Quotes About Power

She believed that unadulterated devotion had its share of protective power, as if love were a steel grinder that Fates could not snip through. She also believed that the moment you relaxed your guard, the moment you were anything less than ferocious in your keeping, that was the moment it could all be snatched away.

Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer.

Librarians, to Melanie, were somewhat in a par with god -- who else could be bothered with, and better yet, know the answers to so many diffrent types of questions? Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to fknd, where to look, how to see

The highest ranking wolf in the pack isn't the one that uses brute force. It's the one who can, and chooses not to.

You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free.

I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love—well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.

It's the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you

un arma no era nada si no había una persona detrás.

The catch was this: Power always involved loss of humanity.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

It's funny how when you are dying, you still fight for the upper hand. You want to pick the terms; you want to choose the date. You'll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you're still the one in control.

I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whather it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.

If you knew you were going to die, wasn't it better to choose the time and place, instead of waiting for fate to drop on you like an anvil?

This judge has a chip on her shoulder the size of the whole goddamned courthouse.

What twisted deity would grant you the superpower of fatherhood to protect someone who, one day, would not need you?

I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free.

Words, he knew, could scar.

I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow-- is the most powerful drug on this planet.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

I believe that having something to hope for—even if it's just a better tomorrow—is the most powerful drug on this planet.

What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise? —William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

monsters I have ever known were men," I said.

I remember reading a novel once that said the native Alaskans who came in contact with the white missionaries thought, at first, they were ghosts. And why shouldn't they have thought that? Like ghosts, white people move effortlessly through through boundaries and borders. Like ghosts, we can be anywhere we want to be.

Anger, it turns out, is a renewable source of fuel.