Matthew Woodring Stover Quotes

Now Obi Wan did face him.
'Palpatine faced Mace and Agen and Kit and Saesee-four of the greatest swordsmen our order has ever produced. By Himself. Even both of us together wouldn't have a chance.'
'True,' Yoda said, 'But both of us apart, a chance we might create ...

I am also, well ... I'm in awe. He's killed people, and saved people. He's fought monsters, and he's fought men who became monsters. He's saved kingdoms and toppled empires. Now he has set himself against the gods to save a universe ... and I used to change his diapers. I used to yell at him to make his bed.

Not his penetrating intellect, or his talents with the Force, or his unmatched skills with a lightsaber.
-Matthew Stover on Mace Windu

Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.

In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way.

Now that it's too late, now that I lie here dying on this bloodstained sand, I finally get it.

I understand, now.

I understand. I know what he meant. My father told me that to know
the enemy is half the battle. I know you, now. That's right.

It's you.

All of you who sit in comfort and watch me die, who see the twitch of
my bowels through my own eyes: You are my enemy.

Corpses lie scattered around me, gleanings left in a wheat field by a careless reaper. Berne's body cools beneath the bend of my back, and I can't feel him anymore. The sky darkens over my head - but no, I think that's my eyes; Pallas' light seems to have faded.

Every drop of the blood that soaks into this sand stains my hands and the hands of the monsters that put me here.

That's you, again.

It's your money that supports me, and everyone like me; it's your lust that we serve.

You could thumb your emergency cut-off, turn your eyes from the screen, walk out of the theatre, close the book . . .

But you don't.

You are my accomplice, and my destroyer.

My nemesis.

My insatiable blood-crazed god.

Ah, ahhh, Christ . . . it hurts.

It is a truism that when one is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The glory of art is that it can show this proverbial hammer how everything looks to a screwdriver--and to a plowshare, and to an earthenware pot. If reality is the sum of our perceptions, to acquire more varying points of view is to acquire, literally, more reality.

When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free.
-Vergere

That's what getting old is: When you can no longer bear the consequences of being wrong.

Somehow Luke understood - in a way that Lando never had, that Hand and Leia and Chewbacca had simply never grasped - just how dark a place the universe really was.
Lando guessed that was where Luke got his humility. His kindness. His gentle faith that people could change for the better. That must have been why he rarely smiled, and almost never made jokes. Because the goodness was all he rally had. It was his lifeline. The rope to which he clung, dangling over the abyss.

I won, goddammit. I beat Kollberg. I beat you. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. Shit, I even got the girl."
"The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said,"is that nothing is ever truly over."
"Fuck that," Hari said."I am living happily ever goddamn after. I am.

A lie is like a pet- you have to take care of it, or it'll turn on you and bite you in the ass.

When I write a book, I put everything I have into it; so the more I have, the more the books become. Some people get freaked out by them: mostly the people who believe, mistakenly, that fantasy is about escaping reality. To them I say: If you have a problem with reality, you should be spending more time dealing with your life, and less time reading popcorn fantasy.

Do you think I'd start a war without knowing how to end it?"
"You've done it at least three times that I know of!"
"Ah sure, bring up the truth."
Caine and T'Passe

The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins.
It always wins because it is everywhere.
It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form - or the master of the classic form?"
"I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master but really - "
"Not a master. The master.

last name's just for people who want you to be impressed by their parents." I

Obi-Wan Kenobi opened his eyes to find himself staring at what he strongly suspected was Anakin's butt.

It looked like Anakin's butt - well, his pants, anyway - though it was thoroughly impossible for Obi-Wan to be certain, since he had never before had occasion to examine Anakin's butt upside down, which it currently appeared to be, nor from this rather uncomfortably close range.

The dark is generous. Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truths of others. The dark protects us from what we dare not know.

Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask is a trick. You will find no truth in me. Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith on this.

I am not the same man you found that day! The monster you've created has returned, to kill you!

A pair of starfighters. Jedi starfighters. Only two.
Two is enough.
Two is enough because the adults are wrong, and their younglings are right.
Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last.

I swear to you on any kind of sacred whateverthefuck you favor: if I live through this I will absolutely start taking your advice." "That'll look nice on your headstone.

Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.

I have known Jedi. Many, many years ago. That knowing was not a gladness for me. I believed I would never know another, and I rejoiced in that belief.
But it is a gladness for me to be proven wrong.
I am happy to have known you, Jedi Luke Skywalker. You are more than they were.
"That's--" Luke shook his head blankly, blinking against the darkness. "I mean, thanks, but I barely know anything."
So you believe. But I say to you: you are greater than the Jedi of former days.
Luke could only frown, and shake his head again. "What makes you say that?"
Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker...
You are not afraid of the dark.

Hobbie: "Have I told you today how much I really, really hate you?"
Janson: "Oh, sure, your lips say 'I hate you' but your eyes say - "
Hobbie: "That someday I'll murder you in your sleep?

The capacity for personal freedom is a rare talent. Talent exists to be used. We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them
but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey.

The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.

No lesson is truly learned until it has been purchased with pain

There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer; that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches.
There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see.
And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade.
They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone.
And I name this saying wisdom.

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away.

Reasons are for peasants.

Life is more a matter of choosing than knowing. He could never know the eventual destination of his path, but he could always choose in which direction to take each step.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end you don't even want to. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself - And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

A girl likes to be asked, dumbass.

I read once, somewhere, that the way you know you've grown up is when your future death becomes a stone in your shoe: when you feel it with every step.

Each of us is the sum of our scars.

Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
-Vergere

What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only - and exactly - this: the choice of the gardener

A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.

How can he love being ... that? Being what Caine is?"
"Because he's an asshole," she says. "You must have noticed.

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi:
A phenomenal pilot who doesn't like to fly. A devastating warrior who'd rather not fight. A negotiator without peer who frankly prefers to sit alone in a quiet cave and meditate.

Once you sand the corners off consequences, people start to get really fucking weird.

Can't trust a fascist
truth is always your first sacrifice to the welfare of the state

The author respectfully dedicates this book to everyone who is almost as smart as they think they are.

With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith--
Because now your self is all you will ever have.

Shit, kid, thinking about that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, like I just ate a kitten.

You assume that I don't know and I do care. The truth is the other way around.

I have known you since the world was born. Everything you are is what you should be. Everything you should be is what you are. I know all of you, and there is nothing in you I do not love.

You've been off fighting the war in the Outer Rim. You don't know what it's been like, dealing with all the petty squabbles and special interests and greedy, grasping fools in the Senate, and Palpatine's constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power - he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at this planet, Obi-Wan! We have given up so much freedom - how secure do we look?

When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep. When you fight, fight.

I knew an Ethersworn monk once, who made it a practice to believe six impossible things before breakfast; if he could manage only five, he stayed in bed.

Okay, maybe I don't have to solve every problem with my fists ... but every once in awhile, a situation arises that is substantially improved by the judicious application of force.

Which would leave Mace and Agen Kolar- -both among the greatest bladesbeings the Jedi Order has ever produced

Every time a horse let you up onto its back, it's giving you its life. Every time.

If I have to make moves in her, we'll all get bloody. You, go wake up Raithe. Tell him Hari's waiting to see him. He'll come with you."
"Hari?" He frowned like he wasn't sure if he was being kidded. "Of what abbey? In what land?"
"Hari of Do as You're Told in the land of And Shut the Fuck Up.

Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be

Scars are the key to power. Scars are the map of beauty ... Each of us is the sum of our scars.

I don't have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down.
-Ganner Rhysode

The hope crashes into reality and people get hurt.

So this is how liberty dies," she was saying to herself. "With cheering, and applause.

He could feel the end of the battle approaching, and so could the blur of the Sith he faced in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear.

Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.

Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half kilometer drop.

Out where the shadow's fear's fear made it hesitate.

Out where the shadow's fear turned some of it's Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.

Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.

One piece flipped back in through the cut open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain towards the distant alleys below.

Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.

'For all your power, my lord,you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord,' Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, 'is under arrest.

And Anakin is on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That's what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.
He looks the dragon in the eye and doesn't even slow down.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don't even have lungs anymore. Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.
Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?

Jacen reflected bitterly that a large part of growing up seemed to involve watching everything change, and discovering that all changes are permanent. That nothing ever changes back.
That you can't go home again.

Vengeance is mine saith the Lord but this morning He's going to fucking well have to share.

If i listen hard enough, i can hear that voice: that small quiet whisper in the back of my head that keeps on insisting "My will, or i won't".

In the distant reaches of his memory, he found a lesson of Yoda's, from one long solstice night, deep in the jungle near Dagobah's equator. When to the Force you truly give yourself, all you do expresses the truth of who you are, Yoda had said, leaning forward so that the knattik-root campfire painted blue shadows within the deep creases of his ancient face. Then through you the Force will flow, and guide your hand it will, until the greatest good might come of your smallest gesture.

It may be there's such a thing as a tool than can't be used as a weapon, but I've never met one.

I told you before," he muttered solidly. "You can kill me, but you can't make me obey.

Be not afraid, child. Be what you are.

... what your life means depends on how you tell the story.

Being old enough to know better but still too young to resist mostly sucks.

It's one thing to be a good guy because that's who you are. It's something else to be a good guy because you're too much a fucking pussy to break the rules.

A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers.
One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time.
One is mortal.
They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless.
They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers.
They each die fighting the blind god.

And so, here at the end of days, you are as you've always been. Willing to die. Not willing to quit

It is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest

Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm.

The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said, "is that nothing is ever truly over.