Jan Siegel Quotes & Sayings

There was a long pause. "you know," he went on, "I sometimes think mankind is dangerously arrogant. We do a few sums, and then claim we have the universe off pat. we measure the spaces between the stars, and declare them empty. We set a limit on infinity. We are like the occupants of a closed room; having worked out everything within the range of our knowledge, we announce that the room and its contents are all that exists. Nothing beyond. Nothing unseen or unknown, incalculable or neffable. This is it. And then every so often God lifts the veil - twitches the curtain - and gives us a glimpse, just a glimpse, of something more. As if He wishes to show us how narrow is our vision, how meaningless the boundaries we have set for ourselves. I felt that when Fern was talking. Just for a minute I though: This is truth, there's a world beyond all the jargon of unbelief. — Jan Siegel

Of course, it is only a legend. Still, most legends germinate from a seed of truth and feed on the imagination of Man. We need our demons: they are symbols, overblown maybe, often exaggerated, but effective. They offer simple confrontations between Good and Evil. War, famine, and pestilence are much less straightforward. — Jan Siegel

They slept little that night, making their newfound love like people for whom the world is running out. Fern did not think of her Task, not because she had abandoned it, but because she felt it would present itself for her attention when the moment was right, and until then she had an intermission, a suspension of hostilities, given by whatever gods there were. They lay in the cave while outside the tide rose and fell, and she thought that in this life and maybe in all lives she would remember that love sounded like the sea, and the beat of her heart was waves on a beach, and she would hear its echo in the nucleus of every shell. — Jan Siegel

I knew you would come," he said, "in the end. I have been waiting a long, long time."
Time seemed to change as he spoke its name, bending out of shape, out of rhythm, curving round to encapsulate them in their own miniature cosmos. The past was coiled around the future: the present was an isolated moment, belonging nowhere, trapped at random in a maze of inverse reflections. — Jan Siegel

I think people should take mythology much more seriously, because it tells us an awful lot about the history of the human race. We tend to dismiss it as 'fairy tales,' when it isn't. Fairy tales in themselves are about fundamentals of human nature. And they keep being reinvented in different ways. Fantasy acknowledges that, whereas a lot of modern literature is trying to distance itself from 'story,' never mind anything else. Which is why a lot of books are read by the critics, then people buy them, put them on their shelves, and don't really read them much, because they're not very interesting! — Jan Siegel

I am only mortal, desperate, urgent. Spirits have endless ages in which to do nothing, if they so choose, but humans have death to hurry them on. Near or far, the end is always in sight. We have no time to stand and stare. Make your choice, Fernanda. — Jan Siegel

I have often dreamed of strangling my Creator. — Jan Siegel

They walked along in silence, that silence just before parting where everything has been left unsaid and it is too late now to say it. Fern felt as if her stomach was full of words, words burning to be spoken, but her lips refused to unclose and the words remained inside her, seething, like a bad case of indigestion. — Jan Siegel

All things resist destruction, according to their capacity. Rocks, pebbles, diamonds. Unity is instinctive to being. — Jan Siegel

You'd have to trust in Hope," said Fern. "Is that it?"
No," Ragginbone replied shortly. "Hope needs something tangible to sustain it. You would have to rely on Faith. Only Faith can endure in the teeth of the evidence. — Jan Siegel

When ambition outstrips ability, that is always a recipe for disaster. — Jan Siegel

Once people needed heaven and hell, Elysium and Faerie. They believed. Belief is the great creative force, the faith that moves mountains. If Someone had not believed in us, so they say, we would never have been born. I have spent my darkest hours wondering what kind of a Creator would have believed in me. Kal — Jan Siegel

And she knew she was not sure, she would never be sure, because uncertainty is the essence of the human condition, and death is the one barrier beyond which we cannot see. There is no hope but faith, no knowledge but the acceptance of ignorance.
Yet still she hoped that one day she would know. — Jan Siegel

Worst of all, she realized, Zohrane was without fear, and fear is the braking system of intelligence. — Jan Siegel

Advice is a dangerous thing," the Watcher responded. "It should be given only rarely and cautiously, and taken in small doses with skepticism. — Jan Siegel

You should never trust anyone completely," said Ragginbone, smiling a half-smile which snaked up one side of his face. "Unpredictability is a vital aspect of intelligence. — Jan Siegel

Time is there for a purpose, to keep things in order. Once you change chronology you change history. The past could eat up the present ... — Jan Siegel

And magic exists to break the rules. — Jan Siegel

I am not tormented, Fern responded. I am ... diminished. I have always believed that your soul grows when you do something that is good and brave, a right thing, a true thing, and when you do evil- no matter what the motive- your soul is eroded. Well, my soul is less. — Jan Siegel

Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are. — Jan Siegel

I am his lover. They had made no promises, no vows; this was an interlude which might end with the next sunset or ebb with the changing tide. Yet she knew, with a certainty that belongs only to the young, that this was for always. Whether she had a year, or a week, or just a few hours, she would make it last forever. — Jan Siegel

The capacity for affection is the best part of humankind. — Jan Siegel

As the chant grew in volume she began to be conscious of the terrible potency of language, the sense that a name spoken is a summons and more than a summons, an act of creation, for a word shapes an idea, an idea shapes belief, and belief shapes the world. — Jan Siegel