Quotes from Jo Walton

For that is to be my purpose here, you see, to teach rhetoric to you children: I, who was never a teacher but who liked to converse with my friends and seek out the nature of things." "They have their own imagination of who you are, but you are not that," Kebes said. "Now that's true," Sokrates said. "And perhaps what I shall teach is not what they expect me to teach.

Hardest of all were those problems about people doing incomprehensible things with no motivation. I was inclined to drift away from the sum to wonder why people would care what time two trains passed each other (spies), be so picky about seating arrangements (recently divorced people), or - which to this day remains incomprehensible - run the bath with no plug in.

I was inclined to drift away from the sum to wonder why people would care what time two trains passed each other (spies), be so picky about seating arrangements (recently divorced people), or—which to this day remains incomprehensible—run the bath with no plug in.

Maybe some of the masters really believed they could make it work, but I think what they really wanted wasn't to do it themselves but for somebody else to have made it real and for them to have been born there.

I didn't laugh, but it was a near thing. It's hard when someone is just exactly like a parody.

Telephone conversations are so inadequate, so lacking in expression and gesture and everything.

Human nature is against it. People just tend to behave in certain ways because they are people. And

I read a lot of older children's books when I was a kid, and you wouldn't believe how many sugar-coated tracts I sucked the sugar off and cheerfully ran off, spitting out the message undigested. (Despite going to church several times every Sunday for my who childhood, I never figured out Aslan was Jesus until told later.)

There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.

Some say that I have self-awareness but no soul, that I am nothing but a machine. This seems un-Platonic as well as unfriendly, but it cannot be discounted as a terrifying possibility. I cannot erase this option simply because I dislike it so much. That too would be un-Platonic.

May her memory be a blessing.

To add insult to injury there's a television at the end of the ward. It's unavoidable, and even more unbearable than usual as it's constantly tuned to ITV, so there are adverts. I wonder if hell is like this? I'd definitely prefer lakes of sulphur and at least being able to swim about in them.

The weather has changed completely in the last week. Last Saturday was mild and sunny, autumn looking reluctantly back over its shoulder towards summer. Today it was wet and blustery, autumn barrelling forward impatiently into winter.

She has read LOTR, and I don't know if she read it identifying with all of the evil people and hoping the good ones wouldn't resist their temptations, but I know she has read it because the first time I read it, it was her copy. This proves that just reading it isn't enough. After all, the devil can quote scripture.)

Morally, magic is just indefensible.

I swear by Zeus and Hera and Demeter and Apollo and Athene, by the figs and olives and barley and grapes, by the sea and the sky and the earth beneath my feet, that I will protect and defend the excellence of the Just City from all enemies, internal and external. I will fight bravely, judge fairly, and contribute to the best of my abilities. I will defend her laws and institutions, resist tyranny and foolishness, and the lures of wealth and honor, and strive ever to increase her excellence.

There's a line in Delany's Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand where he talks about re-reading and says that this time the gleam of torchlight reflected in the water was a different gold. That about sums it up. I love the first re-read of a book, when I know what is coming and am not anxious either about what will happen or whether it will continue to be good, but it isn't yet as familiar as an old slipper.

Plato didn't have as much experience of humanity as he needed when he wrote a book like the Republic,' Socrates said. 'Perhaps nobody does.

I may not always have this, but I have this now," I thought. "I am perfectly happy in this moment and I know it.

Angelo, beds are for sleeping, chairs are for sitting, tables are for piling books.' 'All flat surfaces are for piling books.' Angelo says

I can see the beauty of the world - a weed growing out of a crack, a sunrise, the glory of art.' He takes comfort in even the grain of wood in the arms of the chair, the gentle coarseness of the linen weave of his shirt, the dust motes dancing in the beam of sunlight, the smell of Marsilio's fresh bread.

Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic. W

Piero is only twenty years old, but is married already to a Roman aristocrat, an Orsini like his mother. People say he thought himself too good for Florence. When you think you are too good to marry your neighbors, you start expecting them to be your servants.

Maybe he [Plato] really couldn't imagine agape between men and women, and he thought agape between men wouldn't be affected by them going off to women at the festivals. Sokrates was married, and Aristotle, but never Plato.