Matthew Woodring Stover Quotes & Sayings

I told you before," he muttered solidly. "You can kill me, but you can't make me obey. — Matthew Woodring Stover

And so, here at the end of days, you are as you've always been. Willing to die. Not willing to quit — Matthew Woodring Stover

many truths we regard as immutable are, in fact, surprisingly context dependent. — Matthew Woodring Stover

The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I believe in justice, as long as I'm holding a knife at the throat of the judge. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I knew an Ethersworn monk once, who made it a practice to believe six impossible things before breakfast; if he could manage only five, he stayed in bed. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Scars are the key to power. Scars are the map of beauty ... Each of us is the sum of our scars. — Matthew Woodring Stover

His agony somehow became an invisible hand, stretching out through the Force, a hand that found her, far away, alone in her apartment in the dark, a hand that felt the silken softness of her skin and the sleek coils of her hair, a hand that dissolved into a field of pure energy, of pure feeling that reached inside her
And now he felt her, really felt her in the Force, as though she could have been some kind of Jedi, too, but more than that: he felt a bond, a connection, deeper and more intimate than he'd ever had before with anyone, even Obi-Wan; for a precious eternal instant he was her ... he was the beat of her heart and he was the motion of her lips and he was her soft words as though she spoke a prayer to the stars - — Matthew Woodring Stover

A girl likes to be asked, dumbass. — Matthew Woodring Stover

It is a truism that when one is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The glory of art is that it can show this proverbial hammer how everything looks to a screwdriver--and to a plowshare, and to an earthenware pot. If reality is the sum of our perceptions, to acquire more varying points of view is to acquire, literally, more reality. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Life is more a matter of choosing than knowing. He could never know the eventual destination of his path, but he could always choose in which direction to take each step. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Shit, kid, thinking about that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, like I just ate a kitten. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Hobbie: "Have I told you today how much I really, really hate you?"
Janson: "Oh, sure, your lips say 'I hate you' but your eyes say - "
Hobbie: "That someday I'll murder you in your sleep? — Matthew Woodring Stover

... what your life means depends on how you tell the story. — Matthew Woodring Stover

If I have to make moves in her, we'll all get bloody. You, go wake up Raithe. Tell him Hari's waiting to see him. He'll come with you."
"Hari?" He frowned like he wasn't sure if he was being kidded. "Of what abbey? In what land?"
"Hari of Do as You're Told in the land of And Shut the Fuck Up. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I know some gods. Better than I want to. Not one of them gives a shit about your heart — Matthew Woodring Stover

The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said, "is that nothing is ever truly over. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Every time a horse let you up onto its back, it's giving you its life. Every time. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Jacen Solo, your sojourn in the lands of the dead is at an end. It is time once again to walk the bright fields of day. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I have known you since the world was born. Everything you are is what you should be. Everything you should be is what you are. I know all of you, and there is nothing in you I do not love. — Matthew Woodring Stover

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end you don't even want to. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself - And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I don't have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down.
-Ganner Rhysode — Matthew Woodring Stover

Everything I tell you is a lie."

-Vergere — Matthew Woodring Stover

Can't trust a fascist
truth is always your first sacrifice to the welfare of the state — Matthew Woodring Stover

Once you sand the corners off consequences, people start to get really fucking weird. — Matthew Woodring Stover

If you have to justify an action, you probably shouldn't have done it in the first place. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I am also, well ... I'm in awe. He's killed people, and saved people. He's fought monsters, and he's fought men who became monsters. He's saved kingdoms and toppled empires. Now he has set himself against the gods to save a universe ... and I used to change his diapers. I used to yell at him to make his bed. — Matthew Woodring Stover

The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins.
It always wins because it is everywhere.
It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask is a trick. You will find no truth in me. Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith on this. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars. — Matthew Woodring Stover

No lesson is truly learned until it has been purchased with pain — Matthew Woodring Stover

Everything's forever until it isn't. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Each of us is the sum of our scars. — Matthew Woodring Stover

And Anakin is on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That's what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.
He looks the dragon in the eye and doesn't even slow down. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Obi-Wan Kenobi opened his eyes to find himself staring at what he strongly suspected was Anakin's butt.

It looked like Anakin's butt - well, his pants, anyway - though it was thoroughly impossible for Obi-Wan to be certain, since he had never before had occasion to examine Anakin's butt upside down, which it currently appeared to be, nor from this rather uncomfortably close range. — Matthew Woodring Stover

The author respectfully dedicates this book to everyone who is almost as smart as they think they are. — Matthew Woodring Stover

When I write a book, I put everything I have into it; so the more I have, the more the books become. Some people get freaked out by them: mostly the people who believe, mistakenly, that fantasy is about escaping reality. To them I say: If you have a problem with reality, you should be spending more time dealing with your life, and less time reading popcorn fantasy. — Matthew Woodring Stover

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith--
Because now your self is all you will ever have. — Matthew Woodring Stover

When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep. When you fight, fight. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization. — Matthew Woodring Stover

When all choices seem wrong, choose restraint. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Okay, maybe I don't have to solve every problem with my fists ... but every once in awhile, a situation arises that is substantially improved by the judicious application of force. — Matthew Woodring Stover

In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Being old enough to know better but still too young to resist mostly sucks. — Matthew Woodring Stover

There's only really two things about a man that matter: what he wants, and what he'll do to get it. Everythin' else we pretend is important
whether you're tough, or good-lookin', smart, stupid, honorable, whatever
that's just details. — Matthew Woodring Stover

With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A lie is like a pet- you have to take care of it, or it'll turn on you and bite you in the ass. — Matthew Woodring Stover

This threshhold is mine ... Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass.
-Ganner Rhysode — Matthew Woodring Stover

It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood. — Matthew Woodring Stover

We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask
and to answer
the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer — Matthew Woodring Stover

Only human, after all. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Reasons are for peasants. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers.
One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time.
One is mortal.
They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless.
They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers.
They each die fighting the blind god. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A pair of starfighters. Jedi starfighters. Only two.
Two is enough.
Two is enough because the adults are wrong, and their younglings are right.
Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I read once, somewhere, that the way you know you've grown up is when your future death becomes a stone in your shoe: when you feel it with every step. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A religion that teaches you God is something outside the world
something separate from everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear
is nothing but a cheap hustle. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Be not afraid, child. Be what you are. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I won, goddammit. I beat Kollberg. I beat you. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. Shit, I even got the girl."
"The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said,"is that nothing is ever truly over."
"Fuck that," Hari said."I am living happily ever goddamn after. I am. — Matthew Woodring Stover

The dark is generous. Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truths of others. The dark protects us from what we dare not know. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Oh, sure. What's this supposed to teach me?"
"Is it what the teacher teaches? Or what the students learns?"
"What's the difference?"
"That is, itself, a question worth considering, yes?"
-Jacen & Vergere — Matthew Woodring Stover

When your authority comes straight from God, shit always turns ugly. — Matthew Woodring Stover

It is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest — Matthew Woodring Stover

...you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the will of the Force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean; it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth - if any truth is ever simple - is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can never know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery. — Matthew Woodring Stover

It's desperate in life to be beloved of God."
"Depends on the God."
"Does it?"
"Christ, I hope so."
the horse-witch and Caine — Matthew Woodring Stover

I fear Michaelson not at all. Michaelson is a fiction, you fools. The truth of him is Caine. You do not comprehend the distinction; and so he will destroy you. — Matthew Woodring Stover

This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most impeccable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known ...
just-
didn't-
have it. — Matthew Woodring Stover

When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free.
-Vergere — Matthew Woodring Stover

Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be — Matthew Woodring Stover

Don't care about gods. Gods are irrelevant. What counts is people. What counts is having respect for each other. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Now Obi Wan did face him.
'Palpatine faced Mace and Agen and Kit and Saesee-four of the greatest swordsmen our order has ever produced. By Himself. Even both of us together wouldn't have a chance.'
'True,' Yoda said, 'But both of us apart, a chance we might create ... — Matthew Woodring Stover

All true stories end in death. — Matthew Woodring Stover

You've been off fighting the war in the Outer Rim. You don't know what it's been like, dealing with all the petty squabbles and special interests and greedy, grasping fools in the Senate, and Palpatine's constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power - he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at this planet, Obi-Wan! We have given up so much freedom - how secure do we look? — Matthew Woodring Stover

If you take out the team in teamwork, it's just work. Now who wants that? — Matthew Woodring Stover

You assume that I don't know and I do care. The truth is the other way around. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Do you think I'd start a war without knowing how to end it?"
"You've done it at least three times that I know of!"
"Ah sure, bring up the truth."
Caine and T'Passe — Matthew Woodring Stover

Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Not his penetrating intellect, or his talents with the Force, or his unmatched skills with a lightsaber.
-Matthew Stover on Mace Windu — Matthew Woodring Stover

Anakin." Obi-Wan's voice had gone soft, and his hand was warm on Anakin's arm. "There is no other Jedi I would rather have at my side right now. No other man."
Anakin turned, and found within Obi-Wan's eyes a depth of feeling he had only rarely glimpsed in all their years together; and the pure uncomplicated love that rose up within him then felt like a promise from the Force itself.
"I ... I wouldn't have it any other way, Master."
"I believe," his onetime Master said with a gently humorous look of astonishment at the words coming out of his mouth, "that you should get used to calling me Obi-Wan. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Have you had contact with any other survivors?"
"Only one," the Alderaanian senator said grimly. "Lock onto my coordinates. He's waiting for you. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
-Vergere — Matthew Woodring Stover

There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer; that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches.
There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see.
And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade.
They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone.
And I name this saying wisdom. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form - or the master of the classic form?"
"I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master but really - "
"Not a master. The master. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Should's nothing like is. — Matthew Woodring Stover

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Which would leave Mace and Agen Kolar- -both among the greatest bladesbeings the Jedi Order has ever produced — Matthew Woodring Stover

It may be there's such a thing as a tool than can't be used as a weapon, but I've never met one. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Corellian curses being a synergistic blend of vulgarity, obscenity, and outright blasphemy that were the only things really worth saying when one was in the middle of being blown to monatomic dust. — Matthew Woodring Stover

If i listen hard enough, i can hear that voice: that small quiet whisper in the back of my head that keeps on insisting "My will, or i won't". — Matthew Woodring Stover

The king of the gods took away this man's family, everyone that he loved - and still this particular man did not surrender. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Jacen reflected bitterly that a large part of growing up seemed to involve watching everything change, and discovering that all changes are permanent. That nothing ever changes back.
That you can't go home again. — Matthew Woodring Stover

The capacity for personal freedom is a rare talent. Talent exists to be used. We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them
but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey. — Matthew Woodring Stover

169. We whip them. Starve them. Chain them. Break their spirits. Break their minds. Still they love us. Still they offer up their lives without hesitation. Because when a horse loves you, it's fucking absolute. And all they ask is that you love them back. Most of them never get even that. — Matthew Woodring Stover

So this is how liberty dies," she was saying to herself. "With cheering, and applause. — Matthew Woodring Stover

How can he love being ... that? Being what Caine is?"
"Because he's an asshole," she says. "You must have noticed. — Matthew Woodring Stover

It's one thing to be a good guy because that's who you are. It's something else to be a good guy because you're too much a fucking pussy to break the rules. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I am not the same man you found that day! The monster you've created has returned, to kill you! — Matthew Woodring Stover

Before one can learn truth, one must unlearn lies. — Matthew Woodring Stover