Category Archives: Quotes


Quotes from Darkness

More from “Forge of Darkness”. It is frustrating, because extrapolating quotes can diminish their power.

Haut nodded. ‘Listen well. You are right to not conflate the symbol with the meaning; but you are wrong in thinking that to do so is uncommon.’

‘The older you get,’ she said, in a tone that made her seem eye to eye with his grandmother, ‘the more you discover the truth about the past. You can empty it. You can fill it anew. You can create whatever truth you choose. We live long, Orfantal – much longer than the Jheleck, or the Dog-Runners. Live long enough and you will find yourself in the company of other liars, other inventors, and all that they make of their youth shines so bright as to blind the eye. Listen to their tales, and know them for the liars they are – no different from you. No different from any of us.’

‘But dear, we are its eyes. Here atop the Old Tower. We are the city’s eyes just as we are the world’s eyes, and that is a great responsibility, for it is only through us that the world is able to see itself, and from sight is born mystery – the releasing of imagination – and in this moment of recognition, why, everything changes.’

A promise of depth and distance, yet one in which the promise remained sacred, for neither depth nor distance could be explored.

to look upon oneself in this mirror-world was to witness every truth; and find nowhere to hide.

‘A will crumbled helpless to the assault of revelation. When we are driven to our knees, the world shrinks.’

Behind them T’riss spoke up, her voice carrying with unnatural clarity. ‘In ritual you abased yourselves. I saw it in the courtyard, many times. But the gesture was rote – even in your newfound fear, the meaning of that abasement was lost.’

‘Please,’ growled Resh, ‘explain yourself, Azathanai.’

‘I will. You carve an altar from stone. You paint the image of waves upon the wall and so fashion a symbol of that which you would worship. You give it a thousand names, and imagine a thousand faces. Or a single name, a single face. Then you kneel, or bow, or lie flat upon the ground, making yourselves abject in servitude, and you may call the gesture humble before your god, and see in your posture righteous humility.’

‘This is all accurate enough,’ said Resh.

‘Just so,’ she agreed. ‘And by this means you lose the meaning of the ritual, until the ritual is itself the meaning. These are not gestures of subservience. Not expressions of the surrendering of your will to a greater power. This is not the relationship your god seeks, yet it is the one upon which you insist. The river god is not the source of your worship; or rather, it shouldn’t be. The river god meets your eye and yearns for your comprehension – not of itself as a greater power, but comprehension of the meaning of its existence.’

consider this: it is only when opposed that some things find definition. Few would argue, I think, that Darkness is a difficult thing to worship. What is it we seek in elevating Mother Dark? What manner of unity can we find circling a place of negation?

Erikson being playful

A short, playful and “meta” quote from “Forge of Darkness”:

‘I yield the meaningless secrets, Setch, to better hold hidden the important ones. Think of prod and pull, if you like. Explore the concepts in your mind, and muse on the pleasures of misdirection.’

Sechul Lath studied Errastas, lying there propped up against a boulder, beaten half to death. ‘Are you truly as clever as you think you are?’

Errastas laughed. ‘Oh, Setch, it hardly matters. The suspicion is enough, making fecund the soil of imagination. Let others fill the gaps in my cleverness, and make of me in their eyes a genius.’

The Republic of Wine

Actually, I bought both. “The Republic of Wine” arrived first.

It reads a bit like an alcoholic version of Alice in Wonderland. The sense of humor is hit and miss but the prose is lively and playful enough to make it quite fun to read. These are just a few quotes I enjoyed from a story “embedded” in the book.

“Dear friends, dear students, when I learned that I had been engaged as a visiting professor at the Brewer’s College, this supreme honor was like a warm spring breeze in midwinter sweeping past my loyal, red-blooded heart, my green lungs and intestines, as well as my purple liver, the seat of acquiescence and accommodation. I can stand behind this sacred podium, made of pine and cypress and decorated with colorful plastic flowers, to lecture to you primarily because of its special qualities. You all know that when alcohol enters the body, most of it is broken down in the liver…”

Diamond Jin stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall of Liquorland’s Brewer’s College solemnly discharging his duties. He had chosen a broad and far-reaching topic for this, his first lecture – Liquor and Society. In the tradition of brilliant, high-ranking leaders, who steer clear of specifics when they speak in public – like God looking down from on high, invoking times ancient and modern, calling forth heaven and earth, a sweeping passage through time and space – he proved his worth as visiting professor by not allowing the details of the topic to monopolize his oration. He permitted himself to soar through the sky like a heavenly steed, yet from time to time knew he must come down to earth. The rhetoric flowed from his mouth, changing course at will, yet every sentence was anchored in his topic, directly or indirectly.
Nine hundred Liquorland college students, male and female, heads swelling, hearts and minds ready to take flight, along with their professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and college administrators, sat as one body, a galaxy of celestial small-fry gazing up at a luminous star.

[…]the lights singing, the wine surging through my veins, in the flow of time my thoughts travel upstream[…]

“Dear comrades and dear students, do not have blind faith in talent, for talent is really nothing but hard work. Of course, materialists do not categorically deny that some people are more lavishly endowed than others. But this is not an absolute determinant. I acknowledge that I possess a superior natural ability to break down alcohol, but were it not for arduous practice, attention to technique, and artistry, the splendid ability to drink as much as I want without getting drunk would have been unattainable.”

By the way, Howard Goldblatt, the translator that on the cover is called as “the foremost translator of Chinese literature in the West”, has probably butchered these books:

Goldblatt added that Mo Yan writing style is often unfamiliar with Western readers, and that publishers often demanded that he trim parts of Mo’s novels.

Fowles’ original Magus

I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic than my pseudo-aristocratic, seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short.

Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.

It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and, although I couldn’t have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery.

The picture above (taken with the only crappy camera I could find) is of the book I received today, The Magus by John Fowles. I was able to order it for cheap from the used books on Amazon, and I was glad to find out that this copy I was able to get was indeed the one published in 1974.

I could have bought a newer edition but this one got the best cover (not as good as the original hardcover, but better than… this) and, more importantly, every review I read mentioned that the original version was superior to the revised one, and the revised one is the only one that is published these days. The revision was published in 1977, so if I could find a version prior to that date I could be certain it was the one I wanted. For the most part, what is criticized about the revision is that the writer attempted to clarify the mystery of the book, but ended up defusing and lessening that valuable and meaningful air of mystery. It was essentially made more accessible, but also less powerful. Since what interests me is the myth and mystery, I had to get the first, uncompromised version.

Not sure if the book will make my official reading queue and if I’ll continue commenting it, but for now I read the first chapter (and it’s excellent) and compared with the revised version available on Amazon. The differences are minimal, some spelling changes and unneeded grammar fixes. The biggest change I found was “we argued about essence and existence” turned into “we argued about being and nothingness”.

Bakker’s recent analysis of fiction is a meaningful one (pun intended). I’d say this book is certainly trying to “max out meaning”, but contrarily to Bakker, the romantic vision is one that, once relocated and properly understood, still carries value for me (but this becomes again another contradiction, as you might imagine).

“I am a caster of nets”

I should finish reading Midnight Tides next week. It took a while.

“I am a caster of nets.”

“Yet, should the need arise, your tyrant masters could call you into military service.”

“The Kenryll’ah have ruled a long time, Trull Sengar. And have grown weak with complacency. They cannot see their own impending demise. It is always the way of things, such blindness. No matter how long and perfect the succession of fallen empires and civilizations so clearly writ into the past, the belief remains that one’s own shall live for ever, and is not subject to the indomitable rules of dissolution that bind all of nature.” The small, calm eyes of the demon looked down steadily upon Trull. “I am a caster of nets. Tyrants and emperors rise and fall. Civilizations burgeon then die, but there are always casters of nets. And tillers of the soil, and herders in the pastures. We are where civilization begins, and when it ends, we are there to begin it again.”

A curious speech, Trull reflected. The wisdom of peasants was rarely articulated in such clear fashion. Even so, claims to truth were innumerable. “Unless, Lilac, all the casters and tillers and herders are dead.”

“I spoke not of ourselves, Trull, but of our tasks. Kenyll’rah, Edur, Letherii, the selves are not eternal. Only the tasks.”

“Unless everything is dead.”

“Life will return, eventually. It always does. If the water is foul, it will find new water.”

a well-established, highly successful social structure

“How does one reshape an entire society? How does one convert this impressive example of the instinct to survive into a communally positive force? Clearly, we needed to follow a well-established, highly successful social structure as our inspiration—”

“Rats.”

“Well done, Bugg. I knew I could count on you.”

Trystero (3)

Robert Scurvham had founded, during the reign of Charles I, a sect of most pure Puritans. Their central hangup had to do with predestination. There were two kinds. Nothing for a Scurvhamite ever happened by accident, Creation was a vast, intricate machine. But one part of it, the Scurvhamite part, ran off the will of God, its prime mover. The rest ran off some opposite Principle, something blind, soulless; a brute automatism that led to eternal death. The idea was to woo converts into the Godly and purposeful sodality of the Scurvhamite. But somehow those few saved Scurvhamites found themselves looking out into the gaudy clockwork of the doomed with a certain sick and fascinated horror, and this was to prove fatal. One by one the glamorous prospect of annihilation coaxed them over, until there was no one left in the sect, not even Robert Scurvham, who, like a ship’s master, had been last to go.

time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person’s time line sideways till they all coincide.

You take it because it’s good. Because you hear and see things, even smell them, taste like you never could. Because the world is so abundant. No end to it, baby. You’re an antenna, sending your pattern out across a million lives a night, and they are your lives too.

feeling like a fluttering curtain in a very high window, moving up to then out, over the abyss.

This is America, you live in it, you let it happen.

WE AWAIT SILENT TRISTERO’S EMPIRE