#quest

Leo wondered what unknown sin they must have committed in some previous life to deserve this. The answer came the same way their feet later shocked to life in the warming hut after being so numb for hours- you think you'll never feel your toes again, and then all of a sudden life, damaged, stiffened, clammy, but life, dog-eat-dog life! We have not done a single thing to deserve this. ↗

— Peter Orner

#perserverance #questioning #love

This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina... close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe it's some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it's part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period. ↗

— Leon Uris

#conquest #loneliness #mitla-pass #novelist #writing

They (Romans) were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to... ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#men

Resolutely ignoring Banu's dark mutterings, steeling herself against the barrage of harsh words that questioned her motives, her upbringing, and her morality ↗

— Thrity Umrigar

#motives #questions #motivational

I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with. ↗

— Robin Hobb

#fear #fitz #mankind #nature #robin-hobb

Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered. ↗

— Scott Westerfeld

#questions #read #twitter #twitter

Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest? ↗

— Rumi

#quest #rumi #wealth

Pose your questions to people and you will get countless useless answers. ↗