Top 79 Stephen R. Donaldson Quotes
#2. Involuntarily, she stopped, jerked up her head, looked around her like a frightened woman. They weren't car horns: they were wind instruments
Stephen R. Donaldson
#4. The purpose of life - if it may be said to have purpose - is not ease. It is to choose, and to act upon the choice. In that task, we are not measured by outcomes. We are measured only by daring and effort and resolve.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#5. Another blast from Rivenrock shivered the air. It snatched Mhoram's head up, and he faced Covenant with tears streaming down his cheeks. "It is as I have said," he breathed achingly. "Madness is not the only danger in dreams."
Stephen R. Donaldson
#6. Something in her expression made Covenant feel that he came from a very poor world, where no one knew or cared about the healing of stoneware pots.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#7. Whatever the explanation, it's perfectly obvious that our educational system has nothing to do with education: it's a babysitting service designed to replicate the worst qualities of the parents.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#9. However you look at it, in these books "power" tends to be an expression of the essential nature of the person or being whose power it is. On those occasions when we've seen Lord Foul act directly, he seems to exert the withering force of pure scorn. IMHO, that's pretty intense.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#10. But there's something about sitting at someone else's desk that makes you feel like looking in the drawers. I resisted the impulse briefly. Then I decided what the hell. I was a private investigator. Poking my nose in where it didn't belong came with the territory.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#11. The portal structure is simply a technique: it is neither necessary nor unnecessary, except as the writer and the story make it so. In the case of 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,' it was absolutely necessary to my intentions.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#12. When all hope was gone, they heeded the counsels of despair. Had they continued to strive, defying their doom, some unforseen wonder might have occurred. And if it did not, still their glory would have surpassed their failure.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#13. I can't spend my whole life just sitting on my hands and wondering when I'm going to fade. I can't. That's worse than doing something wrong. Isn't it?
Stephen R. Donaldson
#14. he felt as tired as if he had spent the whole night shouting at himself. While
Stephen R. Donaldson
#15. But we will trust you nonetheless. You are bitter, and bitterness is a sign of concern. I trust that.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#16. This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#17. There is no life which does not possess its own importance, no life which may not be touched by greatness at any time
Yes, be touched by greatness and have a hand in it.
(from The Mirror of Her Dreams)
Stephen R. Donaldson
#20. He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#21. When you've tried all the salves in the world and they don't work, you start thinking about fire
Stephen R. Donaldson
#22. There is no doom so black or deep that courage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#24. But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, "Do not fear. It is a dream." The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#25. And he who wields white, wild magic gold is a paradox
For he is everything and nothing
Hero and fool
Potent, helpless
And with one word of truth or treachery
He will save or damn the earth
Because he is mad and sane
Cold and passionate
Lost and found
Stephen R. Donaldson
#26. One word more, a final caution: Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment; but now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!
Stephen R. Donaldson
#27. The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#29. So now you think the augury was misinterpreted. It said you had to go get someone. It didn't say who that someone was.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#30. It was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#31. Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope. The alternative is despair.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#34. Part of him wanted to weep ... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#35. When the emergency brappers went of they did what any dedicated, well-trained and quick-minded Service personnel would do; they paniced.
From the short story What Makes Us Human.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#37. The conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#38. I'm not alive." She heard fury climbing to the top of his voice. "I'm a leper. Outcast unclean. Lepers are ugly and filthy. And abominable." His words filled her with horror and protest. "How can it be?" she moaned. "You are not - abominable. What world is it that dares treat you so?
Stephen R. Donaldson
#39. His gaze turned cold as he faced her. 'Sure, she's attractive. A stone wall would be attractive if it looked like that. It's her attitude I don't like. There's more to love than just getting your itches scratched.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#41. Mortal lives are not stones. They are not seas. For impermanence to judge itself by the standards of permanence is folly. Or it is arrogance. Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. To deem it less because it is not more is to heed the counsels of the Despiser.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#42. But he was dreaming. The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#44. for faith and courage are the greatest gift that we can give to our descendants. And the Land holds mysteries of which we know nothing mysteries of hope as well as of peril.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#45. We need metaphors of magic and monsters in order to understand the human condition.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#46. In perfect unison, all the townspeople vomited gouts of blood onto the pavement.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#48. He lay in darkness, like a sacrifice; he could hear the teeth of his leprosy devouring his flesh. There was a smell of contempt around him, insisting on his impotence. But his lips were bowed in a placid smile, a look of fondness, as if he had come at last to approve his disintegration.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#49. It may be that hope misleads. But hate - hate corrupts. I have been too quick to hate. I become like what I abhor.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#53. Of the authors published under Ballantine's Adult Fantasy logo, only Evangeline Walton 'spoke' to me.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#54. Golden Boy with feet of clay
Let me help you on your way
A proper push will take you far -
But what a clumsy lad you are!
Stephen R. Donaldson
#56. When inadequate men assumed huge burdens, the outcome could only serve Despite.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#57. It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#58. Dark trees leaped across his vision like aghast dancers in the nacreous light.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#61. And you require no answers", Foamfollower was laughing in his gladness, "You are sufficient to every question".
Stephen R. Donaldson
#62. He who waits for the sword to fall upon his neck will surely lose his head.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#63. For a variety of reasons, my books struck the marketplace like a thunderclap; and one of those reasons was that there were so few alternatives available. Readers who loved Tolkien, and who were not satisfied by Terry Brooks, had nowhere else to turn.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#64. In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not crowd at your back.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#65. Stone and sea are deep in life
Two unalterable symbols of the world
Permanence at rest
And permanence in motion
Participants in the power that remains
Stephen R. Donaldson
#67. It said that the mission's copying costs were too high, so would she please type two hundred fifty copies of the attached letter in addition to her other duties.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#68. Do not hurt where holding is enough; do not wound where hurting is enough; do not maim where wounding is enough; and kill not where maiming is enough; the greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#69. Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite"
Foamfollower from (Lord Foul's Bane; 1977)
Stephen R. Donaldson
#70. On the whole, she reflected with a loopy clarity while pain clanged back and forth in her head and the guard held her upright, she liked being rescued. It was better than not being rescued. Definitely.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#71. She could not distinguish between contrition and self-abasement; between acknowledgment and blame.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#72. Their flat, unreadable faces showed no signs of youth or age, as if their relationship with time was somehow ambivalent; and
Stephen R. Donaldson
#73. That is Lord Foul's way in all things - to force his foes to become that which they most hate, and to destroy that which they most love.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#74. I may not yet be as old as dirt, but dirt and I are starting to have an awful lot in common.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#75. I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#77. But my arts are also pure, as a circle is pure, and in a flawed world purity cannot endure.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#78. power is a dreadful thing, and that the knowledge of power dims the seeing of the wise.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#79. Covenant did not reply at once. He trembled also, and hand to clench himself before he could say without a tremor, "Why? Why do you trust me?"
The Hirebrand's eyes gleamed as if he were on the verge of tears, but he was smiling as he said, "You are a man who knows the value of beauty."
Stephen R. Donaldson
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