Quotes from Tad Williams

Every man is the hero of his own song.

If the bears don't get you, it's home.

Though talent is wonderful, dance is 80% work and 20% talent.

I am a sandwich man. Somewhere early in life, my epigenetic switches got flicked to 'likes sandwiches,' and that's where they still are. I suspect it's at least in part because they're easy to eat while reading.

I've always been partial to werewolves, perhaps because there's a desperation to their plight that resonates.

My parents were perfectly open-minded about everything. They never tried to convince us of what was true or what wasn't true in their minds. We were just presented with the information that was around and pretty much allowed - though, I mean, we knew how they felt. We knew they didn't go to church. So obviously that had an effect.

People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?

One of the fascinating things about researching Heaven and Hell is, of course, the fact that there are so few descriptions of Heaven, because most people can't really explain what it would be like beyond a couple of sentences, whereas Hell is quite often personal.

If you're writing fantasy or science fiction, it's really hard to do if you don't know a lot, at least in a basic way, about how the real world works.

Every time we tell a lie, the thing we fear grows stronger.

The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it.

People may get tired of hearing from me, but I don't think I'll ever run out of things that I want to write about.

I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

A well-aimed spear is worth three.

Unless technology itself is drastically repressed, the idea of the dystopian monoculture like Orwell's 1984 gets harder to believe. But the danger of a solipsistic society will grow, of a disconnected society of mirror-watchers and navel-gazers.

What does that mean, 'real'? Amn't I real, you? If you cut me, do I not bleed? If you piss me off, will I not kick you up the arse?

There is no such thing as an accident. That's what science is all about. (...) There are only patterns we don't yet recognize.

Thank God for, as I posted earlier, the glow of work accomplished. Because a few seconds later, someone on the internet mentioned pie. I don't blame them. It's a good subject. But pie was mentioned and I remembered there was strawberry-rhubarb pie in the refrigerator. So I went there. And pie there was none. I suspect the teenaged boy has inhaled it. And now I cling to life and hope as best I can, because my world is dark and pieless.

I'm tired of being lost and I'm tired of dying, so I'm going to try something different this time.

It's amazing the stupid things I say sometimes. I mean, you could start an entire branch of scientific research about the stuff I say that gets proved wrong while I'm still busy saying it.

Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds. No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds.

But our own selves are like pearls, created by layer after layer of present laid over past until the original thing is completely hidden.

Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman's tongue? What good was beauty — a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless — if it cloaked such a viperous soul?

If your enemy comes to speak bearing a sword, open your door to him and speak, but keep your own sword at hand. If he comes to you empty-handed, greet him the same way. But if he comes to you bearing gifts, stand on your walls and cast stones down on him.