Lawrence M. Schoen
17 quotes
Biography
"I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do."
"I mean, sure, like all prophecy the wording is vague."
"She hated politics and she had no patience for the ultra-serious, wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to change your world whether you wanted to live with those changes or not."
"There’s a part of you that insists reality follow the same parameters it always has, even here. That attachment to the way things work in the living world precludes this kind of manipulation. I, on the other hand, had the privilege of spending a good portion of time, when I was alive, in the paroxysms of my own insanity. Rather liberating, in its own way."
"As a historian, he understood that what in hindsight were taken to be grand events really consisted of a myriad of tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices. Often as not, great moments hung on coincidences and random luck."
"I’m not accusing you of anything, but we both have studied too much history to ignore coincidence."
"It seems to me, that the most unlikely events almost have to happen, or life would just be dull and no one would write anything down."
"In all the rest of my life’s wanderings, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics."
"Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!"
"Ah, self-interest at last. Despite all of our differences, of race and time and distance, we achieve commonality. I understand self-interest."
"Was all of the universe a fixed game, if one only knew where and how to look?"
"We’ve met, and it wasn’t the highlight of my being dead."
"It all seemed like madness, but was madness anything other than desperation blended with hope?"
"The Archetype of Man had not leaped to any false conclusions, had not mistaken Jorl for a deity. Rather, it withheld judgment until it had compiled sufficient explanation."
"There will be paperwork, no government action can occur without it, but that can come later."
"I gave destiny a push to make it happen. You study history, so stop your pathetic whining. You know better than most that destiny happens to us, it is never something we call forth."
"Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift."