pink pastels, a light pink the hue of the inside of a shell and a dark pink that reminds me of raw tuna. With rapid strokes I make Alba's skin. It is as though Alba's skin was hidden in the paper, and I am removing some invisible substance that concealed it. Over this pastel skin I use a cool violet to make Alba's ears and nose and mouth (her mouth is slightly open in a tiny O). Her black and abundant hair becomes a mixture of dark blue and black and red on the paper. I take care with her eyebrows, which seem so much like furry caterpillars that have found a home on Alba's face.

The sunlight covers Alba now. She stirs, brings her small hand over her eyes, and sighs. I write her name, and my name, and the date at the bottom of the paper.

The drawing is finished. It will serve as a record - I loved you, I made you, and I made this for you - long after I am gone, and Henry is gone, and even Alba is gone. It will say, we made you, and here you are, here and now.

Alba opens her eyes and smiles.

- TTTW p 393-4, (jp 139)

I have a Christmas-morning sense of the library as a box full of beautiful books.

- TTTW (jp 142)

"Perhaps the forgiveness of one you love is the only thing in life that really maters - the only thing that can truly heal your heart, heal your soul."

- Terry Goodkind, Temple of The Winds, p 21 (jp 144)

"I won't be needing you. I don't need people I can't trust." - ToTW p 136

"As she finished each mark, she let the one in her mind run from her head to her hand, down the sword and into the snow. There, they ran like lines of golden fire and the marks became alive, burning on the ground."

- Garth Nix, Sabriel, p 42 (jp 146)

(Overheard in daycare) -

M (4 yr old) - Do you have any kids?

Me - I have a stepdaughter.

M - I'm somebody's stepdaughter.

Me - Do you have a stepmom or a stepdad?

M - Stepmom.

Me - Do you like her?

M - Yeah. She has a cat.

"Don't try to understand what the words mean.... No matter what you think, what you fear, you will be wrong." - ToTW p 208

[She] whistled the notes of the lifting wind, visualising the requisite string of Charter marks in her mind, letting them drip down into her throat and lips, and out into the air. - Sabriel p 96

The marks became silver blades as they left her hand, mind and voice, flashing through the air swifter than any thrown dagger. - Sabriel p 107

Rewards lead children to expect payment for "being good." - Gary D. McKay & Don Dinkmeyer, STEP: The Parent's Handbook, p 4 (jp 148)

"No, no, Clare is Lois Lane," she replies.

Matt says, "But Lois Lane was oblivious to the Clark Kent/Superman connection, whereas Clare..."

"Without Clare I would have given up a long time ago," I say. "I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark."

"It makes a better story," says Matt.

"Dous it? I don't know," I reply.

- TTTW p 446

Every angel is terrifying. - TTTW p 461

The paper is damp and dark and wants to tear but it drapes over the wire forms like skin. I twist the paper into sinews, into cords that twist and connect. The wings are bat wings now, the tracing of the wire is evident below the gaunt paper surface.

...then I begin to tear it into strips, into feathers.

- TTTW p 465

You're just addicted to beauty, that's all. - TTTW p 487

"Do you know what he said to me, this wizard?" Shota asked. "He said he forgave me. Can you believe it? He granted me forgiveness. And then he begged mine."

The wind carried some of Kahlan's hair across her face. She pulled it back. "Seems a strange thing for him to say, considering."

"The Wizard's Fourth Rule, he called it. He said there was magic in forgiveness, in the Fourth Rule. Magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, and more so in forgiveness you receive." - ToTW p 398 (jp 151)

Keep your vision all-inclusive, never allowing it to lock on any one thing. That was the meaning of the starburst symbol: look everywhere at once. See nothing to the exclusion of all else - don't allow the enemy to direct your vision, or you will see what he wishes you to see. He will then come at you as you become bewildered, looking for his attack, and you will lose.

- ToTW p 444

He put a fist to his abdomen. "Kahlan, I was once connected to a woman by my flesh, as you were connected to your mother. That is the only connection of flesh we have in this life."

His fist moved to his chest. "It is here that we connect after that. We can be connected only in our hearts."

- ToTW p 604

*Children need to trust, not fear, parents.

*Children need the chance to make choices. This will help them learn limits and responsibility.

*Children need to see that calm words - not yelling or hitting - are the way to solve problems.

- STEP p 4-5 (jp 152)

What is misbehavior?

*Actions or words that are disrespectful or ignore others' rights.

*Refusal to cooperate when the child knows how to cooperate.

*Behavior that is dangerous to the child or others.

- STEP p 22

Therapists who understand the importance of play in the lives of children, and that children naturally communicate through play, are well on their way to understanding the world of children.

- Daniel S. Sweeney & Linda E. Homeyer, The Handbook of Group Play Therapy, p 5 (jp 153)

*Play is a voluntary activity by nature. In a world full of requirements and rules, play is refreshing and provides a respite from everyday tension.

*Play is free from evaluation and judgment by adults. Children are safe to make mistakes without failure and adult ridicule.

*Play encourages fantasy and the use of the imagination. In a make-believe world, children can exercise the need for control without competition.

*Play increases interest and involvement. Children often have short attention spans and are reluctant to participate in a lower interest, less attractive activity.

*Play encourages the development of the physical and mental self.

THoGPT p 5

One in three girls and one in six boys will have sexual contact with an adult. Sometimes it's a neighbor and sometimes it's a day-care worker, but a family member is still most likely to be the sexual abuser. In about 20 percent of the cases, the abuser is an adolescent.

PTG p 152

If a doctor takes a deep breath and feigns a valiant effort to help us understand, most people pretend to get it instead of saying, "No, you're still not there, Doctor. Try again." Remember, the doctor is the one choosing to speak in a foreign tongue, not you.

PTG p 154

"This outer circle represents the beginning of the underworld - the infinite world of the dead. Out beyond this circle, in the underworld, there is nothing else; there is only forever. This is why the Grace is begun here: out of nothing, Creation begins."

A square sat inside the outer circle, its corners touching the circle. The square contained another circle just large enough to touch the insides of th esquare. The center circle held an eight-pointed star. Straight lines draws last radiated out from the points of the star, piercing all the way through both circles, every other line bisecting a corner of the square.

The square represented the veil separating the outer circle of the spirit world - the underworld, the world of the dead - from the inner circle, which depicted the limits of the world of life. In the center of it all, the star expressed the Light - the Creator - with the rays of His gift of magic coming from that light passing through all the boundaries.

Terry Goodkind, Soul of The Fire p 33

Sometimes you will try to be fair, but your child will think you aren't fair enough. If this happens, check your feelings. Your child may be seeking power or revenge. Don't join in the power struggle. Keep being as fair as you can.

- STEP p 27 (jp 154)

"Oh, but how I do love it when men I respect marry smart women. Nothing marks a man's character better than his attraction to intelligence."

SoTF p 64 (jp 158)

She said those with age must stick together and that the only defense against youth was cunning. Zedd couldn't agree more.

SoTF p 115

"I suppose. But it just seems such a shame for a culture to be destroyed by another that invades them. It isn't fair."

She gave him one of her looks akin to looks Zedd sometimes gave him: a look that said she hoped he would see truth rather than repeat by rote a popular but misguided notion. For that reason, he listened carefully as she spoke.

"Culture carries no privilege to exist. Cultures do not have value simply because they are. Some cultures, the world is better off without."

- SoTF p 309

"Zedd used to tell me that if the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way." - SoTF p 317

Life is far too precious to be casually squandered on useless causes.

- Terry Goodkind, Faith of The Fallen p 23

Admitting that you don't know something is the first step to learning. - FoTF p 129

Everything can also be different. - Alfred Adler

If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all. - Unknown jp 164

'I try to teach just in how I live my life.' - paraphrase of yoga girl on NPR

New Stuff Below

Nothing is too wonderful to be true.

- Michael Faraday (physicist) jp 168

You have to live spherically, in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm, and things will come your way.

- Under The Tuscan Sun jp 170

A true leader forges a clear path through a moral wilderness so that people might see the way. Richard was a woods guide because such is his nature. Perhaps he is lost in that dark wood. If he is, he must find his way out, and it must be a correctly reasoned course, if he is to be the true leader of a free people.

- FoTF p 135 (jp 173)

Kahlan had been a long time in healing. She had known, of course, that injuries such as she had suffered would take time to heal...... The pain was exhausting and the monotony numbing.... Lying in her little room as time slipped away while she slowly healed, Kahlan thought of it as her "lost summer."

- FoTF p 147

She doesn't know so much as she thinks. She's a child - she couldn't be a paltry three decades yet. People can't learn to wipe their own noses in that much time.

- FoTF p 217

"He said the only sovereign he could allow to rule him was reason.

....

"He said the first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this irreducible, bedrock principle all knowledge is built. He said that was the foundation from which life is embraced.

"He said thinking is a choice, and that wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discover them..... Reason is our only way of grasping reality - that it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking - to reject reason - but we are not free to avoid the penalty of th eabyss we refuse to see."

.....

"The boy figured it out himself." The old wizard's voice was th euneasy sum of loneliness and quiet pride. "He understands it - he interpreted it perfectly. He even came to it on his own, by applying it."

"Came to what?"

"The most important rule there is, the Wizard's Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

...."The Sixth Rule is the hub upon which all rules turn. It is not only the most important rule, but the simplest. Nonetheless, it is the one most often ignored and violated, and by far the most despised. It must be wielded in spite of the ceaseless, howling protests of the wicked.

"Misery, iniquity, and utter destruction lurk in the shadows outside its full light, where half-truths snare the faithful disciples, the deeply feeling believers, the selfless followers.

"Faith and feelings are the warm marrow of evil. Unlike reason, faith and feelings provide no boundary to limit any delusion, any whim. They are a virulent poison, giving the numbing illusion of moral sanction to every depravity ever hatched.

"Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light.

"Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason, through this rule. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death."

- FoTF p 319

Knowing when not to fight is as important as knowing how.

- FoTF p 350

Your lot in life isn't fate. I don't have any say in much of my life, but I make whatever choices I can make in my own rational best interest.

- FoTF p 362

At times, it almost seemed to him as if she threw her beliefs in his face, not because she believed them, but because she was desperately hoping for a reason not to, hoping he would find her in some lost, dark world and show her the way out.

- FoTF p 385

Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.

- FoTF p 482

Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.

- FoTF p 509

Every person's life is theirs, to live by right. An individual's life can and must belong only to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave. No one can deny another person their right to their life, nor sieze by force what is produced by someone else, because that is stealing their means to sustain their life. It is treason against mankind to hold a knife to a man's throat and dictate how he must live his life. No society can be more important than the individuals who compose it, or else you ascribe supreme importance, not to man, but to any notion that strikes the fancy of that society, at a never-ending cost of lives. Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters.

- FoTF p 515 (jp 174)

"A nobody," Althea scoffed as she leaned back. She was becoming a teacher impatient with a student doing poorly on a lesson. "You are somebody; you are Jensen, a smart girl with a brain. You should not kneel before me and plead ignorance, telling me what you cannot do while asking instead for others to do for you.

"If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking for others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself."

- Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation p 206 (jp 178)

Don't judge a place by one man.

- TPoC p 280

And I realized what a small role the sense of sight plays in the art of loving a baby, and how large a role the sense of touch has. When I miss her physical presence, pictures don't help much.

- jessamyn.diary-x.com, Back At Work, 6/2/04 (jp 180)

Life is the future, not the past.

The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.

.... It's the Wizard's Seventh Rule.

- TPoC p 549

Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.

- Terry Goodkind, Nake Empire p 23 (jp 186)

Sometimes, when people refused to recognize the existence of evil, they found themselves having to face precisely that which they had never been willing to admit existed.

- NE p 193

I will hear no more of your feelings about what you intended. Your feelings do not absolve you of your very real deeds. Your actions, not your feelings, speak the truth of your intent.

- NE p 402

Deserve victory.

- NE p 605

Enemies... are the price of honour.

- Terry Goodkind, Debt of Bones p 119

To repeat a nerve-wracking experience until it became old hat? Rob himself would never confront a fear that way. But it might be a useful trait in an astronaut candidate.

- Brenda W. Clough, How Like A God p 136 (jp 189)

It is easy, the descent to Avernus. Morning and night the gates stand open. But to retrace the footsteps, to light again return, there indeed lies toil.

- Virgil, The Aeneid (HLAG p 184-5)

"Gil, I'm pleased to say we are fundamentally different after all," Rob announced. "You pruned everything inside away and made a desert. I opened up and let things grow. You ground things down to be the same, and I love things that are different. We really have no common ground to stand on. And now - I don't suppose you read comic books?"

- HLAG p 235

"You're only a human being, Rob. You have the power to act like a god or a devil. But you're only a man."

- HLAG p 265

Taking apart the toy to see how it works just increases your respect for the toymaker.

- HLAG p 272

"You were being pathetic," said the Dog, as Lirael rubbed the spot on her calf where visible tooth-marks indented her soft wool leggings. "Now you're just cross, which is an improvement."

- Garth Nix, Lirael p 296

"That's the problem with growing up as a Prince," growled Mogget. "You always think that everything will get worked out for you. Or you turn out like your sister and think nothing gets done unless you do it. It's a wonder any of you are ever any use at all."

- L p 496

"Oh, Dog!" Lirael said plaintively, giving the hound a hug. "Why is everything so difficult?"

"It just is," said the Dog, woofling in her ear. "But sleep will make it seem easier. A new day will bring new sights and smells."

- L p 588

"It's always better to be doing." said Sam, quoting the Disreputable Dog.

- Garth Nix, Abhorsen, p 320

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