Quotes [part I]

[alchemy_hisoka]

-Hunter x Hunter-

'And the truth is, I want to stay by your side . . . Always . . .'
-Killua, Chapter 217

"And even though I am alone,
you'll see me shine.
Even though the sun isn't out,
I'll laugh for you."
-Firefly, third Hunter x Hunter ending

"After this, I felt really shabby and alone . . . I had the impression that I didn't have enough strength to go on. So I wanted to have somebody next to me . . . and I wanted to be useful . . . That's why I was looking for the both of you."
-Gon, to Kurapika on 'borrowing' Hisoka's plate; chapter 32

"If someday, really, I could only save one person out of those who are close to me...what would I do? I don't say this to have an answer to the question, but... A day may come... Where I'll have to make that kind of choice."
-Gon; Chapter 3 [Volume 1]

"You can't get anything if you don't try!"
-Killua; Chapter 125 [Volume 13]

"I do not fear death. What I fear most is that my anger never leaves."
-Kurapica; Chapter 2 [Volume 1]

"First, after I decided to materialize a chain, I worked at forming a mental image of it. For that, I spent all my time with a real chain in my hands. It was always by my side, day and night. Then I started to close my eyes to feel and visualize it. I made hundreds, maybe even thousands of sketches of chains. I watched it, touched it, heard the sounds it made... My master ordered me to enjoy myself only with the chain. After a little while, I began to dream of my chain, and I could separate myself from it. Then I began to have visions of this chain. When darkness fell, my visions became even more real: I could hear it, feel its weight, and the coldness of the metal. And without realizing it, the vision came true: I had materialized a chain."
-Kurapica; Chapter 123 [Volume 13]

"I'm finally refinding the Killua I know. The reckless one is me. You're the one who keeps his head and calms me. The one who we can rely on."
-Gon, to Killua; Chapter 94 [Volume 11]

"'If you want to know someone, start by finding out what makes him mad.'"
-Gon, quoting Mito-san; Chapter 2 [Volume 1]

"Think about your hope, your joys and sorrow, what you like, what you want, where you want to go, who do you want to meet, what kind of experience you will have. All these will help you shape your future."
-Wing; episode 44 "Waste x Decision x Exam Results!"

"What am I thinking about? What am I afriad of? What do I like? What do I want? Where do I wanna go? With whom? What to do there? All these questions will give a form to your nen!"
-Wing; Chapter 56 [Volume 7]

"Living is for everyone to be free, [like a] wild animal. Catch the wind wherever you go."
-Gon; Musical I

"The melody of his heart beat is normal. I can't detect the least bit of nervousness within him. I don't hear any abnormalties indicating fear or uneasiness towards death. It's as if the idea of staying alive hasn't even crossed his mind...! That melody... It's the melody of someone who has already accepted death...!! Someone who lives day by day always with death at his side...but it's a happy melody..."
-Senritsu, on Kuroro; Chapter 116 [Volume 13]

"Living is to continually search for what you seek. But very soon, you'll find it! It's wonderful if you can open your eyes."
-Gon; Musical I

"Killua, are you happy being with me?"
"Well, I guess."
"Then we'll always be together from now on! We'll go to many different places together, see many different things together. I'll search for my father. Killua, you can do what you want too. It will be fun!"
"I guess. It's a good idea."
"Isn't it?"
-Gon and Killua; episode 46 "I'm Home x Welcome Home x I'm Killua"

"Killua."
"Hm?"
"Thank you. I'm very happy I came here with... No. I feel very fortunate that I've met you, Killua."
"Stop it. You're embarrassing me."
"Why? I really mean it from the bottom of my heart."
'It is the opposite. Gon...it is me. Gon... I feel very fortunate that I've met you.'
-Gon and Killua; Greed Island episode 5 "Invitation x List x The First is Guu!"

"I finally know why I was so curious about him. Because this little guy doesn't discriminate good from bad. At that time, I told him that I forged the pot. And now, somebody's picking out nonexistent problems with his stuff. He doesn't blame other people and doesn't feel anything wrong with it. What he has is pure curiousity. The result is whatever he thinks is good. He'll praise it without any cover-up. He's completely open-minded. But the thing is that this kid is too dangerous. To him, those inspecting skills are all useless as long as he has 50% of his intuition."
-Zepairu [on Gon]; episode 57 "Gon x Treasure x Dangerous Man"

"We live in the now. We're not tied to the past."
-Gon; Musical II

"Everything you do should reflect your own will."
-Wing; episode 43 "Talent x Distraught x Nature of Killing"

"We understand even less of things when we have half of the information than when we don't have any."
-Wing; Chapter 46 [Volume 6]

"If you can't go back, then think about going forward."
-Gon; Musical I

"You're not related."
"I am related! Look, we know each other now. Not just people... Animals, too. This town, too. Even the mountains and oceans. People meet each other and are related. Even the people I hit earlier."
-Mitsuko and Gon; Musical I

"Living is a difficult thing. Worrying, being in pain...there's tons of that."
"But birds, fish, and animals don't worry."
"Silly, people are different from animals."
"They're not different! Because humans are a part of nature."
"That's true, but..."
"So, living is a natural thing."
"But living with nature is difficult."
"Un. That is true. That's why people have to fight sometimes. In order to live naturally."
-Mitsuko and Gon; Musical I

"I want to be strong. The kind of strength that can banish all the wandering spirits into the
deepest level of hell."
-Kurapica; episode 45 "Restriction x Oath x Chain of Punishment"
[力が欲しい。]

"I have to keep on fighting. I can't rely on anyone else anymore. The only thing I can rely on is
my own strength. I live solely for this purpose."
-Kurapica; episode 45 "Restriction x Oath x Chain of Punishment"

"What I meant was that you're really amazing. I've never found something that I really want to
do. But when it comes to the things I don't want to do, I have a whole list. For example, I don't
want to stay in that home or inherit the family business. But if you ask me what I want to do . . .
That's why I kind of envy you."
-Killua; episode 46 "I'm home x Welcome home x I'm Killua"

"All of my family members are assassins. We kill anyone if we get the money. And among
them all, it is believed I will become a good assassin. Since I was a child, I've been learning how
to kill. But I don't like to live a life where someone else determines what I do. When I said, ‘I'm
going to pick my own future.' My family got pissed. My mom even lectured me, while crying,
about how much potential I have as an assassin. Don't you think they're terrible parents?
Normally, someone would become a delinquent child. It became a fight in the end. So I beat up
my mom and brother and left the house. They're probably looking for me very hard right now.
But if they do come, I'll beat them up. If I do become a Hunter, I'm going to capture all of my
family members. I think I'll be able to sell them for a good price."
-Killua; episode 11 "Explore x Sports Spirit x Stowaway"

"Killua, you're amazing."
"What?"
"Killua, you're amazing. I never thought of surpassing my dad like you, Killua."
"I see . . . I guess capturing my dad would mean I have to surpass him."
-Gon and Killua; episode 11 "Explore x Sports Spirit x Stowaway"

"Sun in the sky, trees on the ground. Our bodies created from the earth. Our souls from the
heavens. The sun and moon shines on our limbs, and the ground moistens our body, giving this
body to the wind that blows, thank God for the miracle, and the Kurutabou territories. Wishing
for everlasting peace in our souls, I desire to share happiness with my people, and desire to share
their sadness. God, please praise eternally the Kurutabou people. Let us use our Scarlet Eyes."
-Kurapica; episode 58 "Gon x Killua x Lethal Pursuit"

"The leadership of a fool can only lead to more foolishness."
-The King


-Mary Renault-

"He had made, as he lay looking at the night-light's quivering circle on the ceiling, a strange and solemn discovery. It had come to him that no one would ever look from these eyes but he: that among all the lives, he was this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"After, when the passage of years had confused his memories of that night and overlaid them with later knowledge, what he remembered best was having known for the first time the burden, prison and mystery of his own uniqueness."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"Lanyon seemed about to step forward; and Laurie waited. He didn't think what he was waiting for. He was lifted into a kind of exalted dream, part loyalty, part hero-worship, all romance. Half-remembered images moved in it, the tents of Troy, the columns of Athens, David waiting in an olive grow for the sound of Jonathan's bow."
-Narration; The Charioteer

"It doesn't exist anywhere in real life, so don't let it give you illusions. It's just a nice idea."
-Ralph to Laurie, on Plato's Phaedrus; The Charioteer

"I have fallen in love. I now know something about myself which I have been suspecting for years, if I had the honesty to admit it. I ought to be frightened and ashamed, but I am not. Since I can see no earthly hope for this attachment, I ought to be wretched, but I am not. I know now why I was born, why everything has happened to me ever; I know why I am lame, because it has brought me to the right place at the right time. I would go through it all again, if I had to, now that I know it was for this.
"Oddly enough, what I feel most is relief, because I know now that what kept me fighting it so long was the fear that what I was looking for didn't exist. Lanyon said it didn't, and after meeting Charles's set I thought he was probably right. If it hadn't been for him I might have fallen for all that, and missed this. I wish I could thank him."
-Laurie, imagining a letter he might write to his mother; The Charioteer

"In the deep places below his thinking, she had kept the old power to make Providence seem a projection of herself; if she approved, it too would approve and reward him. Now he had committed himself to courses which only lunacy could have supposed her to sanction; yet instinctively he still transposed into this different medium the basic lessons he had learned at her knee: own up to what you do, never break your word, never hurt anyone's feelings unless there is something or somebody to be defended; always kick a banana-skin off the pavement, someone might slip on it and fall."
-Narration, on Laurie and his mother; The Charioteer

"Some events are crucial from their very slightness; because circumstances have used no force on them, they are unequivocally what they are, test-tube reactions of personality. Between Laurie and Mr. Straike there began to weave the first fine filaments of a dislike mutually known."
-Narration; The Charioteer

"'You have found yourself a private Eden, haven't you?'
'It isn't private,' Laurie said. 'Everyone's invited; but only the serpent comes."
-Andrew and Laurie; The Charioteer

"'One thing, it shakes you out of that sort of basic snobbery which makes you proud of not being a snob.'"
-Laurie, on fighting in war; The Charioteer

"'I thought there might conceivably even be some circumstances when I felt it was right to kill. If I knew whom I was killing and the circumstances and the nature of the responsibility. What I finally stuck at was surrendering my moral choice to men I'd never met, about whose moral standards I knew nothing about.'"
-Andrew, on fighting in war; The Charioteer

"But for the war, he said, changing the subject, he would have been going up to Oxford this autumn. The college he had been entered for was just across the road from Laurie's, and they reflected solemnly on the fact that they would have missed one another by a matter of a month or two. Quite likely, said Laurie, they would have run into each other somehow or other. Andrew smiled, and said yes, it seemed that they were meant to meet. Laurie lived on these words for the next two days."
-Narration; The Charioteer

"Why, he wondered, was it the people one held in the most innocent affection who so often demanded from one the most atrocious treachery?"
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"The two of them were always getting involved in arguments; but, as the only men in the ward who acknowledged the rules of logic in debate, they put up with each other for the sake of conversation."
-Narration, on Laurie and Neames; The Charioteer

"Laurie kept his hand on the book covering the title. In his imagination the pages were printed not with their own paragraphs only, but with all that he himself had brought to them: it seemed as though he must be identified and revealed in them, beyond all pretense of detachment, as if they were a diary to which he had committed every secret of his heart."
-Narration, on Laurie with Ralph's book; The Charioteer

"'Does life stop being sacred,' he asked, 'when it gets down to cockroaches?'"
"'Well, the Jains don't think so,' said Andrew seriously. 'But I never know how they meet the fact that our own bodies destroy millions of microorganisms every day, without giving us any alternative to it except suicide. One has to draw the line where one sees it oneself.'"
-Laurie and Andrew; The Charioteer

"All kinds of little things came suddenly back to him; but most of all he remembered the term after Lanyon had gone. Over and over, during those first months, Laurie had relived the scene in the study, guarding it with fierce secrecy as a savage guards a magic word. Now he felt strands and fibers of Lanyon twitching in his mind where he had not recognized them before, and realized the source of those standards which had supplemented his mother's in those parts of his life where she could not go."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"'Oh?' said Lanyon without much expression. 'Then which of these people have you met before?'"
"'Only you.'"
"He hadn't meant to give this simple statement of fact any special significance. For some reason which he couldn't understand it seemed to go on ringing, like glass picking up a note."
-Ralph and Laurie; The Charioteer

"He was, Laurie thought, a person who hated soft thinking on one hand and intolerance on the other; much of his life must be spent fighting a war on two fronts."
-Narration, on Alec; The Charioteer

"'One doesn't know how far he can help himself. Perhaps he can't be different from what he is.'"
"'God,' said Ralph, 'what are any of us?' His blue eyes stared out with a kind of tired anger. 'It's not what one is, it's what one does with it.'
"'Get your feet on the ground, my dear. People get sick of what they are. They get sick of carrying it. What d'you think dictators and party bosses are for? Or they just pour it down the drain and forget it, like Harry does. Everyone isn't like you, Ralph, trying to carry the world.'"
-Alec and Ralph; The Charioteer

"A momentary detachment came upon Laurie as he looked on. After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths of the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb."
-Narration, on Laurie and his thoughts on the queer community in general; The Charioteer

"'He kept telling me I was a queer, and I'd never heard it called that before and didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other half anyway, and just keep together so that they can lean up against each other for support. I don't think I've ever tried to put all this into words before; am I talking nonsense?'"
-Laurie, on a man from Oxford; The Charioteer

"'Yes, of course. One would know it was impossible and feel it just the same.'"
-Laurie to Ralph, on [unrequited] love; The Charioteer

"'Some things can't be thought about. The more you try to be honest with them, the more they lie to you. I'm only beginning to know that.'"
-Laurie; The Charioteer

"He had forgotten there was anything to hide. To return to the innocence of their love was like returning home. He reached for Andrew's hand as it might be for the hundredth time, as if everything had been accepted and spoken of between them."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"Laurie was saying to himself that it would soon ceaseto seem so important, this discovery he had made that, instead of accepting concealment as a permanent condition of life, he had merely been enduring it."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"It hadn't occurred to Laurie to have any conversation ready; one always imagined Ralph taking charge. Now, sensing at the other end a tentativeness at least equal to his own, he felt suddenly afraid of drying up. The thought of Ralph ringing off after a few perfunctory commonplaces came to him with a terrible sense of flatness, disappointment, and failure. He hadn't anticipated any of this. However, in the end they talked for nearly ten minutes."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"The smell of antiseptics, sick bodies, and old clothes pervaded everything. Amid all this Laurie sat and wondered, with rapidly decreasing confidence in each successive answer, what he was going to do with his life. The surrounding climate of shabbiness, dejection, and failure seemed to subdue all possible futures to itself. It was in the midst of such thoughts that he saw Ralph walk briskly in at the street door."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"In seven years, thought Laurie, every cell in one's body had been replaced, even our memories live in a new brain. That is not the face I saw, and these are not the eyes I saw with. Even our selves are not the same, but only a consequence of the selves we had then. Yet I was there and I am here; and this man, who is sometimes what I remember and sometimes a stranger I met at a party the other day, is also to himself that I who was there: his mind in its different skull has travelled back to a place his living feet never visited; and the pain he felt then he can feel again."
-Narration, on Laurie and Ralph; The Charioteer

"'Esprit de corpse, Spud. Every time they try to slip it on you, just say to yourself, 'The lower they go, the tighter they hang together.''"
"'The trouble is, how else are you to meet people you're sure about, if it's only to talk to? After all, it's the way you and I met again.'"
"'I don't forget that, Spud, believe me. No, of course we all have to use the network sometimes. Don't let it use you, that's all. Ours isn't a hoizontal society, it's a verticle one. Plato, Michelangelo, Sappho, Marlowe; Shakespeare, Leonardo, and Socrates if you count the bisexuals--we can all quote the upper crust. But at the bottom--Spud, believe me, there isn't any bottom. Never forget it. You've no conception, you haven't a clue, how far down it goes.'"
-Ralph and Laurie, on the queer community; The Charioteer

"'When all's said and done, the best way to be independent is to have all you need at home.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"Now, as soon as one began wondering what could be wrong and why, one began to have new and disturbing thoughts and to resent Bunny more than was reasonable. Laurie got exasperated with himself and revolted against emotion altogether. With a decision which his habitual fear of boring people made rare in him, he embarked on a conversation about the war."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"'They've got children and they want grandchildren. Make you sick, the dirty bastards. So what? They've learned to leave us in peace unless we make public exhibitions of ourselves, but that's not enough, you start to expect a medal. Hell, can't we even face the simple fact that if our fathers had been like us, we wouldn't have been born?'"
-Ralph, on homosexuality; The Charioteer

"'It's been getting risky. You see, he--I think he quite likes me, and he mustn't ever know. It would spoil his life, and there's no need. I wonder if this wasn't meant to happen. One gives oneself away without meaning to. It's much more important he should be all right.'"
-Laurie, on Andrew; The Charioteer

"At first it had been a relief no longer to consider anyone's feelings but his own; to rest his head in his hands, to be silent. He hardly know at what point solitude passed into loneliness, and he began to listen for the sound of the door."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"In the weeks of that summer holiday seven years before, after he had read the Phaedrus by the stream in the wood, he had gone for long walks alone, and, returning, sat in the evening by a September fire, so silent and enclosed that more than once his mother had asked if he was well. It was of this that he had been dreaming.
"Involuntarily he moved his hands so that they covered his face, as the dream came back in all the high colors of boyhood: his own room with the fire he had, as a rule, only on the first day of the holidays, furnished as he had thought, then, he would want it when he was older; the flickering light on leather and books; and Ralph's face at nineteen. In the dream there had always been a pause in which he had looked up and said, 'Next time you go away, I'm going with you'; and Ralph, who hadn't had a first name in those days, had looked down all the same and answered, 'Of course.'"
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"Sometimes when they were sitting quietly somewhere out of doors, Andrew would withdraw into himself, and Laurie, without any wish to interrupt him, used to sit silent, watching him with admiration and love. Now suddenly he felt alone and excluded."
-Narration; The Charioteer

"'How is it that--I've often liked people enough to talk to them, but--things I'd feel a fool saying to anyone else in the world--I don't always tell you, one doesn't of course, but I always feel I could and you'd know what
t they meant better than I do.'"
-Andrew, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"'It's all right when I'm with you. I don't have the feeling of being different, then.'"
-Andrew, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"At this moment, he could feel nothing in himself from which Andrew ought to be protected. With a simplicity which this knowledge made to seem quite natural, he leaned over and kissed him. Even when he had done it he felt no reaction or self-reproach. It was if it had happened before and they both remembered."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"'You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all of the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets so that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"'Things can happen. It's not in the blueprint, perhaps. Perhaps it isn't for ever. But a person who knows you will understand that. No one's going to hold it against you afterwards.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"Laurie pressed his forehead to the icy glass and shut his eyes. He didn't know why memories which had lain with his mind's lumber for so many years, waking no more than a dim nostalgia, should return now to charge the present with so unbearable a weight of longing. On a stricken field littered with the abandoned trophies of his lifetime, he remembered a victory which had once seemed beyond the furthest reach of the most secret aspiration. But he only said to himself that he must have someone to talk to."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"The bridal couple vanished through the west door. Ralph looked him in the eyes and smiled. Someone was here now for whom he came first: it was like a well in the desert."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"The people who are vulerable to these things are less absent-minded about them."
-Narration, on Laurie thinking about Ralph; The Charioteer

"He had reviewed his own weaknesses early in life, and with untender determination trained them as one bends a tree; the resolution this had demanded had stamped his face with most of the lineaments of strenght. The fastidious severity of his dress and carriage hid, no doubt, a personal vanity by no means extinct; but it had the air of a fine, unconscious arrogance. Laurie, as he walked beside him up the hall, was looking at Mr. Straike and thinking, He'd have liked to be the one who brought him here, to put me in my place. Too bad he belongs to me."
-Narration, on Ralph and Laurie; The Charioteer

"He heard in Ralph's voice that secret overtone only half of which is created by the one who speaks, the other half by the one who listens, and which says in any language, 'By and by all these people will have gone.'"
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"He had a feeling, not of grief, but of absolute full stop and aimlessness. He turned, and Ralph was beside him."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"'Tell me if you want to rest and I'll fix it.'"
"'There's nothing you can't fix, is there?'"
"'It's time someone started to look after you.'"
"'Is it?' He felt subtle and rarefied. He looked up.
"'Spud,' said Ralph softly, 'you're drunk. Be careful.'"
"They held one another's eyes for a moment, not having meant to.
"Perhaps it was only instinct that made Laurie look around, perhaps it was a movement on the edge of his visual field. At the far end of the buffet, one of the decrepit waiters had appeared. Laurie's gaze travelled out from Ralph's face to meet a cold, flat, withdrawing eye, glaucous and sunken, the eye of yesterday's fish rejected by this morning's buyer, wrinkling on the slab. The face could still be read, as it were, between the lines; faint traces were left in it of a mincing, petulant kind of good looks. The glance, so quickly caught away, lingered on like a smell; it had been a glance of classification. Laurie sensed, without comprehending, the dull application of unspeakable terms of reference; the motiveless calculation proceeding, a broken mechanism jogged on its dump by a passing foot. His eyes, flinching away, met Ralph's retrating too.
"There was a moment's uncertain pause; then Laurie moved nearer to Ralph, as he had with Mr. Straike. They had a very small island to defend, he thought, a very isolated position."
-Ralph, Laurie, and Narration; The Charioteer

"Stealthily the cold silent night slid around Laurie its noose of solitude. But it was only he who was alone. Ralph lay quiet with the image he had created, the beloved and desired, for whom nothing was good enough, of whom nothing was demanded but to trust and receive."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this was what you wanted."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"At some stage of a broken midnight conversation, he had said, 'I've often had a feeling that there's nowhere I really belong.' He had hardly known himself what he wanted; but Ralph had said, without a moment's hesitation, 'You belong with me. As long as we're both alive, this will always be your place before anyone else's. That's a promise.'"
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"Now he slept in the deep peace of valor and sacrifice; and Laurie, only half understanding the reproaches of his own nature, thought gropingly: I wanted someone to follow, I wanted him to be brave. But he wants to be brave for me too; and no one can do that."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"Ralph had turned on his side, his closed eyes still smoothed by sleep. Turned by the light to the color of some pale palladian metal, the fair hair, which Laurie had seen for so long only in order and discipline, lay tumbled like a boy's. A secret thrill of triumph, none the less strong for being mixed with gentler things, drew Laurie irresistibly; he reached out stealthily and touched it. When he moved away, Ralph's eyes had opened. They were smiling, and with fear Laurie saw in how deep a happiness, too silent and too deep, eating like rust the core of his defenses."
-Narration, on Ralph and Laurie; The Charioteer

"Ralph made a little movement of the head as if to shake it wouldn't be worth the trouble, and went on looking at Laurie under his lashes, a long contented reminiscent look, not demanding an answer."
-Narration, on Ralph; The Charioteer

"He longed to give him something, to help him with something, to be depended on for a moment. Just then, without moving, Ralph said, 'Are you thinking about me?'"
"'Yes,' said Laurie with affection."
-Ralph and Laurie; The Charioteer

"Ralph scratched up softly the short hair at the nape of his neck, causing an involuntary shiver like a stroked cat's. 'Spud,' he said gently, 'are you worrying again?'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"'You say this boy has guts, but what you're trying to do for him is to keep him like a mid-Victorian virgin in a world of illusion where he doesn't know he's alive. He mustn't be told he's a passenger when human decency's fighting for survival, in case it upsets his religion. He mustn't be told he's a queer, in case he has to do a bit of hard thinking and make up his mind. He mustn't know you're in love with him, in case he feels he can't go on having his cake and eating it. If he amounts to anything, he won't really want to be let off being human. And if he does want it, then he isn't worth all this, Spud.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie on Andrew; The Charioteer

"'If a city or an army could be made up only of lovers and their beloved, it would excel all others. For they would refrain from everything shameful, rivalling one another in honor; and men like these, fighting at each other's side, might well conquer the world. For the lover would rather be seen by anyone than by his beloved, flying or throwing away his arms; rather he would be ready a thousand times to die.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie quoting Plato; The Charioteer

"'I suppose they'd sooner think we can't take it than feel we don't need them any more. The more they're fond of you, the worse it seems to be.'"
-Laurie, to Mervyn on mothers; The Charioteer

"'I ought to get over next week with any luck, and we'll find somewhere to talk. The telephone is rather dimishing, isn't it? In a way Morse would be better, because it doesn't pretend to be conversation.'"
-Andrew, in a letter to Laurie; The Charioteer

"There had not been time to discover, till now, the sensations of coming home again which is one of the more stable by-products of physical love. One can see sometimes in a crowded railway carriage at night two lovers, lethargic, travel-grimed, and bored, weary beyond the dimmest stirrings of desire, but by instinct comfortably adapting their bodies to cushion and support each other, making a little refuge from the crush while the strangers or even friends around them rub elbows and knees, stiff with apologetic constraint and inward resentment."
-Narration, on Laurie; The Charioteer

"'The things with you is, you're too new to it all and you don't know what to be frightened of. I've listened to so many life-histories: I don't know why, I always seem to pitch up when they've had a drink too many, or a knock too many, or something. It's loneliness that rots them, every time. A starving man won't notice a dirty plate. You don't know, Spuddy, I do. When you're settled with someone real you can forget all that. You can afford friends then, I mean friends, people to talk to, like anyone else.' He added softly, 'You know, we do get along together.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"'You know, even St. Anthony practiced his austerities in the desert. His temptations came to him in dreams, and he just told them to go to hell. You can do that with a dream; it hasn't any feelings.'"
-Ralph, to Laurie; The Charioteer

"The fact of the matter is that if I hadn't met you again, and had gone on as I was, I might have drifted past the point where a step of this kind ought to be taken, and I would rather have it like this. You did what anyone would in the circumstances. So don't worry. Just lately I have been happier than I ever had the right to expect, and as one goes round the world one sees that happiness is hard to come by and seldom lasts for long. Good luck to you, Spud. We always agreed that right, left, or center, it is still necessary to make out as a human being. I haven't done it but you will."
-Ralph, in a letter to Lauire; The Charioteer

"He was scarred within by such battles. When another threatened, the scars throbbed like old wounds before the rain."
-Narration, on Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"He cried easily at old war-songs where sworn comrades died together, at a falling cadence of the flute. He had cried half a day, when his dog fell sick and died. Already he knew what it was to mourn the fallen; for Agis he had wept his heart out. But to cry for his own wounds would make Herakles forsake him. This had long been a part of their secret compact."
-Narration, on Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"'Do you know that old song about Orpheus, how he played his lyre on the mountainside, and found a lion had crouched at his feet to listen? I'm no Orpheus, I know; but sometimes I see the lion's eyes. Where did it go, after the music, what became of it? The story doesn't say.'"
-Epikrates, on Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"'As we know, the ashes of Achilles and Patroklos were mingled in one urn. Not even a god could sift the one from the other. Achilles has come back with his fierceness and his pride, and with Patroklos' feeling. Each of them suffered for what he was; this boy will suffer for both.'"
-Lysimachos, to Olympias on Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"'Yes, he was warned that his death would follow Hektor's, but still he killed him. He was avenging Patroklos, his friend, whom Hektor had killed.'"
"The boy considered this intently. 'He was his best friend of all?'"
"'Yes, from when they were boys together.'"
"'Why didn't Achilles save him first, then?'"
"'He had taken his men out of the battle, because the High King had insulted him. The Greeks were getting the worst of it without him; that was as he'd been promised by the god. But Patroklos, who had a feeling heart, when he saw old comrades falling came to Achilles weeping for pity. 'Lend me only your armor,' he said, 'and let me show myself in the field. They wil think you are back; it will be enough to scare them off.' So Achilles gave him leave, and he did great deeds, but...' He was stopped by the boy's shocked stare."
"'He couldn't do that! He was a general! And he sent a junior officer, when he wouldn't go! It was his fault Patroklos died.'"
-Lysimachos and Alexander, on Achilles and Patroklos; Fire From Heaven

"'Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.'"
-Herakles to Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"Hephaistion, who was not very neat-handed, unwound with anxious care the walnut twig from its shining tangle, which smelled of some expensive wash used on it by Olympias, and of summer grass. This done, he slid his arm down to Alexander's waist. He had done it the first time almost by accident; though not rebuffed, he had waited two days before daring to try again. Now he watched his chance whenever they were alone; it had become a thing he thought about. He could not tell what Alexander thought, if he thought at all. He accepted it contentedly, and talked, with ever more ease and freedom, about other things."
-Narration, on Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"He had not withdrawn, but, backed to the sloping gable-roof, sat propped lightly against Hephaistion, trustful and warm. This, thought Hephaistion, was the true perfection of happiness; it ought to be; it must be."
-Narration, on Alexander and Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"'You won't ever go to war without me?'
Alexander sat up staring; Hephaistion was jolted into taking his hand away. 'Without you? What do you mean, how could you even think of it? You're my dearest friend.'
Hephaistion had known for many ages that if a god should offer him one gift in all his lifetime, he would choose this."
-Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"At the stair-foot Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not by calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed. Now, when he came down the stairs with a shut mouth and blue lines under his eyes, Hephaistion received some mute signal he understood, and fell into step beside him. They went up along the path which wandered into the wood; in an open glade was an old fallen oak-bole with orange fungus and a lace of ivy. Hephaistion sat down with his back to it. Alexander, in a slience unbroken since setting out, came and settled into his arm."
-Narration, on Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"For Hephaistion, it was a new life. Alexander was his own in the sight of everyone. His place was recognized even by the philosopher.
"The school discussed friendship often. It is, they learned, one of the things man can least aford to lack; necessary to the good life, and beautiful in itself. Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist. He described the degrees of friendship, up from the self-seeking to the pure, when good is willed to the friend for the friend's own sake. Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time."
-Narration, on Hephaistion and Aristotle; Fire From Heaven

"Hephaistion was quickly growing possessive. Everything led him that way: his nature, the integrity of his love and his own sense of it; the tenet of the philosopher that for each man there was only one perfect friend; the certainty of his unspoiled instincts that Alexander's loyalty matched his own; and their acknowledged status."
-Narration, on Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"Their minds were ripening, a growth they were daily urged to hasten; less was said about the fact that their bodies were ripening too. At Pella, Hephaistion had lived in a cloud of vague, inchoate longings. They had become desires, and no longer vague.
"True friends share everything; but Hephaistion's life was filling with concealments. It was Alexander's nature to love the proofs of love, even when he was sure of it; in this spirit he welcomed and returned his friend's caresses. Hephaistion had never dared do anything which could tell him more."
-Narration, on Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"That night he woke Hephaistion by shouting 'No!' in his sleep. Hephaistion went over and got in with him; Alexander grasped his throat with savage strength, then opened his eyes, embraced him with a sigh of relief that was like a groan, and fell asleep again. Hephaistion lay awake beside him, and just before daybreak returned to his own cold bed."
-Narration, on Alexander and Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"The philosopher felt less easy when, at one of the feasts, they rode into town and went to the theater. To his regret, it was Aischylos' Myrmidons, which showed Achilles and his Patroklos as more (or in his own view less) than perfect friends. In the midst of his critical concerns, when the news of Patroklos' death had reached Achilles, he became aware that Alexander was sitting trance-bound, tears streaming from his wide-open eyes, and that Hephaistion was holding his hand. A reproving stare made Hephaistion let go, red to the ears; Alexander was unreachable. At the end they vanished; he ran them down backstage, with the actor who had played Achilles. He was unable to stop the Prince from actually embracing this person, and giving him a costly arm-ring he had on, which the Queen was sure to inquire for. It was most unsuitable. All next day's work was devoted to mathematics, as a healthy antidote."
-Narration, on Aristotle and The Myrmidons; Fire From Heaven

"Sometimes in the night Hephaistion wondered if he was a fool and coward, not to try his luck. But the oracle of instinct signed against it. They were being daily told that all things were open to reason; he knew better. Whatever it was that he was waiting for--a birth, a healing, the intervention of a god--he would have to wait, if he waited forever. Only with what he had, he was rich beyond his dreams; if, reaching for more, he lost it, he would as soon be dead."
-Narration, on Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"'You went in without me. You didn't even look.'"
"Suddenly transformed, Alexander gave him a loving smile. 'What's the matter with you? Patroklos reproached Achilles for not fighting.'"
-Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"'Poor man, he was half out of his mind. I could tell, when he made us that speech about the nature of barbarians. Imagine calling a great man like Kyros the stuff of slaves, only because he was born a Persian.'"
-Alexander, on Aristotle; Fire From Heaven

"Alexander put his fur cloak away, incase he should come to depend on it. The young men who had been doubling up went back to sleep alone; so he put away Hephaistion too, though not without some regret. Secretly Hephaistion exchanged their pillows, to take with him the scent of Alexander's hair."
-Narration, on Alexander and Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"He put out his hand. Alexander's came out and touched it, deathly cold; then closed on it crushingly, so that he caught his breath with mingled relief and pain. 'You're with me,' Hephaistion said. 'I love you. You mean more to me than anything. I'd die for you any time. I love you.'"
-Narration, on Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"'One should learn to go without anything one can. But I should find it very hard to do without you.'"
-Alexander, to Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"'I'll never love anyone I'm ashamed of, that I know.'"
-Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"Hephaistion, who had never imported anything in his life before, had gone through the complex business of ordering from Athens a copy of The Myrmidons, which he gave to Alexander. Under a flower-bowed lilac beside the pool of the Nymphs, they discussed the nature and attributes of love."
-Narration, on Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"Both agreed that all this had been ordained by their destinies before their birth. Hephaistion still felt an incredulous sense of miracle; his days and nights were lived in a glittering cloud. [. . .]
"The young men read the signs with which their youth made them familiar, and paid up their bets. The philosopher, less expert and not so good a loser, while they all walked or sat in the rose-starred gardens looked doubtfully at the two handsome boys unfailingly side by side. He risked no questions; there was no place in his thesis for the answers."
-Narration, on Hephaistion, Alexander, and Aristotle; Fire From Heaven

"Hephaistion, his mind freed from the clouds of longing, saw in a divining moment the succession of King Philip's young men: their coarse good looks, their raw sexuality like a smell of sweat, their jealousies, their intrigues, their insolence. Out of all the world, he had been chosen to be everything which those were not; between his hands had been laid, in trust, Alexander's pride. As long as he should live, nothing greater could ever happen to him than this; to have more, one would need to be made immortal. Tears burst from his eyes, and trickled down on the throat of Alexander, who, believing he too felt the after-sadness, smilingly stroked his hair."
-Narration, on Hephaistion and Alexander; Fire From Heaven

"'In our souls,' he said, 'we'll be more than ever united, winning eternal fame. Son of Menoitios, great one, you who delight my heart.' He smiled deeply into Hephaistion's eyes, which faithfully smiled back. 'Love is the true food of the soul. But the soul eats to live, like the body, it mustn't live to eat.'"
-Alexander, to Hephaistion; Fire From Heaven

"Tomorrow he would sacrifice to Herakles. Meantime, he felt a deep wish at once to make someone happy. Luckily he had not far to seek."
-Narration, on Alexander [and Hephaistion]; Fire From Heaven

"'. . . one must be true to the mind before the body.'"
-Axiothea, paraphrasing Plato on her dressing in men's clothes; The Mask of Apollo

"'How, how, how--he will probe into that forever; he can't see that for Plato the use of how is to find the why. Why, Niko, is man? And why does man ask why? When we know that, we have all truth in our fingers. Without, a lifetime of how leads where?'"
-Speusippos, on Aristoteles; The Mask of Apollo

"'Accept in your mind that anything which can happen can happen to you.'"
-Nikeratos, quoting Pythagoras; The Mask of Apollo

"'And yet, sir, men's souls put me in mind of scattered seeds, which may fall in cracks of the earth, or at a stream's edge, or where a stone rolls over them, so that each has to find its own path to the light and rain. Can one seed know it for another?'"
-Thettalos, to Plato; The Mask of Apollo

"'The others are the Companions of the Prince; but we two are just Hephaistion and Alexander.'"
-Alexander; The Mask of Apollo

"He will wander through the world, like a flame, like a lion, seeking, never finding, never knowing (for he will look always forward, never back) that while he was still a child the thing he seeks slipped from the world, worn out and spent."
-Nikeratos [narration], on Alexander; The Mask of Apollo

"No one will ever make a tragedy--and that is as well, for one could not bear it--whose grief is that the principals never met."
-Nikeratos [narration]; The Mask of Apollo

"In Athens, when we were ruled by Hippias, we called it tyranny. It seems there is another kind that men make in their own souls. As boys they must question nothing; as youths they must think alike, what they are told. And when they are men, there is a fetter of iron around their minds."
-Pheidippides, on the Spartans; The Lion in the Gateway

"'They loved their lives. But they died unfearing. It was living without fear, that made their lives worth loving.'"
-Alexander, on Achilles and Patroklos; The Persian Boy

"'One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at
once.'"
-Alexander; The Persian Boy

"'Extremes breed one another.'"
-Myron; The Last of the Wine

"'. . . yet there are times when feeling sees more than intellect.'"
-Alexis; The Last of the Wine

"'Either we shall find what we are seeking, or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.'"
-Sokrates; The Last of the Wine

"'It seems the want of hope unmans one more than the want of food.'"
-Phaedo; The Last of the Wine

"'It pleased me to watch him undermine the security of fools. There, I thought, is a man who will not tame the truth, but will follow it into the dry places. So in my turn I followed him; and he led me where I had not thought to go. It doesn't frighten me when he tears down the definitions and leaves nothing in place.'"
-Phaedo; The Last of the Wine

"'. . . the Nature of Helios is a secret of the god; and that a man's first business is to know himself, and seek the source of light in his own soul.'"
-Lysis; The Last of the Wine


-Maurice [film version]-

-Maurice-

"What sort of life would I have without you? I risk everything, and gladly, because the one thing I dread losing is you."
-Maurice, to Clive

". . . did you ever dream you had a friend, someone to last your whole life?"
-Maurice, to Alec

"I'm trying to make a very serious point here which is that a masculine love of physical beauty and of moral beauty and of the beauty of the thirst for human knowledge -- you omit that and you've omitted the mainstay of Athenian society. It's as if our benighted dean hadn't even read The Symposium. You read it, Hall?"
"No, no, you missed the point. You have to maintain some standards of decency."
"No, you don't. Not if they're propped up by tenth-hand opinion. Typical of you, I may say."
"Western civilization happens to be run on the principles of Christ's doctrines, not Plato's bloody essences."
"What exactly do you mean by Christ's doctrines? They're open to all sorts of interpretations."
"You know: the redemption, the Trinity."
"Three in one, and one in three. Ruler of the earth and sea. Hear us while . . ."
"Damn Christ's doctrines. I can't prove them, but they mean a lot to millions of people, whatever you say."
-Clive, Maurice, and Risley


-Thief II: The Metal Age-

"My heart, it ceases. My breath, undrawn. My eyes forever focused on the sanguine metal
dawn."
-Keeper Prophecy

"The man who learns only what others know is as ignorant as if he learns nothing. The treasures
of knowledge are the most rare, and guarded most harshly."
-Chronicle Of The First Age

"When we looked at the relics of the precursors, we saw the height civilization can attain. When
we looked at their ruins, we marked the danger of that height."
-Keeper Annals

"There are those to whom knowledge is a shield, and those to whom it is a weapon. Neither
view is balanced, but one is less unwise."
-Keeper Annals

"Reliance upon other is weakness for the strong, but strength for the weak. Wisdom and balance
lie in knowing your own nature over time."
-Chronicle Of The Metal Age

"To manipulate a man is a careful project. Too light a hand, and he follows his own whim; too
heavy a hand, and he will turn on you."
-Chronicle Of The Metal Age


-Earthian-

"You want to change who you are, right? This is what you want, right? Then I'll teach you something. I want you to find someone to love. Man or woman, it doesn't matter. Just so long as you love them so much you want to cry. And if you don't find anyone, then choose me! And then...you'll grow up...to be a wonderful person."
-Taki, to Miyuki/Chihaya; 'Eternal Romance Part 1' (volume 1)

". . . I understand that everyone has something that they don't like to eat, so it's okay."
-Kagetsuya; 'Eternal Romance Part 2' (volume 1)

"But I just wanted to know one thing. I wanted to know...if I broke...would I die? Would I get to sleep...where everyone else sleeps when they've died?"
"Yes, you'll get to sleep there too. I'm sure of it. Because you're an Earthian."
-Taki and Chihaya; 'Eternal Romance Part 2' (volume 1)

"It's a big lie to say that you become stronger when you fall in love with someone. There's no way you can get stronger. All you become is weak with anxiety."
-Narration; 'Two' (volume 2)

"Every time I saw you trying to put up with so much...it made me wonder...if there was anyone out there who knew the real you."
-Michael, to Chihaya; 'Two' (volume 2)

"Do you think I'm strange?"
"Wh-why strange?"
"W-well, what if there was someone I liked? And I thought that I wanted to be with him forever. Would that be weird?"
"No, that's perfectly normal!"
"But what if I never wanted to be apart from him? What if I didn't want to give him up to anyone else?"
"There's nothing weird about that! It'd be weird...to want to be apart from that person!"
'I never realized...there was such a tempest inside of me.'
-Chihaya and Kagetsuya; 'Two' (volume 2)

"What's happiness?"
"It's something that you can't get through money . . . It's passion."
-Miyuki/Chihaya and Masataka-sensei; 'Eternal Romance Part 3' (volume 2)

"You and I are similar in some ways, ya know? We both have things that we just can't make up our minds about . . . Even though you know the answer yourself...sometimes you need to hear it from someone else, you know? If you're feeling lost...I hope I can give you the answer you need."
-Taki, to Chihaya; 'Eternal Romance Part 3' (volume 2)

"I thought the least I could do was try to smile...but it always turns out looking funny."
-Narration; 'Flowers to You' (volume 2)

"Don't you find it humiliating to say the words 'please hand him over to me'?"
"Yes, I think it's humiliating. But I'd rather feel that now than do nothing and regret it later. That would be much more painful than a little embarrassment."
-Raphael and Chihaya; 'Flowers to You' (volume 2)

"No, I wasn't avoiding you." 'I just didn't like myself. When Kagetsuya is with me...a silence falls in my heart, like a night on the planet after a storm has passed. What should I do now? I hated myself for being so coarse. I hated myself for getting depressed. And I hated how ashamed I was for enjoying it when everyone was nice to me. What on Earth is there about me that I can like?'
-Chihaya, to Kagetsuya and himself; 'Night on the Planet' (volume 2)

"Worthy to be my partner? I'm not so great that I deserve someone saying that to me."
-Kagetsuya, on Sayaka; 'Night on the Planet' (volume 2)

"Black angels, you shall be called Fallen, for you are demons who have fallen to Earth."
"Nay, we are the righteous ones."
-Narration; 'Coronation in Heaven' (volume 3)

"Please...just hold my hand. Unless...it just disgusts you..."
"What are you talking about? How could it disgust me?"
"I'm in season. Mating seaon."
"There's nothing wrong with that. You should have a baby."
"I can't. Because I love you."
"I know. I love you too."
"Don't mock me. I'm serious."
"I know that."
-Kagetsuya and Chihaya; 'Angel's Chain' (volume 3)

"If I were to reach out my hand now...you might become mine. I might become yours."
-Narration; 'Angel's Chain' (volume 3)

"One with the courage to show his tears. And one with the courage to hide them. So this is how it is."
-Raphael, on Kagetsuya and Chihaya; 'Crown of Thorns' (volume 3)

"What would you do if the Earth were going to be destroyed in a week? What would you do? If everyone were going to die, who would you want to die with?"
"I would choose to die alone."
-Narration; 'For the Earthian' (volume 3)

"I don't want to lose him. I'll follow him, to the ends of Hell...to the ends of Earth, or to the end of Eden. You are more important to me than anyone else--that's why I hurt you more than anyone."
-Narration; 'For the Earthian' (volume 3)

Go to Quotes [part II].