Top 84 Steven Brust Quotes
#1. Erik maintained his ignorance in any and every matter he came across, and even improved upon it when he could. The
Steven Brust
#2. It wasn't until I was working on 'Tacky' that I admitted to myself that I was writing a series.
Steven Brust
#3. I've heard it said: 'By his home you shall know him'; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence.
Steven Brust
#4. I just never learn: When you're about to finally get what you've been wanting, and when it's what you need like you've rarely needed anything, turn off your fucking phone.
Steven Brust
#5. When you have understood the piece of the world you want to change, and aligned your will with the world as it actually is, then and only then can you begin to change it;
Steven Brust
#6. Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do.
Steven Brust
#7. Those are good questions. I recognize good questions, because I can come up with them myself.
Steven Brust
#8. One man's mistake is another man's opportunity.
Steven Brust
#9. You may borrow them, if
you wish," so I could avoid letting him startle me.
"I'd like that very much."
"I should warn you, however, that I have several volumes devoted to curses for
people who don't return books."
"I'd like to borrow those, too.
Steven Brust
#10. Pittsburgh. I'd been there. One of the most underrated cities in North America. People who'd never been there thought of it as a graveyard of abandoned steel mills, but it was a beautiful city, and it would be good to have it back.
Steven Brust
#11. I'm a decent cook. I'm an outstanding eater.
Steven Brust
#12. There are millions of ways for people to die, if you number each vital organ, each ways it can fail, all the poisons from the earth and the sea which can cause these failures.
Steven Brust
#13. She grinned and nodded and another frozen thing inside of me melted.
Steven Brust
#14. What are you working on?" "I'm trying to set up a store to sell baskets of none-of-your-fucking-business at wholesale prices.
Steven Brust
#15. Well," she said, "if I were the enemy commander, and our assault had failed three times, and I wanted to make a fourth, I don't think I'd attack with fewer men. But that's just me."
"Shut up, Loiosh."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. Private joke.
Steven Brust
#16. Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you'd find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble.
Steven Brust
#17. What's the point of having weak enemies? They just waste your time.
Steven Brust
#18. Staring into the dragon's maw, one quickly learns wisdom.
Steven Brust
#19. When you stop being surprised, you've stopped living.
Steven Brust
#20. A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.
Steven Brust
#21. I have something to tell you." "How, you have something to tell me?" "You have understood me exactly." "Well, I am listening." "Listening? Then, you wish me to tell you?" "Yes, that is it. I am listening, and therefore I wish you to tell me." "Shall I tell you now?" "No.
Steven Brust
#22. It's just that no one wants to be the one being rescued, we all want to do the rescuing.
Steven Brust
#23. I'd rather be running the game than playing it.
Steven Brust
#24. [...] I've learned something about my own hunches: the only time they turn out to be meaningful is when I ignore them.
Steven Brust
#25. Most people seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to someone. I'm not like that, which pleases me because it makes me feel superior.
Steven Brust
#26. Appropriate action means to advance your own goals, without unintentional harm to anyone else.
Steven Brust
#27. Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[ ... ]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action.
Steven Brust
#28. Minneapolis has two seasons: Road Removal and Snow Repair.
Steven Brust
#29. All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool.
Steven Brust
#30. It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good.
Steven Brust
#31. That's what does it
that moment where you think you're lost, and then discover that you're not, that you've never really left. There's something that happens in that incredible tiny no-time, and that something is like the revelation of learning.
Steven Brust
#32. Ah, you poor fools, walking so tall and haughty with your guns and your sticks and your wide belts full of gear like the second coming of Batman, sitting in your little cars full of mechanized fear as you reach for your little radios at the first sign of anything more worrisome than a jaywalker.
Steven Brust
#33. Time has stretched, so that a few hours are an age; and it has collapsed, so that the events of hours seem to have ended before they began. Turmoil, even when generated from within, can do that to a person.
Steven Brust
#34. No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
Steven Brust
#35. Plan. Yes. Good idea. I should come up with a plan.
Steven Brust
#36. But once you allow yourself to recognize necessity, you find two things: One you find your options so restricted that the only course of action is obvious, and, two, that a great sense of freedom comes with the decision.
Steven Brust
#37. You can't put something together again unless you've torn it apart first.
Steven Brust
#38. He got up and walked out, so I missed seeing the powerful sorcerer doing his powerful sorcery, which would have involved him closing his eyes and then, I don't know, maybe taking a deep breath or something.
Steven Brust
#39. One nice thing about putting the thing away for a couple of months before looking at it is that you start appreciate your own wit. Of course, this can be carried too far. But it's kind of cool when you crack up a piece of writing, and then realize you wrote it. I recommend this feeling.
Steven Brust
#40. You connect yourself to the viewer by by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you.
Steven Brust
#41. Because here's the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.
Steven Brust
#42. Let him who doubts the victory wrest the banner from my hand.
Steven Brust
#43. I suggested that my patron goddess should take sensual pleasure, though I didn't put it quite in those terms.
Steven Brust
#44. The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable; foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest.
Steven Brust
#45. Q: The Witness is reminded that she may be held in contempt.
A: The feeling is mutual.
Steven Brust
#46. But then, it is the mark of a good book that it rewards many readings, is it not?
Steven Brust
#47. Boss, what, exactly, are we doing here?" "Feeling maudlin." "Oh. Good. How long are we planning on doing that?" "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" "What?" "Never mind.
Steven Brust
#48. True heroics must be carefully planned - and strenuously avoided.
Steven Brust
#49. There is no excuse for bad manners, except fast reflexes.
Steven Brust
#50. Painting consists of long periods of minutes followed by short bursts of hours
Steven Brust
#52. We create our own omens, I think, and then mystify ourselves trying to understand their significance.
Steven Brust
#53. Can you be serious for two words?"
"Not without effort.
Steven Brust
#54. I'm told I'm very charming when people do what I want.
Steven Brust
#55. Just a feeling." "Hmmm. Well, since it's your job to have feelings, I guess I'll go with it. But if you're wrong, and they kill me, I'm going to be very disappointed in you." "I'll bear that in mind." *
Steven Brust
#56. There's nothing worse than a smartass who pretends not to understand hyperbole.
Steven Brust
#57. It is as if I have changed in some way, but I can't tell what it is, or if it will fade with time.
Steven Brust
#58. Saving someone's life is a wonderful feeling. Try it. You feel like, if you don't mind a TV reference, a big damn hero.
Steven Brust
#59. Xxx there is a certain kind of peace that you find in the middle of a city when you are the only one on the street, and you can hear your footsteps echo on the dry pavement, xxx
Steven Brust
#60. People trying to force their agenda on my by deciding how I'm permitted to speak is offensive.
Steven Brust
#61. A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.
Steven Brust
#62. I guess there's just a time for doing dumb things.
Steven Brust
#63. Chaler, who had finished his ale, left the cup where it was, making no effort to procure more, indicating that he was capable of what the natural philosopher calls "learning behaviour," which turn of phrase pleases us so much that we cannot resist making use of it.
Steven Brust
#64. Do you think it's possible to discuss politics without preaching?
Steven Brust
#65. It isn't always easy to act on what's in your head instead of what's in your heart. And it isn't always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when it's okay to just follow your feelings.
Steven Brust
#66. The creation of powerful magical tools, generally, is the result of one of three things: the desire to impress a lover; an accident while trying to create something else entirely; or a side project created to assist while working toward something considered more significant by the creator.
Steven Brust
#67. I turned away, took a deep breath, and sheathed the weapon. I never know what to
say after I've intimidated someone; I ought to keep a list of tough-guy remarks.
Steven Brust
#68. Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.
Steven Brust
#69. Short version: it doesn't matter how many bad decisions you just made, your job is to make the next one correct.
Steven Brust
#70. I shall draw forth thy bones one by one ere I send thee to the devil. So that for all time thy shapeless body shall serve a a carpet for all the minions of Hell.
Steven Brust
#71. The others followed, and found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark.
Steven Brust
#72. What foul sorcery is this?" she said. "Pretty standard foul sorcery; nothing special." "Okay," she said. "Just checking.
Steven Brust
#73. To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.
Steven Brust
#74. Every once in while, a person will do something obvious and direct that is no more than it appears to be. I think they do it to throw you off.
Steven Brust
#75. But we're assassins: when we make mistakes, people live
Steven Brust
#76. It is not the lack of wit or intellect that shallow men crave [in women], it is lack of personality; they desire a woman who will exist only as a shadow to themselves, because this gives them the illusion that they have some importance, that they are more than cattle.
Steven Brust
#77. Chapter the Eleventh: In Which the Plot, Behaving in Much the Manner Of a Soup to which Corn Starch Has been Added, Begins, at Last, to Thicken.
Steven Brust
#78. The door opened, and Ren emerged, and my heart did a thing.
Steven Brust
#79. Just because they really are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid.
Steven Brust
#80. Your job is to find better ideas, mine is to cut holes in the ones you have, and you've already done that pretty well.
Steven Brust
#81. You're stubborn, Vlad."
"Is that a compliment?
Steven Brust
#82. Several years ago, I was getting drunk with four or five of the most powerful sorcerers in the Empire - like you do - when Daymar told a story.
Steven Brust
#83. I tend to close my eyes when I look at people anymore.
Steven Brust
#84. Don't explain why it works; explain how you use it.
Steven Brust
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top