Tom Holt Quotes

But the world continued to thrive and prosper, with only the epidemic of love and romance spoiling an otherwise perfect situation.

A lifetime in the business had taught her that, apart from the few good people that work along-side you,nobody is to be trusted,ever,because sooner or later they'll let you down,sure as God made little green apples. And, when you came to think of it,hadn't that been the dirtiest trick of them all?

It was worth repeating, because it constituted the First Law of Sentient Ordnance: Thou shalt not blow up the wrong planet. On that point the programmers had been insistent to the point of fussiness. Accordingly,

Threats ... are the last resort of the inadequate negotiator.

American-style iced tea is the perfect drink for a hot, sunny day. It's never really caught on in the UK, probably because the last time we had a hot, sunny day was back in 1957.

How careless of me!" By which she meant that she had deduced that he had found [them] in his pocket and pitied him for needing to be forever in the right.

Mostly I sit at home in the evenings watching the box and hoping that one day I'll evolve into plankton.

There are few moments of clarity more profound than those that follow the emptying of an overcharged bladder. The world slows down, the focus sharpens, the brain comes back on line. Huge nebulous difficulties prove on close calm examination to be merely cloud giants.

All computers expect to be yelled at. There's not a single computer in the whole world that hasn't been sworn at. Even the discreet little VDU with the crossed keys monogram on the keyboard that sits on the Pope's desk in his office in the Vatican has in its time heard language that'd make a Marine blush.

It had all dropped into place, like the last bit of the jigsaw, which you thought all along was a bit of left-hand sky, but when you turn it over you realise it's the last chunk of right-hand sea, or the sky tricksily reflected in the surface of the pond.

...[She] was not nearly so intrusive. If she happened to observe the comings and goings of her friends out of the corner of her eye (which she could hardly fail to do, given the nature of her favorite sitting-place) and chanced to be able to remember when she had seen them and where they had been going, it was simply a tribute to her keen powers of observation and recall. Conscious spying was beneath her altogether.

Such confusion was, however, his normal state of mind. Without it, he would feel rather lost.
Confusion is the only possible result of a lifetime of being asked unanswerable questions by one's parents and relatives, such as 'What are we going to do with you?' or 'Why can't you be more like your sister?' To judge by the frequency with which he encountered it, the latter problem was the truly significant one, to which not even the tremendous intellectual resources of his family had been able to find an answer.

Luck isn't a wheelbarrow, Maurice; it works better if you don't push it. Stay

As the Athenians to the Pnyx, the antique Romans to the Campus Martius, or our Nordic ancestors to the All-Thing, so the folk of Tilling flocked to the High Street for extempore parliament.

There's an old goblin saying; there is nothing to fear but fear itself and scary things.

I don't read the Sunday papers; or the dailies, either.

It was irritating to have one's physical shortcomings pointed out quite so plainly twice in one evening, once by a beautiful girl and once by a dying badger.

He believes it's time to redesign Evil from the ground up; to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse, rapidly changing society.
"He's thinking of calling it," said Miss Gold, "New Evil.

When you're about to die, your whole life's supposed to flash before your eyes. When you fall in true love, on the other hand, what you see in the twinkling of an eye is your entire future.

Niceness, he realised, was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn't nobody would notice.

New technology is useful, but it's inefficient and ugly; it knows it'll be obsolete by lunchtime tomorrow, so it has no incentive to be anything else.

I try and do 2,500 words a day, every day of the year.

Only please, do be careful to bear in mind that Mordak's a goblin. Enlightened, yes, but a goblin. He likes his employees loyal or lightly steamed on a bed of bruised rocket.

A romantic, I think the word is. Latin for idiot.

Most thoughtful,"...[he said] politely. This cheerfulness was ambiguous, Had she determined to ignore ...[the] coup entirely--an established tactic, most irritating to the innovator but hard to sustain over long periods of time--or had she already evolved her counter-strategy?

A problem's nothing but an opportunity wearing a funny hat, and inside every disaster there's a triumph struggling to get out.

Realism without naturalism... is a leading motif in Modern Art. There is a move away from the struggle to perfect the reflection of Nature in Art's mirror, which I attribute to the all-pervading effects of photography...You must serve the tradition without being its slave. Remember you are an artist, not a draughtsman.

Georgie paused on the threshold for a moment as if hesitant to enter the habitation of such a perjurer lest it should be struck by lightning.

The fact that he hated and feared his new environment was largely beside the point, for he had been taught long ago that what he thought and felt about any given subject was without question the least important thing in the world.

Among the gods, there is a dispute as to which one of them originally thought of Christianity; or, as they call it, the Great Leg Pull. Apollo has the best claim, but a sizeable minority support Pluto, ex-God of the Dead, on the grounds that he has a really sick sense of humour.
How would it be, suggested the unidentified god, if first we tell them all to love their neighbour, pack in the killing and thieving, and be nice to each other. Then we let them start burning heretics.

So; in the beginning was the Word, but ten nanoseconds later there was a twelve-volume dictionary, and ten nanoseconds after that a Library of Congress, with 90 per cent of the books in foreign languages. It's probably not possible after such a lapse of time to find out what the original Word was. Given the consequences, however, it could well have been oops.

Birmingham City Council was playing third time lucky with the design of the city's celebrated Victoria Square ...

Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever.

A brief note on the legend of Pandora's Box: Ever wondered why bundled in with all the torrents, and suffering of man kind the Gods put hope down there at the bottom, answer because in certain circumstances hope can be the worst torment of them all.

I know what you're doing," the wolf said. "This is advanced interrogation techniques, right? First you destroy my self-esteem and sense of individuality, then you force me to tell you where the pack hides out, so your woodcutter pals can come and slaughter us. Well, you're wasting your breath. I won't talk. I won't talk. Got that?

In spite of really intense competition for the job, I'm still my own worst enemy.

At any given time, ninety-nine-point-nine-five per cent of the human race are a confounded nuisance

He turned and gave the Dark Elf a nasty look. "They can do that," he said, "mess with your head, using arcane mind control techniques. Well-known fact."
The Dark Elf sniggered. "I wish," he said. "Sadly, no. You're thinking of journalism, which is slightly different.

It sounded a bit like his mother, a woman who'd lied to him about the existence of Santa Claus and was therefore not to be trusted on matters of any importance.

People are sometimes easily overlooked. The holes they leave behind when they aren't there any more are far harder to miss.

He made a conscious decision not to think about it, and accordingly spent the rest of his shift thinking about nothing else.

You wouldn't think you could get bored falling to your death ... But when it's a really, really long drop, there's a definite risk on ennui.

What are the deeds of heroes, except a few frightened people doing the best they can in the circumstances?

Everything is out there if you know how to find it, and have the patience. I don't and haven't, but that's my problem.

Lawyers are predators in grey worsted.

A hero," Max said.
"A weirdness-haunted victim of circumstance who spends his days looking for things."
Max grinned. "That's what I just said.

"A weirdness-haunted" title="Tom Holt Quotes: A hero," Max said.
"A weirdness-haunted" width="913px" height="515px" loading="lazy"/>

Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try.

After all, why be right when you can be happy.

Mr Winckler clapped his hands together. Evil, as personified by me. Meet the new Dark Lord. But you can call me Albert.

The logical flaws and inconsistencies that riddled the tale, far from making him doubt its veracity finally convinced him that it might indeed be true; for life is like that.

There ought to be a dictionary of smiles; somewere you can look them up and find out what they mean.

They were on foot, for the Royce had developed some curious wasting disease and was even more under the spanner.

There's nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it's basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly.

Genies rarely have nightmares, for the same reason that elephants don't usually worry about being trampled underfoot. With the possible exception of bottles, there's nothing in the cosmos large enough or malicious enough to frighten them, or stupid enough to try.