Janet Morris famous quotes

Always take responsibility for your past. It is your only collateral in life. Unless you despise yourself now, you cannot despise yourself then. Everything you did is a part of the process that brought you here. All your past is as alive and real as your so-called 'present.'
-- Janet Morris

#Real #Responsibility #Past

The universe forgives those who give until their hearts are aching and their spirits weak, and finds a way to renew all strength and cure all ills, in this world or the next, if a soul can just have faith.
-- Janet Morris

#Loyalty #Heart #Giving

Generosity is never out of season.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Generosity

It was his soul's freedom that was in question. And that question was whether freedom was worth the price when it meant shirking the responsibilities of honor.
-- Janet Morris

#Freedom #Responsibility #Soul

So well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him I fought beside you.
-- Janet Morris

#Love #Father #Singing

Listen close and you can hear, Please, bless us and forgive us, and make us good here and strong here. Let us get along here. Let those we love and left behind be blessed. Let us find the proper path and keep to it. Help us act harmoniously, and find work pleasing in the sight of god and man.
-- Janet Morris

#Love #Strong #Blessed

There must be love, and understanding, to betray. Most men haven't the wit or the honor for betrayal: not to know it when they see it; not the stomach to apprehend it as they do it. Most men, blind and dumb in their self-centeredness, don't betray: they merely disappoint.
-- Janet Morris

#Betrayal #Men #Self

There must be a corps that will battle for righteousness, for there are endless battalions who serve unrighteousness.
-- Janet Morris

#Responsibility #Battle #Unrighteousness

Tempus never left a problem for another to solve. Tempus never let the pain or difficulty of an undertaking persuade him not to pursue a resolution his heart thought was right. Tempus never gave up.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Pain #Heart

I see ranks ready for battle, stretching out. Five, six horses across, ranks in formation. Endlessly.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Horse #Battle

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price. And that price is blood. The sound of it in your veins. The pound of it in your head. The volume of it in a human body; the sickness when you've spilled it.
-- Janet Morris

#Death #Blood #Long

Use him wisely. Few have been given such a weapon by the gods or Fates before.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Fate #Use

Reasons never matter, once Death comes cold and bold and takes the living by the hand. You count up your dead, every one..
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Hands #Matter

Die never for a god, Nikodemos who should know better - not your soldiers' god, nor any other.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Soldier #Should

Something awful is always going to happen, Arton. It's Sanctuary. You're a Stepson. Awful is a big part of your job.
-- Janet Morris

#Jobs #Commitment #Sanctuary

Don't forget, Riddler, how I love thee. Or all we shared together. Or that this sea and all other seas can lead you back to me.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Sea #Together

Fury from the heavens; fury at the gods - inseparable.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Heaven #Inseparable

Live to fight on other days.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting

Proof of war, when it comes, always comes too late.
-- Janet Morris

#War #Commitment #Too Late

In this new world, this day and forever, then, we are not only Thebans - we are all Stepsons. We are all one Sacred Band. If you will have us. And mine will fight by yours, henceforth, as brothers.
-- Janet Morris

#Brother #Fighting #Forever

I think we're all in Cime's army now. But never mind, the Storm God hasn't forgotten us. Heaven is no farther away than it ever was.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Army #Thinking

War's balance will prevail.
-- Janet Morris

#War #Destiny #Balance

Grab reality by the balls and squeeze.
-- Janet Morris

#Power #Reality #Balls

Nothing powers hate better than embarrassment.
-- Janet Morris

#Hate #Power #Embarrassment

You count up your dead, every one. Always. Recall them, each and all - every face, every heart.
-- Janet Morris

#Heart #Commitment #Faces

Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting #Destiny #Ethos

If cities have souls, Sanctuary's was troubled long before Tempus got here, and will be troubled long after he and his are gone.
-- Janet Morris

#Destiny #Cities #Long

Stop grieving. Start giving thanks to me. You live to fight on other days.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting #Destiny #Grieving

A wise one determines his own fate.
-- Janet Morris

#Wise #Fate #Destiny

Every man heals himself.
-- Janet Morris

#Destiny #Men #Heal

Order is its own reward.
-- Janet Morris

#Order #Discipline #Rewards

Nature has a surer plan than mortals can devise.
-- Janet Morris

#Destiny #Plans

Keep your enemies at a distance, your partners close at hand.
-- Janet Morris

#Distance #Hands #Discipline

I survive. I survived it all then and I'll survive the rest of it. Without your help.
-- Janet Morris

#Discipline #Helping

Bandara was not an easy place to return to: it could hide from the common worlds whose periphery it inhabited. But Bandara never had, in all its years, completely disappeared.
-- Janet Morris

#Years #Discipline #Return

Be polite to all, friendly to none. Be professional. Be ready to kill everyone and everything.
-- Janet Morris

#Discipline #Friendly #Polite

When the balance is restored, people get hurt.
-- Janet Morris

#Hurt #Commitment #People

Men are fools who forget what really matters while time goes by.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Matter #Fool

Shed your mortal skin and let me take you beneath the waves.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Skins #Wave

There are stranger things here than Thebans know about....
-- Janet Morris

#Destiny #Stranger

And what do the Theban hoplites see in this extended rending of the sky, this white-bright glory of Enlil's lightning? The future, but not theirs: paired cavalry fighters; formed ranks of armored death; grim men on their tall horses with lightning limning weapons tailored to the task; men spoiling for a fight if the gods allowed - the Sacred Band of Stepsons, out from shadows and the dark.
-- Janet Morris

#Horse #Commitment #Dark

It's all right. Things as they once were will never be again, but it's all right.
-- Janet Morris

#Commitment #Right Thing

Humans create their futures every day of every year; only you can alter your worlds.
-- Janet Morris

#Destiny #Years #World

Look around you. It's an honor to fight beside you. Today we choose to fight. For the freedom to fight on other days. So we remember what's worth fighting for.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting #Honor #Looks

It is hard to battle anger, for whatever it wants it pays from the soul.
-- Janet Morris

#Soul #Risk #Battle

I'm reverent from a distance.
-- Janet Morris

#Distance #Belief

It is upon each soul to recognize its limit.
-- Janet Morris

#Soul #Limits #Belief

This fight coming is not a battle of weapons, but a battle of wills.
-- Janet Morris

#Loyalty #Fighting #Battle

Gather the shards of your courage. Patch together what resolve you can. We'll find this thing - and kill it.
-- Janet Morris

#Loyalty #Together #Patches

You must become like yourself.
-- Janet Morris

#Loyalty #Like You #Like Yourself

And personally, I've lost my thirst for vengeance.
-- Janet Morris

#Modesty #Vengeance #Lost

I am always yours to call, wherever the sea can reach.
-- Janet Morris

#Love #Sea

When I write what publishers call 'fantasy' I am writing in what I think is the most important tradition of fiction: starting with Homer and up through Shakespeare and Milton, the most important themes to tackle are those of the mythopoeic domain, tales of the body and mind seen through a temperament and a cosmos divorced from current reality so what is said can be more clear.
-- Janet Morris

#Writing #Reality #Thinking

Everyone prepares for battle in his own way.
-- Janet Morris

#Battle #Way #Conflict

One man can make another's life so much better.
-- Janet Morris

#Military #Men #Professionalism

The city guardsmen were like the keres, doom-bringers of merciless vengeance.
-- Janet Morris

#Cities #Vengeance #Doom

Nothing walks the earth more savage than a mare enraged.
-- Janet Morris

#Animal #Savages #Earth

I see all sorts of things when I'm clearing my pipes.
-- Janet Morris

#Psychics #Pipe #Clearing

These Stepsons tread where mortals don't belong, some of us think. They seek out battle high above their station. Who knows what powers may yet take them and their mystic allies to task, bring them their comeuppance?
-- Janet Morris

#Thinking #Battle #Allies

Your stuff does not own the home; either control your belongings, or they will control you.
-- Janet Morris

#Home #Doe #Stuff

If, as you teach, the universe has no beginning and no end, why should we?
-- Janet Morris

#Ontology #Ends #Should

But we're dying here.
-- Janet Morris

#Risk #Dying

The Riddler says you make the world better one battle at a time.
-- Janet Morris

#Risk #Battle #World

Now the Fates are here on the beach, three shadows blacker than black, walking through the dunes and looking for their own. Just shadows, lamb-white hands beneath black robes spun of tears, glide among the celebrants on this night wherein the spirits of Thebes have found a home, if serendipitously.
-- Janet Morris

#Beach #Home #Fate

Men live, and then they die. It is the quality of the process of living which matters, that and that alone.
-- Janet Morris

#Men #Quality #Meaning Of Life

For Harmony. A chance at life. To fight on other days.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting #Survival #Chance

Survival has its own etiquette.
-- Janet Morris

#Survival #Etiquette

The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
-- Janet Morris

#Fighting #Survival #Unfair

All gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any.
-- Janet Morris

#War #Tricksters #Worst

War is all and king of all
-- Janet Morris

#Kings #War

Only from chaos does order come. The angry Fates bring death where they will, when war is king, says Enlil, storm god of the armies, and the tip of his crown rends the clouds above their heads. "Wheresoever I rule, death comes shambling after. So it has always been, is, and will be."
-- Janet Morris

#Kings #War #Army

Ask yourselves if the gods are angry, you who have seen Harmony come among us, walk among us, touch us, look kindly upon us. We are the Sacred Band of Thebes. We fight in the forefront, therefore we bleed first. We live, therefore we die.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Fighting #Sacred

Gods have bloody hands.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Hands #Bloody

If, as Niko asks, you show them mercy, then the gods will be well pleased.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Mercy #Shows

Gods are nothing without their worshipers; they act on the affairs and the passions of men.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Passion #Men

The two stallions, the silver and the black, represent the equine god (whomsoever horses pray to) in this ritual so ancient that no one knows what god to thank.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Horse #Two

You three have done quite enough today: all of you and your feckless, treacherous god.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Three #Done

Gods and men honor those who have fought in battle.
-- Janet Morris

#God #Men #Honor

"Godling? Demigod?" Lysis nearly howled. "You'd be beaten black and blue in Thebes, and staked out overnight for claims like that. In Sparta, the secret police would ambush you, violate you, skin you alive and use your skull for a drinking cup."
-- Janet Morris

#God #Drinking #Skulls

Arrows are cheap; you're expensive.
-- Janet Morris

#Arrows #Risk

One to a customer was the rule: one body; one mind; one swing through life. - Tempus
-- Janet Morris

#Swings #Mind #Body

Humiliation sets armies marching, empires falling, breaks hearts and minds and souls.
-- Janet Morris

#Revenge #Fall #Heart

Here Stormbringer spies the Stepsons, the Theban fighters, and the 3rd Commando, attending to their own. In the face of such unflinching determination and unswerving devotion, the hurricane pauses and calms. Its ravings turn to mutters.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Spy #Faces

Time to unite the Sacred Bands, Thebans and his people: one unit, one heart, one swing through life.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Heart #Swings

Niko's angular face caught a flicker of firelight and Tempus saw his future there: sharp purpose, discipline, and power in perfect balance; love of man and gods, and mercy transcending all. If war ever wore a more humane face, this one would make it so.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #War #Men

What we hold sacred is honor, justice, and glory. You need not swear allegiance to our storm god, to serve with us. Fighters are among us from many lands, with many gods and many beliefs. Believe as you will. What is between a man and his god is theirs alone to say.
-- Janet Morris

#Believe #Men #Land

Go carefully, child of mat, where no mercy can be had, and let your faith lead you on.
-- Janet Morris

#Love #Children #Justice

Some nights, one wants to tell beloveds everything that's been waiting to be said. Some nights, a man needs flesh and blood and warm breath and a loving heart.
-- Janet Morris

#Loneliness #Heart #Men

‎Niko and his women will be the death of all the Stepsons yet.
-- Janet Morris

#Loneliness #Stepsons

Some nights, valor and cold purpose aren't enough.
-- Janet Morris

#Loneliness #Night #Purpose

Every man's in his own hands, with a little help from his brothers.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Brother #Men

Survival's the thing, isn't it?
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Survival

So some will be left who remember.
-- Janet Morris

#Determination #Remember

Such hubris could only come from a man's mouth.
-- Janet Morris

#Pride #Men #Mouths

Your honor blinds you, Tempus, to what's right and wrong these days.
-- Janet Morris

#Pride #Honor #These Days

For me, myth is the 'common' language of us all.
-- Janet Morris

#Communication #Common #Language

I thought we'd die there, quarrels in our backs, you for what you did and me for bearing witness.
-- Janet Morris

#Revenge #Bearing Witness #Quarrels

Revenge is fruitless.
-- Janet Morris

#Revenge

Everything that anyone respects is what men naturally excel at: fighting, accruing wealth, playing at power....
-- Janet Morris

#Ambition #Fighting #Men

Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative.
-- Janet Morris

#Book #Heart #Technology