Top 83 Connie Willis Quotes
#1. The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her surprise, they all thought in chorus." - LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking-Glass
Connie Willis
#2. It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir.
Connie Willis
#4. Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying 'See the Siamese twins,' and everybody pays a buck, thinking they're gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it's a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.
Connie Willis
#6. Nothing in all those "O swan" poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.
Connie Willis
#7. This gave me an early taste for humorous authors, of which there were - and are - far too few (though there are lots who labor under the misapprehension that they're funny.)
Connie Willis
#8. And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.
Connie Willis
#9. I think literature totally fails when it has an agenda. - From an interview on the podcast Starship Sofa, December 2010.
Connie Willis
#10. Time is the fire in which we burn. - Delmore Schwartz
Connie Willis
#11. It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.
Connie Willis
#12. Insecure, ill-dressed chaos theorist desires intelligent, insightful, incandescent trends researcher. Must be SC.
Connie Willis
#13. And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.
Connie Willis
#14. They were a susitute. They were what you did when you couldn't have what you wanted.
Connie Willis
#15. 'I promise you calm seas,' " Sir Godfrey called, and raised his hands in benediction, " 'auspicious gales, and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off.'
Connie Willis
#16. No," I said finally.
"Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?"
"1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.
Connie Willis
#17. I am a Colorado native, and, no, I did not vote for the anti-gay amendment or the same-sex marriage ban, and I am not a member of a militia.
Connie Willis
#18. Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.
Connie Willis
#19. Tomorrow at the press conference would be dreadful. She would be surrounded by nice young men who spoke Big Business or Computer or Bachelor on the Make, and she would not understand a word they said."
"Short Story: Blued Moon
Connie Willis
#20. One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.
Connie Willis
#21. People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.
Connie Willis
#22. I remember an aunt saying sagely, "The good die young." Not exactly a motivation to behave yourself.
Connie Willis
#23. The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.
Connie Willis
#24. I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.
Connie Willis
#26. Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.
Connie Willis
#27. Io suuicien lui damo amo," she said softly. "You are here in place of the friends I love.
Connie Willis
#28. I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie).
Connie Willis
#29. History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.
Connie Willis
#30. what the hell is 'emotional bonding,' anyway? It sounds like something out of Fifty Shades of Grey.
Connie Willis
#31. But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy, lie further off." - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night's Dream The
Connie Willis
#32. What's Management up to?" I whispered to Bennett.
"My guess is a new acronym," he whispered. "Departmental Unification Management Business." He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. "D.U.M.B.
Connie Willis
#34. When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.
Connie Willis
#35. Come here, cat. You wouldn't want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.
Connie Willis
#36. Movie Cliche #12: The Moral. A character states the obvious and everybody gets the point.
Connie Willis
#37. That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.
Connie Willis
#38. I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction.
Connie Willis
#39. Translated 'Non omnia possumus omnus' as 'No possums allowed on the omnibus.
Connie Willis
#40. I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty.
Connie Willis
#41. I wanted to come, and if I hadn't, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.
Connie Willis
#42. You shouldn't be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that's what science is all about.
Connie Willis
#43. There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I'd like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O'Reilly's macaques, which have to have more sense.
Connie Willis
#44. Moom' and 'tomb' actually rhyme, which is something Dickinson hardly ever did, preferring near-rhymes such as 'mat/gate', 'tune/sun,' and 'balm/hermaphrodite.
Connie Willis
#45. Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie.
"You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him.
"Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey.
Connie Willis
#46. Will I ever see you again? No. Do I love you? Yes, for all time.
Connie Willis
#47. None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does.
Connie Willis
#48. One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.
Connie Willis
#49. Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides.
Connie Willis
#50. I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.
Connie Willis
#51. Don't come all the way across town. There's a Metro station right outside of Arlington. I'll meet you there, all right?
Connie Willis
#52. Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.
Connie Willis
#53. They make you settle for second best."
That's what I like about the movies. There's always some minor character standing round to tell you the moral, just in case you're too dumb to figure it out for yourself.
"You never get what you want.
Connie Willis
#54. Barbie's one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race.
Connie Willis
#55. Finch picked up one of the ancient fax-mags and brought it over to me.
"I don't need anything to read," I said. "I'll just sit here and eavesdrop along with you."
"I thought you might sit on the mag," he said. "It's extremely difficult to get soot out of chintz.
Connie Willis
#56. There are a hundred ways a man can bleed to death. And he can be pulled from the rubble of bitterness, of despair, as well as the wreckage of the Phoenix. And which rescue is the more real? Nothing you could have done for me ... was more important than the restoration of my hope.
Connie Willis
#57. Seriousness of mind was a prerequisite for understanding Newtonian physics. I am not convinced it is not a handicap in understanding quantum theory.
Connie Willis
#58. That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!
Connie Willis
#59. Perhaps that's how I should think of them, Polly thought, the troupe and Miss Snelgrove and Trot. And Sir Godfrey. Not as lost to her, but as removed to this moment in time for safekeeping.
Connie Willis
#60. her. I never felt properly sorry for schizophrenics, she thought, unable to escape the voices in their heads and fighting for their sanity with a maelstrom of noise all around them, making it impossible to think. No
Connie Willis
#61. I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.
Connie Willis
#62. Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.
Connie Willis
#63. It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all.
Connie Willis
#64. There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I
Connie Willis
#65. One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober.
Connie Willis
#66. I don't know who started the myth that sheep are fluffy and white. They were more the color of an old mop and just as matted with dirt.
Connie Willis
#67. 1. Optimize potential.
2. Facilitate empowerment.
3. Implement visioning.
4. Strategize priorities.
5. Augment core structures.
Connie Willis
#68. Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy's hand and clasped it tightly in her own. "I knew you'd come," she said, and the net opened.
Connie Willis
#69. io sui ici en liu dami amo' ('I am here in place of a friend love')
Connie Willis
#70. Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?
Connie Willis
#71. Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it's my duty after work to encourage the trends I'd like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake. And reading. Also,
Connie Willis
#72. She was afraid she'd have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her,
Connie Willis
#73. maybe I should join It's Only Brunch. It's like JustDinner, but with mimosas.
Connie Willis
#74. Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.
Connie Willis
#75. There are some things worth giving up anything for, even your freedom, and getting rid of your period is definitely one of them.
Connie Willis
#76. That's the problem with models - they only include the details people think are relevant,
Connie Willis
#77. Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.
Connie Willis
#78. It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances.
Connie Willis
#79. Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there?" Mel shook his head. "By the wolves," he said.
Connie Willis
#81. Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change.
Connie Willis
#82. If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.
Connie Willis
#83. It cannot rain but it pours." - JONATHAN SWIFT Oh,
Connie Willis
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