Disclaimer: Never will I vent in these. Who honestly wants to read vents? Not me. Nor do I want to write them, which makes me a somewhat rare person. People who complain all the time are just annoying.
I have spent a lot of time, over the years, analyzing my shyness/anxiety/reservedness. It doesn't help whatsoever. So I will not bother to try and explain it. I feel that I actually always know what I want to say, I just so often have such a hard time saying it accurately. This applies to writing also, but writing is easier, especially when it's on a computer and can be easily edited.
I find it highly unlikely that talking to a person who I don't like and getting to know them better will result in my opinion of them changing. Nomatter where I work, there are always a lot of people who I find annoying. I doubt it will ever change. Wait a second, it sounds like I'm complaining. I refuse to!
Here's a different topic, and one that is an example of my all or nothing thinking pattern.
I have a relatively good time talking about entertainment; specifically, that which I find entertaining, especially "deep", "subtle", "epic", "imaginative" fiction like Planescape: Torment, Xenogears, Dune, A Song of Ice and Fire, and RahXephon. Describing their settings, premise, themes and so on is nothing short of exhilerating in fact, especially in discussion with someone who is already knowledgeable. However, I'm always afraid I'll become fixated on such discussion, and make it the core of my relating during freetime, as thrilling as that would be. I have fun talking about videogames as well, but less so since I've become less interested in them over the past 5 or so years. My point is, I can't help but believe that nomatter how fun and thought-provoking it may be, entertainment is only that, entertainment, and therefore of no true value, even when shared. Unless it's productive in some way, but then I wouldn't consider it to really be entertainment.
Then on the other side I love talking about serious, personal (but focusing on the positive) stuff, but it's a might harder (not that I find initiating conversation of entertainment with new people easy). I have the idea that using entertainment (and more importantly, discussion of it) as an initial way of relating can very well lead into sharing of the more vulnerable aspects of oneself. Actually it's one I have to constantly remind myself of. I always think I should start with the serious stuff, to see from the beginning if there are enough common values. I never do it though. Enough of my fears, I'll not speak of them again. It is not fun. Period!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Immortal Quotes
Qwhoats. Profound, cunning, badath, guffaw worthy. Sometimes all at once. Mild spoilers may be included, for the fiction obviously.
From The Seven Levels of Intimacy by Matthew Kelly:
-Life is about sharing ourselves with humanity at this moment in history.
-Before you can learn to be with someone else, you need to learn to be alone. Until you are comfortable being with yourself, you will always be afraid of being alone.
-The defects we so often despise are actually a wonderful part of our humanity.
-This is the greatest gift we can give to another human being: to allow him or her to simply see us for who we are, with our strengths and weaknesses, faults, failings, flaws, defects, talents, abilities, achievements, and potential.
-The real tragedy is that once we fool ourselves into believing we know a person, we stop discovering that person. If they do something that doesn't fit our mold for them we say, "Why did you do that? That's not like you!" The process of discovering another person in a relationship is endless. The discovering and rediscovering of each other is intimacy. It is not a task to be finished so you can move on to the next task. It is a process to be enjoyed.
-Physical intimacy is limited. But emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacies are limitless, and relatively unexplored. And, truth be told, if you truly wish to experience the upper reaches of physical intimacy you must first explore and develop the depths of [the other three].
-Maturity comes once we learn to cherish the self. From that moment on, we would rather be rejected for who we truly are than loved for pretending to be someone we are not. That is self-esteem. It's not a feel-good thing. It's practical, it's real, and it cuts to the essence of the hardest choice we ever make: the choice to be ourselves.
-Only by sharing our story with another will we ever feel uniquely known. Otherwise, and I assure you it happens every day, we can pass through this life and into the next without anyone ever really knowing us.
-In the twentieth century, humanity seemed preoccupied with the quest for independence. The twenty-first century will be a century of interdependence or one of tremendous human suffering. The great truth that must come into focus is that we are all in this together. Both in our individual relationships and in relations between nations, this is the idea that can most advance humanity.
-We hide because we think people will love us less if they truly know us, but the opposite is true in most cases. If we are willing to take the risk and reveal ourselves for who we are, we discover that most people are relieved to know that we are human. Why? Because they are human too, and are filled with the same fear as you. In most cases, you will find that the things you thought would cause people to stop loving you actually lead them to love you more. There is something glorious about our humanity. Strong and weak, the human person is amazing. Our humanity is glorious and should be celebrated. When we reveal our struggles, we give others the courage to do the same.
-The truth is, when we reveal our weaknesses people feel more at peace with us and are more likely to respond by expressing a desire to be there for us than by rejecting us. Everyone has a dark side, and yet everyone walks around pretending that they don't. This is the unending pretense. Intimacy requires that we be prepared to reveal our dark side, not in order to shock or hurt the other person, but so that he or she might help us battle with our inner demons.
From Breaking Out of Loneliness by Jerry A. Greenwald:
-Laughter is a shift in attitude which puts us in touch with the reality that, despite our pain and anguish, there is great joy in simply being alive.
-When we expand our inner dimensions some psychological pain is inevitable.
-Breaking out of old attitudes and behavior patterns is frightening even when we clearly perceive hat they haven't worked.
-We get stuck when we fail to see that discovering how to nourish ourselves, how to develop a growing meaningfulness and excitement in our lives, is never a fixed accomplishment.
-Chronic loneliness always means that our personal growth process is stagnant.
-A resolution to loneliness is more simply achieved by breaking out of the myth that our fears, anxieties, feelings of inadequacy, and so forth must be understood and "cured" before we can proceed. Trying to understand can kill our spontaneity and can literally take away the joy of being alive.
-Our problems will persist as long as we continue to seek solutions within the same context as that in which we created them.
-There are no prerequisites to breaking out of loneliness. We do this at any moment when we are being loving to ourselves now, as we are.
-Success makes a great camouflage to conceal loneliness. Our self-image is too often dominated by other people's responsiveness, or the lack of it, to what we have accomplished. While we may feel nourished by receiving approval and recognition, they become a trap when comsidered of primary importance. Financial success, for example, is a carrot that society dangles in front of us, promising an end to emotional frustrations and deprivation. When we feel we haven't succeeded, we may sincerely believe that wealthy or powerful people surely have no problems with loneliness or feelings of isolation.
-Many lonely people create their loneliness by taking sex lightly, knowing all the while that they are being dishonest with themselves.
-The paranoid person automatically and immediately projects onto each new person all kinds of threatening attributes from the past.
-Living in fantasy generally makes us more emotionally delicate since we avoid learning through actual experiences how to cope with emotional pain.
-When feeling paranoid, our attention is focused primarily on the outside world instead of on ourselves.
-The more paranoid we feel, the more rejecting we feel toward others. This is externalized (it's not me, it's them) and we then feel rejected.
From Dune by Frank Herbert:
-"The things that can happen here, I cannot begin to tell you," he said. "I cannot even begin to tell myself, although I've seen them. This sense of the future--I seem to have no control over it. The thing just happens. The immediate future--say, a year--I can see some of that... a road as broad as our Central Avenue on Caladan. Some places I don't see... shadowed places... as though it went behind a hill" (and again he thought of the surface of a blowing kerchief) "...and there are branches..."
-"My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'truth' can be."
-"Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us, 'The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.' And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.'"
-And the Baron thought: Yes! See him there, this man who believes he cannot be bought. See him detained there by a million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of his life! If you took him up now and shook him, he'd rattle inside. Emptied! Sold out! What difference how he dies now?
-"There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."
-She sighed. "Thufir, I want you to examine your own emotional involvement in this. The natural human's an animal without logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness. You're the embodiment of logic--a Mentat. Yet, your problem solutions are concepts that, in a very real sense, are projected outside yourself, there to be studied and rolled around, examined from all sides." "You think now to teach me my trade?" he asked, and he did not try to hide the disdain in his voice. "Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it," she said. "But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us."
-"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."
-His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr. Kynes shaken. He prided himself on being a scientist to whom legends were merely interesting clues, pointing toward cultural roots. Yet the boy fitted the ancient prophecy so precisely. He had "the questing eyes," and the air of "reserved candor." Of course, the prophecy left certain latitude as to whether the Mother Goddess would bring the Messiah with her or produce Him on the scene. Still, there was this odd correspondence between prediction and persons.
From A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin:
-"We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Pride comes before prayer, maggots rule our castles, and gold is all... but no more! The Rotten Summer is at an end, and the Whoremonger King is brought low! When the boar did open him, and so on."
-Lark the Sisterman laughed. "Small Paul, thick as a castle wall," he mocked. "You shut up with that," said Small Paul dangerously.
-"Best not try and eat my bird, Lark. Best not."
-"You are too kind. More wine?"
"No. No, truly, I... oh, gods be damned, yes. Why not? A bold man drinks his fill!"
"Truly."
-"You have a gift for words, Lord Tyrion, if I might say so. And you tell a droll tale. Droll, yes."
-"Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe... an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast... would you do it? Without question?"
"Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much."
-"Are you drunk? If you think I will sit here and have my honor questioned..."
"What honor is that?"
-"THE KING IN THE NORTH!"
-"It's a long roll down the serpentine, little bird. Want to kill us both?"
-"A hound will die for you, but he'll never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face."
-Ned frowned. "You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and now you expect me to believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a fool do you take me for?"
"Well, quite an enormous one, actually," said Littlefinger, laughing.
-"Let me tell you how it will go. Lord Velaryon will urge me to storm the castle walls at first light, grapnels and scaling ladders against arrows and boiling oil. The young mules will think this a splendid notion. Estermont will favor settling down to starve them out, as Tyrell and Redwyne once tried with me. That might take a year, but old mules are patient. And Lord Caron and the others who like to kick will want to take up Ser Cortnay's gauntlet and hazard all upon a single combat. Each one imagining he will be my champion and win undying fame."
-"I made no such claim. The Starks were nothing to me. I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act. At Robert's coronation, I was made to kneel at the royal feet beside Grand Maester Pycelle and Varys the eunuch, so that he might forgive us of our crimes before he took us into his service. As for your Ned, he should have kissed the hand that slew Aerys, but he preferred to scorn the arse he found sitting on Robert's throne. I think Ned Stark loved Robert better than he ever loved his brother or his father... or even you, my lady. He was never unfaithful to Robert, was he?" Jaime gave a drunken laugh. "Come, Lady Stark, don't you find this all terribly amusing?"
"I find nothing amusing about you, Kingslayer."
"That name again. I don't think I'll eff you after all, Littlefinger had you first, didn't he? I never eat off another man's trencher. Besides, you're not half so lovely as my sister."
His smile cut. "I've never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. So who has jid for honor now, I ask you?"
-Storm's End dwindled behind them, but the red woman seemed unconcerned.
"Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?" she asked.
Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," he said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."
"A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"
"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey."
"If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil."
-Melisandre laughed again. "You are lost in darkness and confusion, Ser Davos."
"And a good thing." Davos gestured at the distant lights flickering along the walls of Storm's End. "Feel how cold the wind is? The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they're a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass. The god of darkness protects us now, my lady. Even you."
The flames of her eyes seemed to burn a little brighter at that. "Speak not that name, ser. Lest you draw his black eye upon us. He protects no man, I promise you. He is the enemy of all that lives. It is the torches that hide us, you have said so yourself. Fire. The bright gift of the Lord of Light."
-"Who rowed you to Renly?"
"There was no need," she said. "He was unprotected. But here... this Storm's End is an old place. There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass--ancient, forgotten, yet still in place."
"Shadow?" Davos felt his flesh prickling. "A shadow is a thing of darkness."
"You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows."
-"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said.
"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago."
Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon III, who was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany. "Everywhere?" she said, disappointed. "Even in the east?"
Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn't there be dragons too?
"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known."
"It is known," agreed Jhiqui.
"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire.
Silvery wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"
"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi. Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe fire. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."
The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."
"It is known," Jhiqui agreed.
From Planescape: Torment by Chris Avellone:
-"Have you seen a journal recently? I'm missing mine."
"What does it look like?"
"No idea."
"If you don't know what it looks like, how do you expect to find it?"
"I'm beginning to wonder that myself."
-"However you choose to define it, Grimscalp."
-"I order you to fall on your face, then get back up."
-"Oh dear! T'would seem THOU ART HARDLY WORTHY OF APPEASING MY ENDLESS HUNGER FOR MORTAL FLESH, THOU INSIGNIFICANT RODENT! BEGONE, VERMIN!"
-"Take your hand and fly to the moon? Not today, my friend."
-"Interesting. Farewell, fishwife."
-"I feel like they're staring right at my soul." "They are. Farewell."
-"If you lack the conviction to kill yourself, I'm not going to do it for you."
-"Well, I'm friggin' dead, it looks like. Give 'em my worst regards, then."
-"To that, 'good' Derek, I say fie, fie, and fie once more to thee!"
-Quell glances around as you approach. "Blast! Nowhere to hide!"
-"THOU ART NOTHING! BOW BEFORE MY UNHOLY MIGHT AND PERHAPS I SHALL MAKE THEE A LEMURE FOR ONLY 10,000 YEARS!"
-"Just keep pumping crossbow bolts into the branched thing, and we'll sort it out later."
-"Time lays waste to all things. But I shall fight it as long as I can."
From Terranigma by some unknown J-er:
-"The unbelievers shall be driven from paradise."
-""
From Chrono Trigger by Masato Kato:
-"The weak strive to be weaker."
-"The black wind howls... One among you, will shortly perish."
-"Okay, give me your best shot... If you're prepared for the void!"
-"If history is to change, let it change! If the world is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed! If my fate is to be destroyed, I must simply laugh!"
From Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem by some Canadian lifeform:
-"His undoing has been planned in intricate detail."
-"Take this one, and use him as the foundation for the pillar! He is special, and should be given a special place... among the suffering."
From Xenogears by Tetsuya Takahashi, Soraya Saga and Masato Kato:
-"Regardless of what may have happened in the past, with the passing of time the cause becomes more remote."
-"If God doesn't exist in this world, then I will create God with my own hands!"
-"We humans are... parts for god..."
From The Seven Levels of Intimacy by Matthew Kelly:
-Life is about sharing ourselves with humanity at this moment in history.
-Before you can learn to be with someone else, you need to learn to be alone. Until you are comfortable being with yourself, you will always be afraid of being alone.
-The defects we so often despise are actually a wonderful part of our humanity.
-This is the greatest gift we can give to another human being: to allow him or her to simply see us for who we are, with our strengths and weaknesses, faults, failings, flaws, defects, talents, abilities, achievements, and potential.
-The real tragedy is that once we fool ourselves into believing we know a person, we stop discovering that person. If they do something that doesn't fit our mold for them we say, "Why did you do that? That's not like you!" The process of discovering another person in a relationship is endless. The discovering and rediscovering of each other is intimacy. It is not a task to be finished so you can move on to the next task. It is a process to be enjoyed.
-Physical intimacy is limited. But emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacies are limitless, and relatively unexplored. And, truth be told, if you truly wish to experience the upper reaches of physical intimacy you must first explore and develop the depths of [the other three].
-Maturity comes once we learn to cherish the self. From that moment on, we would rather be rejected for who we truly are than loved for pretending to be someone we are not. That is self-esteem. It's not a feel-good thing. It's practical, it's real, and it cuts to the essence of the hardest choice we ever make: the choice to be ourselves.
-Only by sharing our story with another will we ever feel uniquely known. Otherwise, and I assure you it happens every day, we can pass through this life and into the next without anyone ever really knowing us.
-In the twentieth century, humanity seemed preoccupied with the quest for independence. The twenty-first century will be a century of interdependence or one of tremendous human suffering. The great truth that must come into focus is that we are all in this together. Both in our individual relationships and in relations between nations, this is the idea that can most advance humanity.
-We hide because we think people will love us less if they truly know us, but the opposite is true in most cases. If we are willing to take the risk and reveal ourselves for who we are, we discover that most people are relieved to know that we are human. Why? Because they are human too, and are filled with the same fear as you. In most cases, you will find that the things you thought would cause people to stop loving you actually lead them to love you more. There is something glorious about our humanity. Strong and weak, the human person is amazing. Our humanity is glorious and should be celebrated. When we reveal our struggles, we give others the courage to do the same.
-The truth is, when we reveal our weaknesses people feel more at peace with us and are more likely to respond by expressing a desire to be there for us than by rejecting us. Everyone has a dark side, and yet everyone walks around pretending that they don't. This is the unending pretense. Intimacy requires that we be prepared to reveal our dark side, not in order to shock or hurt the other person, but so that he or she might help us battle with our inner demons.
From Breaking Out of Loneliness by Jerry A. Greenwald:
-Laughter is a shift in attitude which puts us in touch with the reality that, despite our pain and anguish, there is great joy in simply being alive.
-When we expand our inner dimensions some psychological pain is inevitable.
-Breaking out of old attitudes and behavior patterns is frightening even when we clearly perceive hat they haven't worked.
-We get stuck when we fail to see that discovering how to nourish ourselves, how to develop a growing meaningfulness and excitement in our lives, is never a fixed accomplishment.
-Chronic loneliness always means that our personal growth process is stagnant.
-A resolution to loneliness is more simply achieved by breaking out of the myth that our fears, anxieties, feelings of inadequacy, and so forth must be understood and "cured" before we can proceed. Trying to understand can kill our spontaneity and can literally take away the joy of being alive.
-Our problems will persist as long as we continue to seek solutions within the same context as that in which we created them.
-There are no prerequisites to breaking out of loneliness. We do this at any moment when we are being loving to ourselves now, as we are.
-Success makes a great camouflage to conceal loneliness. Our self-image is too often dominated by other people's responsiveness, or the lack of it, to what we have accomplished. While we may feel nourished by receiving approval and recognition, they become a trap when comsidered of primary importance. Financial success, for example, is a carrot that society dangles in front of us, promising an end to emotional frustrations and deprivation. When we feel we haven't succeeded, we may sincerely believe that wealthy or powerful people surely have no problems with loneliness or feelings of isolation.
-Many lonely people create their loneliness by taking sex lightly, knowing all the while that they are being dishonest with themselves.
-The paranoid person automatically and immediately projects onto each new person all kinds of threatening attributes from the past.
-Living in fantasy generally makes us more emotionally delicate since we avoid learning through actual experiences how to cope with emotional pain.
-When feeling paranoid, our attention is focused primarily on the outside world instead of on ourselves.
-The more paranoid we feel, the more rejecting we feel toward others. This is externalized (it's not me, it's them) and we then feel rejected.
From Dune by Frank Herbert:
-"The things that can happen here, I cannot begin to tell you," he said. "I cannot even begin to tell myself, although I've seen them. This sense of the future--I seem to have no control over it. The thing just happens. The immediate future--say, a year--I can see some of that... a road as broad as our Central Avenue on Caladan. Some places I don't see... shadowed places... as though it went behind a hill" (and again he thought of the surface of a blowing kerchief) "...and there are branches..."
-"My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'truth' can be."
-"Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us, 'The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.' And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.'"
-And the Baron thought: Yes! See him there, this man who believes he cannot be bought. See him detained there by a million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of his life! If you took him up now and shook him, he'd rattle inside. Emptied! Sold out! What difference how he dies now?
-"There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."
-She sighed. "Thufir, I want you to examine your own emotional involvement in this. The natural human's an animal without logic. Your projection of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness. You're the embodiment of logic--a Mentat. Yet, your problem solutions are concepts that, in a very real sense, are projected outside yourself, there to be studied and rolled around, examined from all sides." "You think now to teach me my trade?" he asked, and he did not try to hide the disdain in his voice. "Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it," she said. "But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us."
-"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."
-His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr. Kynes shaken. He prided himself on being a scientist to whom legends were merely interesting clues, pointing toward cultural roots. Yet the boy fitted the ancient prophecy so precisely. He had "the questing eyes," and the air of "reserved candor." Of course, the prophecy left certain latitude as to whether the Mother Goddess would bring the Messiah with her or produce Him on the scene. Still, there was this odd correspondence between prediction and persons.
From A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin:
-"We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Pride comes before prayer, maggots rule our castles, and gold is all... but no more! The Rotten Summer is at an end, and the Whoremonger King is brought low! When the boar did open him, and so on."
-Lark the Sisterman laughed. "Small Paul, thick as a castle wall," he mocked. "You shut up with that," said Small Paul dangerously.
-"Best not try and eat my bird, Lark. Best not."
-"You are too kind. More wine?"
"No. No, truly, I... oh, gods be damned, yes. Why not? A bold man drinks his fill!"
"Truly."
-"You have a gift for words, Lord Tyrion, if I might say so. And you tell a droll tale. Droll, yes."
-"Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe... an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast... would you do it? Without question?"
"Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much."
-"Are you drunk? If you think I will sit here and have my honor questioned..."
"What honor is that?"
-"THE KING IN THE NORTH!"
-"It's a long roll down the serpentine, little bird. Want to kill us both?"
-"A hound will die for you, but he'll never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face."
-Ned frowned. "You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and now you expect me to believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a fool do you take me for?"
"Well, quite an enormous one, actually," said Littlefinger, laughing.
-"Let me tell you how it will go. Lord Velaryon will urge me to storm the castle walls at first light, grapnels and scaling ladders against arrows and boiling oil. The young mules will think this a splendid notion. Estermont will favor settling down to starve them out, as Tyrell and Redwyne once tried with me. That might take a year, but old mules are patient. And Lord Caron and the others who like to kick will want to take up Ser Cortnay's gauntlet and hazard all upon a single combat. Each one imagining he will be my champion and win undying fame."
-"I made no such claim. The Starks were nothing to me. I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act. At Robert's coronation, I was made to kneel at the royal feet beside Grand Maester Pycelle and Varys the eunuch, so that he might forgive us of our crimes before he took us into his service. As for your Ned, he should have kissed the hand that slew Aerys, but he preferred to scorn the arse he found sitting on Robert's throne. I think Ned Stark loved Robert better than he ever loved his brother or his father... or even you, my lady. He was never unfaithful to Robert, was he?" Jaime gave a drunken laugh. "Come, Lady Stark, don't you find this all terribly amusing?"
"I find nothing amusing about you, Kingslayer."
"That name again. I don't think I'll eff you after all, Littlefinger had you first, didn't he? I never eat off another man's trencher. Besides, you're not half so lovely as my sister."
His smile cut. "I've never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. So who has jid for honor now, I ask you?"
-Storm's End dwindled behind them, but the red woman seemed unconcerned.
"Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?" she asked.
Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," he said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."
"A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"
"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey."
"If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil."
-Melisandre laughed again. "You are lost in darkness and confusion, Ser Davos."
"And a good thing." Davos gestured at the distant lights flickering along the walls of Storm's End. "Feel how cold the wind is? The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they're a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass. The god of darkness protects us now, my lady. Even you."
The flames of her eyes seemed to burn a little brighter at that. "Speak not that name, ser. Lest you draw his black eye upon us. He protects no man, I promise you. He is the enemy of all that lives. It is the torches that hide us, you have said so yourself. Fire. The bright gift of the Lord of Light."
-"Who rowed you to Renly?"
"There was no need," she said. "He was unprotected. But here... this Storm's End is an old place. There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass--ancient, forgotten, yet still in place."
"Shadow?" Davos felt his flesh prickling. "A shadow is a thing of darkness."
"You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows."
-"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said.
"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago."
Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon III, who was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany. "Everywhere?" she said, disappointed. "Even in the east?"
Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn't there be dragons too?
"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known."
"It is known," agreed Jhiqui.
"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire.
Silvery wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"
"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi. Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe fire. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."
The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."
"It is known," Jhiqui agreed.
From Planescape: Torment by Chris Avellone:
-"Have you seen a journal recently? I'm missing mine."
"What does it look like?"
"No idea."
"If you don't know what it looks like, how do you expect to find it?"
"I'm beginning to wonder that myself."
-"However you choose to define it, Grimscalp."
-"I order you to fall on your face, then get back up."
-"Oh dear! T'would seem THOU ART HARDLY WORTHY OF APPEASING MY ENDLESS HUNGER FOR MORTAL FLESH, THOU INSIGNIFICANT RODENT! BEGONE, VERMIN!"
-"Take your hand and fly to the moon? Not today, my friend."
-"Interesting. Farewell, fishwife."
-"I feel like they're staring right at my soul." "They are. Farewell."
-"If you lack the conviction to kill yourself, I'm not going to do it for you."
-"Well, I'm friggin' dead, it looks like. Give 'em my worst regards, then."
-"To that, 'good' Derek, I say fie, fie, and fie once more to thee!"
-Quell glances around as you approach. "Blast! Nowhere to hide!"
-"THOU ART NOTHING! BOW BEFORE MY UNHOLY MIGHT AND PERHAPS I SHALL MAKE THEE A LEMURE FOR ONLY 10,000 YEARS!"
-"Just keep pumping crossbow bolts into the branched thing, and we'll sort it out later."
-"Time lays waste to all things. But I shall fight it as long as I can."
From Terranigma by some unknown J-er:
-"The unbelievers shall be driven from paradise."
-""
From Chrono Trigger by Masato Kato:
-"The weak strive to be weaker."
-"The black wind howls... One among you, will shortly perish."
-"Okay, give me your best shot... If you're prepared for the void!"
-"If history is to change, let it change! If the world is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed! If my fate is to be destroyed, I must simply laugh!"
From Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem by some Canadian lifeform:
-"His undoing has been planned in intricate detail."
-"Take this one, and use him as the foundation for the pillar! He is special, and should be given a special place... among the suffering."
From Xenogears by Tetsuya Takahashi, Soraya Saga and Masato Kato:
-"Regardless of what may have happened in the past, with the passing of time the cause becomes more remote."
-"If God doesn't exist in this world, then I will create God with my own hands!"
-"We humans are... parts for god..."
Friday, July 6, 2007
The Sad Band's Acomin': Heartshaped Vision and Else
Welcome. This shall find itself as my second entry on this site.Watch me get totally sentimental again, and never stop:
Unlike before, I entirely refuse to criticize myself in any of these entries. You may now look forward to me continuing to not criticize myself. Tomorrow I mean to stuff you with as many immortal quotes as I can find. Look forward to it.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Welcome to space
What, space? It doesn't seem like we're in space, does it?
Of course technically we are. I don't know much about space, honestly, but it's not space in particular I'm going to write about. Sorry if the title was misleading.
Here is the core of this post: I can't believe we beings exist and can communicate, share thoughts and feelings and interact. Not to say I don't believe, just that it's quite profound when I think about it. Whoa, we are lifeforms and I'm one of them! Therefore, as long as one is not overwhelmed with various sources of distress I believe it should be an easy feeling for anyone to arrive at, yet I am certain that far too many never do. At this exact moment I am not feeling overwhelmed with stress, which is actually partly due to writing this and knowing that someone is going to read it, and hopefully respond. Even if whoever it is says something like "ur fuckin retarded get a life fagget" (which, believe me, I am completely expecting some lifeform will), it will have been worthwhile because I will have expressed a deep and hard-for-me-to-express feeling (the difficulty being from fear of course).
If even one human in existence that I am unacquainted with gets any noticeable amount of inspiration from this and I hear about it, I'll be ecstatic. Hell, they could lie about it and I wouldn't know, so I'd still be ecstatic.
There, that's all for my first blogger entry. I would say it turned out better than I expected it to. Begone, creature!
Of course technically we are. I don't know much about space, honestly, but it's not space in particular I'm going to write about. Sorry if the title was misleading.
Here is the core of this post: I can't believe we beings exist and can communicate, share thoughts and feelings and interact. Not to say I don't believe, just that it's quite profound when I think about it. Whoa, we are lifeforms and I'm one of them! Therefore, as long as one is not overwhelmed with various sources of distress I believe it should be an easy feeling for anyone to arrive at, yet I am certain that far too many never do. At this exact moment I am not feeling overwhelmed with stress, which is actually partly due to writing this and knowing that someone is going to read it, and hopefully respond. Even if whoever it is says something like "ur fuckin retarded get a life fagget" (which, believe me, I am completely expecting some lifeform will), it will have been worthwhile because I will have expressed a deep and hard-for-me-to-express feeling (the difficulty being from fear of course).
If even one human in existence that I am unacquainted with gets any noticeable amount of inspiration from this and I hear about it, I'll be ecstatic. Hell, they could lie about it and I wouldn't know, so I'd still be ecstatic.
There, that's all for my first blogger entry. I would say it turned out better than I expected it to. Begone, creature!
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