Tom Holt Quotes

Lawyers are predators in grey worsted. ~ Tom Holt

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

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? ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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

Threats ... are the last resort of the inadequate negotiator. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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

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

After all, why be right when you can be happy. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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

...[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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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, ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

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? ~ Tom Holt

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. ~ Tom Holt

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

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

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? ~ Tom Holt

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

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. ~ Tom Holt

There are two kinds of people: the ones who need to be told, and the ones who figure it out all by themselves. ~ Tom Clancy

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference. ~ Tom Brokaw

It had not seemed to matter that Rose was only eight years old.
"More than eight," said Rose. "Nearly nine."
"Darling Rose, even almost nearly nine-year-old's don't fall in love," said forgetful Caddy.
Caddy tried very hard to comfort Rose when Tom had left. It was not an easy job. It was like trying to comfort a small, unhappy tiger.
"Who said anything about falling in love?" growled Rose crossly. "Falling! Falling is by accident! I didn't fall in anything!"
"Oh. Right. Sorry, Posy Rose."
"And I am definitely not in love! ~ Hilary McKay

I'm a big baby. I'm not tough at all. ~ Tom Sizemore

What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea. ~ Tom Stoppard

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people. ~ Kiana Tom

Emily Dickinson has great sound and sense. ~ Tom Verlaine

It is better to be quotable than to be honest. ~ Tom Stoppard

A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility ~ Tom Brokaw

What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives. ~ Tom Rachman

Tom, how many children do you think I have to have before I figure out you get them by having sex?"
"Of course there would be protection," he offered.
"Tons of it. ~ Robyn Carr

There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others. ~ Tom Robbins

This diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ~ J.K. Rowling

A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall. ~ Tom Robbins

I've done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon. ~ Tom Berenger

It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head. ~ Tom Selleck

He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he'd known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace. ~ Tom Perrotta

considering that lexicons and dictionaries are practically a high art form in German- speaking countries. The entry merges Essad Bey and Wolfgang von Weisl into one person. It explains that "Wolfgang (von) Weisl" also used the pseudonyms Leo Noussimbaum, Essad Bey, and Kurban Said - and hence the Austrian journalist, who otherwise had only a travel book and a book on Austrian artillery to his credit, suddenly was the prolific author of approximately twenty works of fiction and nonfiction ~ Tom Reiss

Wasn't crying. I've had a bad day. Another one. One in a series of bad days. I'm not complaining. Bad days are my bag. They're time-consuming, however, and I'm a busy girl. ~ Tom Robbins

Career is just posh slavery. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

I consider myself to be a very fortunate person and to have led a very fortunate life. ~ Tom Stoppard

Were you so scared that she'd hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you?"

"No suh, I's scared I'd be in court, just like I am now."

"Scared of arrest, scared you'd have to face up to what you did?"

"No suh, scared I'd hafta face up to what I didn't do. ~ Harper Lee

I love ghost stories but kind of left them alone after my teens and came back to it after playing Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights' on the radio. ~ Tom Goodman-Hill

I beg young people to travel. If you don't have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you're going to see your country differently, you're going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You're going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It's not what Tom Friedman writes about; I'm sorry. You're going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can't get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people - Americans and Europeans - come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on. ~ Henry Rollins

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since then ~ Tom Lehrer

Final Fantasy VII awoke American gaming to the possibilities of narrative dynamism and the importance of relatively developed characters - no small inspiration to take from a series whose beautifully androgynous male characters often appear to be some kind of heterosexual stress test. ~ Tom Bissell

I detest computers. If you had a device like that 30 years ago that froze up constantly, misbehaved constantly, lost your information and screwed up when you needed it the most, it would have been laughable. ~ Tom Scholz

Elio: Are you sory I came?

Oliver: I'd holt you and kiss you if I could. ~ Andre Aciman

The sovereign individual cannot escape to any degree the rules and practices of gardening. ~ Tom P. S. Angier

When coffee became popular in Oxford and the coffee houses selling it began to multiply, the university authorities tried to clamp down, worrying that coffee houses promoted idleness and distracted members of the university from their studies ~ Tom Standage

Osborne paused. "There is... something else."

Clegg sighed.

"What?"

"Your Wikipedia page."

"What? My-"

"It says you're Prime Minister now."

"Well, it was news to me that I'm not, I can't-"

"Was it one of your staff?"

Silence fell heavily on the room. Clegg tilted his head to one side.

"Are you... what are you..." he began.

"I'm asking because if it was, it could be... serious."

Another pause. This time, Clegg couldn't help but smile in disbelief.

"Are you going to accuse my staff of a constitutional coup for editing Wikipedia? ~ Tom Black

Technology has allowed us to have more drought-resistant crops. The spotty nature of drought, the spotty nature of rains can sometimes result in better yields than anticipated. ~ Tom Vilsack

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had the baby. He was there for the birth. It would've been nice if he was there for the conception. ~ Joan Rivers

We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics. ~ Tom DeLay

You [the Gallaudet students] have brought the deaf community together ... You are my heroes. ~ Tom Harkin

Although the mystery of God is addressed in human terms by our imagination, it must be by the genuinely grounded imagination and not the imagination of make-believe. ~ Tom Stack

I must stop compromising my plays with this whiff of social application. They must be entirely untouched by any suspicion of usefulness. ~ Tom Stoppard

Every chef has his treats. By that, I mean bits and pieces from things you're working on - crusty little cake trimmings, ends from a brisket, collars from a salmon, scraps. But they're snacks to me, and I eat them right off the cutting board - maybe too much. ~ Tom Douglas

Now it's closing time/the music's fading out. ~ Tom Waits

Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people "I thought you said this." Poetry comes out of that too. ~ Tom Waits

There are three things in life ... not worrying what they are, not caring what others may think they are, and enjoying the wonder of what they might be. ~ Tom Althouse