Famous Quotes & Sayings

Connie Willis Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Connie Willis.

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Famous Quotes By Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 492302

I was flying out to Connecticut for the express purpose of breaking up with my boyfriend and I bought this set of three paperbacks to read on the plane and by the time I got to New Haven I was so worried about Frodo and Sam that I said to my boyfriend, "It's awful. They're trying to sneak into Mordor and the Ringwraiths are after them and I don't trust Gollum and ... " and I completely forgot to break up with him. And, as of yesterday, we've been married thirty-nine years. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 703507

Good. Drink your tea," he ordered. "It will make you feel better."
Nothing will make me feel better, she thought, but she drank it down. It was hot and sweet. Mr. Humphreys must have put his entire month's sugar ration into it.
She drained the cup, feeling ashamed of herself. She wasn't the only one who'd had a bad night. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 229418

Don't come all the way across town. There's a Metro station right outside of Arlington. I'll meet you there, all right? — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1386913

It's that undefined something we're really afraid of-the flicker of movement we don't quite catch out of the corner of our eye, the bad dream we can't quite remember when we wake up, the sound of a door opening downstairs we thought we heard. And worst of all, the things we're not sure even happened, the things that we might just have imagined, that might mean we're going mad, all those nameless, nebulous things we can't quite put our finger on and can only guess at. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1016782

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1266769

I think literature totally fails when it has an agenda. - From an interview on the podcast Starship Sofa, December 2010. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1455853

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 445654

maybe I should join It's Only Brunch. It's like JustDinner, but with mimosas. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1513785

That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1814481

Wrong, and wrong agains,' he said. 'The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we seek to make sense of our surroundings, our experiences, ourselves, seeing similarities, parallels, connections. We cannot help it. Even as the mind fails, it goes on trying to make sense of what is happening to it. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 800090

I have great faith in the future of books - no matter what form they may take - and of science fiction. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2210335

History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1901711

Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 86505

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one? — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1602078

Then why does every sentence beginning 'We need to talk' end in disaster? Our whole evolutionary history has been about trying to stop information from getting communicated - camouflage, protective coloration, that ink that squids squirt, encrypted passwords, corporate secrets, lying. Especially lying. If people really wanted to communicate, they'd tell the truth, but they don't. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1747634

The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her surprise, they all thought in chorus." - LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking-Glass — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1768099

She reached the group. Eileen had been crying. She wiped clumsily at her cheeks as Polly joined them, and then smiled at her. "Are you ready?" Eileen asked.
No, Polly thought. "Yes."
"Are you certain?" Colin said. "I know how hard this must be for you. We haven't a lot of time, but we've enough for you to say goodbye, if there's anyone else you need to
"
I love you, Polly thought. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 847778

There are some things worth giving up anything for, even your freedom, and getting rid of your period is definitely one of them. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 454412

TO ALL THE
ambulance drivers
firewatchers
air-raid wardens
nurses
canteen workers
airplane spotters
rescue workers
mathematicians
vicars
vergers
shopgirls
chorus girls
librarians
debutantes
spinsters
fishermen
retired sailors
servants
evacuees
Shakespearean actors
and mystery novelists
WHO WON THE WAR. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1833463

It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 140913

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 349852

Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 112319

Barbie's one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1316545

If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1102885

At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians' and Emily Dickinson's dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn't meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.14 Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright's Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.15 None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1136723

Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy's hand and clasped it tightly in her own. "I knew you'd come," she said, and the net opened. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1851251

But if she'd come then, she would never have properly appreciated it. She'd have seen the happy crowds and the Union Jacks and the bonfires, but she'd have no idea of what it meant to see the lights on after years of navigating in the dark, what it meant to look up at an approaching plane without fear, to hear church bells after years of air-raid sirens. She'd have had no idea of the years of rationing and shabby clothes and fear which lay behind the smiles and the cheering, no idea of what it had cost to bring this day to pass
the lives of all those soldiers and sailors and airmen and civilians. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1657008

She was afraid she'd have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her, — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1666217

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself? — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1808429

Nothing in all those "O swan" poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1806068

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 275929

Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 279186

They were a susitute. They were what you did when you couldn't have what you wanted. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1739985

That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1687896

Moom' and 'tomb' actually rhyme, which is something Dickinson hardly ever did, preferring near-rhymes such as 'mat/gate', 'tune/sun,' and 'balm/hermaphrodite. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1677633

io sui ici en liu dami amo' ('I am here in place of a friend love') — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 318508

1. Optimize potential.
2. Facilitate empowerment.
3. Implement visioning.
4. Strategize priorities.
5. Augment core structures. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1628791

Sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to inflict my rantings on you, even though we are destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I don't suppose you fave any thought to where we should be married while I was in with that lot of fools, did you?"
"Yes," she said. "I decided we shouldn't, that wartime attachments are a bad idea. Particularly if you're going to be lassoing flying bombs. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1613596

The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1612607

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 294682

None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1538126

When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1532097

She watched him a while longer and then shut her eyes again. And even though she knew her hand was tucked beneath her cheek and he was on the far side of the room, the instant she closed her eyes he was there beside her again, his hands crossed on his chest and her hand held tightly under them, pressed safely against his heart. Who — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1527943

No," I said finally.
"Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?"
"1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 323362

And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1988516

This gave me an early taste for humorous authors, of which there were - and are - far too few (though there are lots who labor under the misapprehension that they're funny.) — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 121412

Come here, cat. You wouldn't want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2208624

Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it's my duty after work to encourage the trends I'd like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake. And reading. Also, — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2190786

There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I'd like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O'Reilly's macaques, which have to have more sense. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2171426

I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2147407

Seriousness of mind was a prerequisite for understanding Newtonian physics. I am not convinced it is not a handicap in understanding quantum theory. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2143284

They make you settle for second best."
That's what I like about the movies. There's always some minor character standing round to tell you the moral, just in case you're too dumb to figure it out for yourself.
"You never get what you want. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2072968

I remember an aunt saying sagely, "The good die young." Not exactly a motivation to behave yourself. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 2037181

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums? — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1812552

Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie.
"You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him.
"Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1970828

Kneeling on St. Mary's stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat's face and worn-out hose.

She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I'm glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1957455

It's strange. When I couldn't find the drop and the plague came, you seemed so far away I would not ever be able to find you again. But I know now that you were here all along, and that nothing, not the Black Death nor seven hundred years, nor death nor things to come nor any other creature could ever separate me from your caring and concern. It was with me every minute. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1952503

Io suuicien lui damo amo," she said softly. "You are here in place of the friends I love. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1936201

I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 142506

There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1900994

But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy, lie further off." - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night's Dream The — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 199079

face Lady Schrapnell. And I promised I'd help — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 244264

Tomorrow at the press conference would be dreadful. She would be surrounded by nice young men who spoke Big Business or Computer or Bachelor on the Make, and she would not understand a word they said."
"Short Story: Blued Moon — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 780995

Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it's small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes - disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it'd be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I'd like to turn that one off for good. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 982828

It is not an easy thing to put on a wet sock. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 975608

Translated 'Non omnia possumus omnus' as 'No possums allowed on the omnibus. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 968518

The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 933729

I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 898668

It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 854480

Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there?" Mel shook his head. "By the wolves," he said. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 516096

Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 845485

Insecure, ill-dressed chaos theorist desires intelligent, insightful, incandescent trends researcher. Must be SC. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 545098

What's Management up to?" I whispered to Bennett.
"My guess is a new acronym," he whispered. "Departmental Unification Management Business." He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. "D.U.M.B. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 476768

Do it on the radio." - Educating Rita Saved — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 741203

Will I ever see you again? No. Do I love you? Yes, for all time. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 727335

It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 579960

After all, Americans can be terrifying. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 701179

Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything - a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment - can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand's chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram "urgent" and Admiral Kimmel isn't warned of the impending Japanese attack. "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 700217

her. I never felt properly sorry for schizophrenics, she thought, unable to escape the voices in their heads and fighting for their sanity with a maelstrom of noise all around them, making it impossible to think. No — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 646186

He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door
to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?
would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn't possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too
in a place he didn't belong, serving in a war in which he hadn't enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance? — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 631508

I wanted to come, and if I hadn't, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 621071

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1328518

I picked out F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and a couple of mysteries, which always have simple, solvable problems like "How did the murderer get into the locked room?" instead of hard ones like "What causes trends?" and "What did I do to deserve Flip?" and then went over to the eight hundreds. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1470989

There are a hundred ways a man can bleed to death. And he can be pulled from the rubble of bitterness, of despair, as well as the wreckage of the Phoenix. And which rescue is the more real? Nothing you could have done for me ... was more important than the restoration of my hope. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 581981

Finch picked up one of the ancient fax-mags and brought it over to me.
"I don't need anything to read," I said. "I'll just sit here and eavesdrop along with you."
"I thought you might sit on the mag," he said. "It's extremely difficult to get soot out of chintz. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1448777

It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick's Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 379030

It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1382204

People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1369909

That's the problem with models - they only include the details people think are relevant, — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1368909

Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1331982

Books are an amazing thing. Anyone who thinks of them as an escape from reality or as something you should get your nose out of and go outside and play, or as merely a distraction or an amusement or a waste of time is - dead wrong.
Books are the most important
the most powerful
the most beautiful thing
humans have ever created. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1498925

Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 383139

I am a Colorado native, and, no, I did not vote for the anti-gay amendment or the same-sex marriage ban, and I am not a member of a militia. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1240262

Time is the fire in which we burn. - Delmore Schwartz — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1192087

You shouldn't be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that's what science is all about. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1174910

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1167011

Which one's in the main theater?"

"I don't know. I just work here part-time to pay for my organic breathing lessons."

"Do you have any dice?" I asked, and then realized I was going about this all wrong. This was quantum theory not Newtonian. It didn't matter which theater I chose or which seat I sat down in. This was a delayed-choice experiment and David was already in flight. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1165045

One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober. — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1159074

I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie). — Connie Willis

Connie Willis Quotes 1154004

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change. — Connie Willis