Vladmir Tod Quotes

Vlad's heart sank into his stomach, then squeezed its way down his leg and popped out of the hole in his shoe, where it struck the floor and broke. ~ Heather Brewer

I think in many ways, the texture of technology actually diminishes human beings. It doesn't augment them. ~ Tod Machover

The schoolroom clock was worn raw by stares; and you couldn't look up at the big Puritanical face of it and not feel the countless years of young eyes reflected in it, urging it onwards. It was a dark, old spirit that didn't so much mark time as bequeath it. ~ Tod Wodicka

We take Tod and Stevie to the mall with us, we'd be in and out in thirty minutes. Those boys don't fuck around at the mall. They got, like, a different kind of gay-dar," Daisy told Tex. "It's the kind that they can hone in on the best outfit, pair of shoes, or whatever you need, find your size without even askin' and feed you the shit in your dressing room without you havin' to leave it. They don't spare your feelin's either. If it don't look good, they just snatch it from you and find you somethin' else. They could do it in the Olympics, they're so good. ~ Kristen Ashley

I nodded, chewing my own syrup-soaked bite. "But surely that's not all there is to it. I mean, really? A big picnic? That's Avari's master plan? That makes him sound about as dangerous as Yogi Bear."
Tod shrugged. "Yeah. If Yogi were a soul-sucking, body-stealing, boyfriend-snatching, damned-soul-torturing evil demon from another world. Besides, what else could he be planning? ~ Rachel Vincent

I need you to trust me, even after I'm gone. Even after you've forgotten all of this. Do you trust me, Tod?"
"With everything I have and everything I am. With all my soul. ~ Rachel Vincent

I went up on my toes to kiss him, and he groaned. "Do you really think this is appropriate on school grounds?"
"Nope." I wrapped my arms around his neck. "And I happen to know there isn't an appropriate thought running through your head right now."
"Or any other time." Tod pulled me close and held me so tight my ribs almost hut, but I didn't want him to let go. Ever. ~ Rachel Vincent

You don't see Los Angeles erecting a museum dedicated to the birth place of the Crips and the Bloods and the Mexican Mafia, with a special guided bus tour highlighting the rise of the crack trade, yet you can hop on a bus in Chicago tomorrow to see the famous locales of murders. I have to imagine there's some wonderful academic book on the sociology of this out there. ~ Tod Goldberg

Someday decades from now, when you and Sabine are hobbling around in your old-people pants and orthopedic shoes, yelling at grandchildren and reminiscing about the days when you could still see your feet, unimpeded by the view of your gut, I will still be basking in the glow of eternal youth, forever young, forever golden, forever - "
"In love with the face in the mirror and the sound of your own voice," I finished for him, and Nash laughed. ~ Rachel Vincent

I think a double bass for me would be too much effort. But the cello, you're really engaged and the sound is kind of right here. So, it feels like being merged, married to an instrument. ~ Tod Machover

But more than any of that, I was thankful for the possibility he'd shown me: that a man really could love a woman enough that he'd do anything to protect her. That's how much Tod loved Addy.
That's how much I wanted Nash to love me. ~ Rachel Vincent

Beer. There's nothing I don't like about it. I love the smell, the taste - even the sound of it. The cool thunk of the cap coming off the bottle, the silvery crack of the pop-top can. You need to sip a whiskey. And I was never a sipper. I was a guzzler. I loved the feeling of it: to open wide the mouth of the soul and pour a cold one down my throat, with my mind racing ever-forward toward the next. Beer was kind and faithful, like an old friend. Every drinker has their poison. I am a beer man. ~ Tod A

So could we please not mob the three-thousand-plus-year-old reaper like tweens at a boy-band concert? ~ Rachel Vincent

Hey." Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. "I think death looks good on you. ~ Rachel Vincent

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind. ~ Tod Machover

And I met Madeline's necromancer. His name's Luca."
"A death detector?" Tod made a face. "That's creepy."
"It gets weirder. He's dating Sophie."
"On purpose? ~ Rachel Vincent

I think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else. ~ Tod Machover

I love Bach, I love Beethoven, I love Mozart, I love the Beatles, I love you know, Stockhausen, I love many things. But for some reason I come back to Elizabethan music because it's a little bit like the Beatles. ~ Tod Machover

I like the idea of imagining a sound and feeling a sound and then having it come out through your body, through an instrument. That's an important way to make music. ~ Tod Machover

How long until you have to go ... reap?" I whispered as my arms slid around his neck. Like we were dancing. Only we weren't moving, and there was no music.
"Don't know. Don't care."
"Won't you get in trouble if you miss something?"
"See my previous answer. ~ Rachel Vincent

It's a side effect of the process. You know how they say the eyes are the windows to the soul?" he asked, and I swallowed thickly before nodding. I didn't like where this was headed. "Evidently they mean that literally. Once the soul is gone, there's nothing to see through the windows."
Nash whistled softly. "That has to be the weirdest thing I've ever seen." And that meant a lot coming from a bean sidhe.
"You want me to put the contact back in, don't you?" Addison cocked her head and gave him a small, eerie smile.
"That's be great, thanks." Nash nodded decisively.
-Tod, Nash and Addison talking about her blank white eyes ~ Rachel Vincent

I almost never these days sit down with a CD or my laptop and just listen to a piece with a score. I probably would do that while I'm exercising. ~ Tod Machover

I think that there are reasons people fall in love over and over again. It's that feeling that someone wants to always help you. That feeling that you're never absolutely alone. ~ Tod Goldberg

I started thinking, my gosh, all this sophisticated software for measuring how Yo-Yo plays, and how he moves and this technique of the bow, I should be able to use similar techniques for measuring the way anybody moves, and so somebody who is not a professional or a trained musician, I should be able to make a musical environment for them. ~ Tod Machover

It's not like I'm actually wishing for more dead cheerleaders. I'm just saying, if someone has to go ... "
Tod snorted. "I like her."
-Emma ~ Rachel Vincent

Who cut him?' Sam liked saying things like 'Who cut him?' It reminded him of being a kid and watching prison movies, which is probably why prisoners talked like that, too. ~ Tod Goldberg

I've never understood America,"said the king.
"Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government."
"They get along together, these governments?"
"Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism."
"So I have heard," said Pippin.
"Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states."
The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said.
"Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors d ~ John Steinbeck

I think it's maybe because Sergeant Pepper's came out when I was about 13 or 14 and that was a pretty impressionable age, and it was such a kind of radical period. But that period of the Beatles really had a big influence on me and I think are directly related to hyperinstruments. ~ Tod Machover

There was a sweetness in my voice I found nauseating. I made a note to myself never to have children. Or at least not helpless children. ~ Tod Goldberg

In all these sights I achieve solace only in bringing forth trees, picturing them blooming like smoke from the roofs of gutted buildings, dreaming of what a fine and picturesque pile of rubble this city will someday make. ~ Tod Wodicka

They [academy writing programs] have no concept that the world has changed, that publishing has changed, that filmmaking has changed, and if you're not constantly looking at your education model and adjusting for the change, you'll find yourself teaching antiquity. Like all of these programs that won't accept students who are writing genre fiction - what an institutional ego! ~ Tod Goldberg

True love is a blinding thing, it can color the experiences of even the worst events with a rosy tint, it can turn men and women into the best types of people - ones who will sacrifice the world for a shared moment of bliss. ~ Tod Goldberg

Wenn Man an den Tod denkt, alles ist lächerlich. (When one thinks of death, everything is ridiculous). ~ Thomas Bernhard

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things. ~ Tod Machover

Have you and Nash both lost your minds? This is really a very simple concept
one that you taught me! Hellion equals evil. Period!
-Kaylee to Tod ~ Rachel Vincent

It's important as a composer to sit in silence and imagine these complex musical worlds in your head, but it's also a wonderful experience to touch your music and to hear it and hear it in the room with you and to say, you can't have an entire orchestra there, but you'd kind of like to have the orchestra there. ~ Tod Machover

Will this be in the examination, Mr Hecker? was the limit of my students' interest in any given subject. If it was going to be in the test they took notes, if it was not going to be in the test they did not take notes. Their silent, depthless stares were unnerving. I told myself that they were not stupid - for how could the final attainment of thousands of years of human progress be stupid? ~ Tod Wodicka

There's a good kind of crazy, Kaylee," he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. "It's the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward's way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole."
Tod leaned closer, staring into my eyes so intently I was sure he could see everything I was thinking, but too afraid to say. "I've seen you fight, Kaylee. I've seen you step into that darkness for someone else, then claw your way out, bruised, but still standing. You're that kind of crazy, and I live in that darkness. Together, we'd take crazy to a whole new level. ~ Rachel Vincent

So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs. ~ Tod Goldberg

History ... a release from the troublesome promiscuous present. ~ Tod Wodicka

The classroom looked like cupid had thrown up all over it. ~ Z Brewer

He's not like you, Tod. Aside from a couple of notable exceptions, you tend to think things through, but Nash is ruled by his heart - ~ Rachel Vincent

Vanity, right?" Nash reappeared in the living room with an open bag of potato chips. "I nominate my venerable brother. He likes to play hero, and one look at him should establish the vanity angle."
"Nash!" I really shouldn't have been surprised by the dig. But I was.
"What?" He raised one brow at me in challenge. "It's okay to call me jealous, but not to call him vain?"
"Awareness of one's obvious advantages doesn't imply vanity," Tod insisted calmly.
Nash turned on him. "Does it imply narcissism?"
Tod huffed. "This coming from the guy who owns more hair products than his girlfriend. ~ Rachel Vincent

Uh ... didn't we just pretty much share we care deeply for each other not five minutes ago?" I asked cautiously.
"No, we didn't pretty much do anything and we sure as fuck didn't pretty much share we care deeply for each other. We tod each other we're in love," he corrected me and my belly compressed as my heart skipped a beat.
"No," I contradicted stupidly but correctly, my heart, now racing, messing with my ability to think.
"I think it was you telling me we're in love."
His brows shot together and that was hot too. "Do you disagree?" he fired back.
"Uh ... no," I replied.
His brows then shot up and damn, that was hot too. "Your point? ~ Kristen Ashley

It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel ... but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point. ~ Tod Goldberg

You two are cracked," Tod snapped.
My smile widened. "Says the undead man in love with the soulless pop star. ~ Rachel Vincent