Stephen R. Donaldson Quotes

Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope. The alternative is despair.

But he was dreaming. The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended.

Another blast from Rivenrock shivered the air. It snatched Mhoram's head up, and he faced Covenant with tears streaming down his cheeks. "It is as I have said," he breathed achingly. "Madness is not the only danger in dreams."

All paths lead to death," she said when she found her voice. "This the Worm merely hastens.

Stone and sea are deep in life
Two unalterable symbols of the world
Permanence at rest
And permanence in motion
Participants in the power that remains

However you look at it, in these books "power" tends to be an expression of the essential nature of the person or being whose power it is. On those occasions when we've seen Lord Foul act directly, he seems to exert the withering force of pure scorn. IMHO, that's pretty intense.

Courage is for the lean. I am wiser.

The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling

I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.

The portal structure is simply a technique: it is neither necessary nor unnecessary, except as the writer and the story make it so. In the case of 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,' it was absolutely necessary to my intentions.

Are you a person - with volition and maybe some stubborness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising - or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It's only as good as the skill of its user, and its not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special - something more than you can do for yourself - you can't use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that's free to not be what you had in mind.

Involuntarily, she stopped, jerked up her head, looked around her like a frightened woman. They weren't car horns: they were wind instruments

A real man - real in all the ways that we recognize as real - finds himself suddenly abstracted from the world and deposited in a physical situation which could not possibly exist: sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre. There he is informed by a disembodied voice that he has been brought to that place as a champion for his world. He must fight to the death in single combat against a champion from another world. If he is defeated, he will die, and his world - the real world - will be destroyed because it lacks the inner strength to survive.

The man refuses to believe that what he is told is true. He asserts that he is either dreaming or hallucinating, and declines to be put in the false position of fighting to the death where no "real" danger exists. He is implacable in his determination to disbelieve his apparent situation, and does not defend himself when he is attacked by the champion of the other world.

Question: Is the man's behavior courageous or cowardly? This is the fundamental question of ethics.

It was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.

I may not yet be as old as dirt, but dirt and I are starting to have an awful lot in common.

When inadequate men assumed huge burdens, the outcome could only serve Despite.

There is no life which does not possess its own importance, no life which may not be touched by greatness at any time
Yes, be touched by greatness and have a hand in it.
(from The Mirror of Her Dreams)

When the emergency brappers went of they did what any dedicated, well-trained and quick-minded Service personnel would do; they paniced.

From the short story What Makes Us Human.

She could not distinguish between contrition and self-abasement; between acknowledgment and blame.

everything that passes unattempted is impossible." At

When all hope was gone, they heeded the counsels of despair. Had they continued to strive, defying their doom, some unforseen wonder might have occurred. And if it did not, still their glory would have surpassed their failure.

Oh, I have dreams, you fool. I have dreams. I dream of blood.

It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.

Their flat, unreadable faces showed no signs of youth or age, as if their relationship with time was somehow ambivalent; and

So now you think the augury was misinterpreted. It said you had to go get someone. It didn't say who that someone was.

Mending is harder than breaking.

For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.

Part of him wanted to weep ... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.

But there's something about sitting at someone else's desk that makes you feel like looking in the drawers. I resisted the impulse briefly. Then I decided what the hell. I was a private investigator. Poking my nose in where it didn't belong came with the territory.

Admonitions took over the ravaged playground of his mind.

In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not crowd at your back.

Joy is in the ears that hear.

He who waits for the sword to fall upon his neck will surely lose his head.

But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, "Do not fear. It is a dream." The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.

And you require no answers", Foamfollower was laughing in his gladness, "You are sufficient to every question".

The conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.

Whatever the explanation, it's perfectly obvious that our educational system has nothing to do with education: it's a babysitting service designed to replicate the worst qualities of the parents.

Life is risk. All who inhabit the Earth inhale peril with each breath.

His gaze turned cold as he faced her. 'Sure, she's attractive. A stone wall would be attractive if it looked like that. It's her attitude I don't like. There's more to love than just getting your itches scratched.

Be true, unbeliever.

It may be that hope misleads. But hate - hate corrupts. I have been too quick to hate. I become like what I abhor.

There is no doom so black or deep that courage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it.

He lay in darkness, like a sacrifice; he could hear the teeth of his leprosy devouring his flesh. There was a smell of contempt around him, insisting on his impotence. But his lips were bowed in a placid smile, a look of fondness, as if he had come at last to approve his disintegration.

Golden Boy with feet of clay
Let me help you on your way
A proper push will take you far -
But what a clumsy lad you are!

Do not hurt where holding is enough; do not wound where hurting is enough; do not maim where wounding is enough; and kill not where maiming is enough; the greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill.

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.

Dark trees leaped across his vision like aghast dancers in the nacreous light.

I'm not alive." She heard fury climbing to the top of his voice. "I'm a leper. Outcast unclean. Lepers are ugly and filthy. And abominable." His words filled her with horror and protest. "How can it be?" she moaned. "You are not - abominable. What world is it that dares treat you so?

But we will trust you nonetheless. You are bitter, and bitterness is a sign of concern. I trust that.

What good are friends who treat you just like your enemies do?

So ignorance increases ignorance, and knowledge

He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few.

Mortal lives are not stones. They are not seas. For impermanence to judge itself by the standards of permanence is folly. Or it is arrogance. Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. To deem it less because it is not more is to heed the counsels of the Despiser.

Ah, deserve," sighed Kindwind. "The notion of deserved and undeserved is a fancy. Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Mayhap the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. A wider gaze does not regard us in that wise. The stars do not. Perhaps the Creator does not. The larger truth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust. "For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear.

For a moment after his voice faltered and fell, the sanctuary was silent, and the voice throbbed like weeping, as if in his words the people recognized themselves, recognized the failure he described as their own. But then a new voice arose. Saltheart Foamfollower said boldly, "My Lord, we have not reached our end. True, the work of our lifetime has been to comprehend and consolidate the gains of our forebearers. But our labour will open the doors of the future. Our children and their children will gain because we have not lost heart, for faith and courage are the greatest gift that we can give to our descendants. And the Land holds mysteries of which we know nothing
mysteries of hope as well as of peril. Be of good heart, Rockbrothers. Your faith is precious above all things."

On the whole, she reflected with a loopy clarity while pain clanged back and forth in her head and the guard held her upright, she liked being rescued. It was better than not being rescued. Definitely.

Misliking the Harrow as I do, I would find no small joy in thwarting him. Have I not admitted that I, too, am prone to greed? But here I personify the united will of the Insequent. Any deviation from that resolve will breach the sacred prohibition which enables the Insequent to endure and prosper. Answering you, I will bring down my own destruction and accomplish only sorrow.

I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira that night when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named Jose, had just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. A piece of real quiet. Jose's cheeks bristled because he didn't shave very often, and his apron was dingy because it didn't get washed very often, and his fingernails had little crescents of grime under them. The glass he poured for me wasn't all that clean. But the stuff he poured was golden-amber and beautiful, like distilled sunlight, and it made the whole place soothing as sleep - which drunks know how to value because they don't get much of it.

I can't spend my whole life just sitting on my hands and wondering when I'm going to fade. I can't. That's worse than doing something wrong. Isn't it?

In perfect unison, all the townspeople vomited gouts of blood onto the pavement.

Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite"

Foamfollower from (Lord Foul's Bane; 1977)