"...you would obviously die pretty quickly. You wouldn't really die of anything, in the traditional sense. You would just stop being biology and start being physics." - Randall Munroe, http://what-if.xkcd.com/141/

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. -- J. H. Poincare

"I built bridges with these arms, I will not build a fortress"
Squalloscope - Big Houses

"You should enjoy the little detours to the fullest because that's where you'll find the things more important than what you want." - Ging Freecs

“What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.” - Michael Moorcock

“Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.” - Michael Moorcock

“For this was the other thing that Elric knew: that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance.” - Revenge of the Rose

“When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.” - The Steel Remains

“Such contentedness and change of view in regard to every kind of life does the infusion of reason bring about. When Alexander heard from Anaxarchus of the infinite number of worlds, he wept, and when his friends asked him what was the matter, he replied, ‘Is it not a matter for tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, I have not conquered one?'”
-Plutarch

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"Man, born from dust, was strong, wise, and resourceful. But he was born into an unforgiving world. ... Nature’s wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness and in the shadow’s absence, came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life. Even the most brilliant lights eventually flicker and die. And when they are gone… darkness will return. So, you may prepare your guardians… Build your monuments to a so-called free world, but take heed… There will be no victory in strength."
-RWBY, season 1 opening monologue

"Nature's wrath in hand" just sounds so dang cool.

And pretty much anything else from Zen Pencils.

Sanderson’s First Law: “An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.”

That would explain why he describes a world's magic once in the prologue, and again in the first chapter. That felt too clunky to me, but must have been important for someone.

I can't say I'm a fan of how deeply he ties his magic into his conflict resolution. But he's a fine worldbuilder by all accounts. One of the best up and coming, certainly one of the most proliferative. I like it when the magic is being deployed by characters, lacking clunky exposition, with enough clues thrown in for the reader to piece it together.

"‘I rule through music and literature." - Kim Jong Il. "Anyone who composes a work that has not been assigned to the writer through this chain of command is by definition guilty of treason. All written works in North Korea must be initiated in response to a specific request from the Workers’ Party."

"They used hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased, they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors and the war came to them in 3D. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself."

- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

I loved that story, Raven. Fine quote.

My playlist served up "I Want You" by Bob Dylan this morning, and I was reminded again of how much I love the strange, almost surrealistic imagery of that first verse:

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it’s not that way
I wasn’t born to lose you

I mean, that's not your typical torch song fodder. But that language just has a power over me.

"He believed in justice, and what was justice if not the older sister of vengeance?"

I just heard Jim Sterling say this on the Podquisition. It's in reference to depression and suicidal thoughts, but I find it so very poignant that I can't not share it.

"Life is a series of 'blink and you'll miss it' where in this case 'blink' is something a lot more lasting and permanent, really, and... you don't know what you could miss during that incredibly long blink."

"It is sufficient for our present purpose, if it be allowed, what surely, without the greatest absurdity, cannot be disputed, that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

"Moving's only a pain if you have stuff."