Tad Quotes & Sayings

Obstreperous, 'huh," said Tad. "I see you've been using that Big Word of the Day calendar I got you last Christmas."

"That is irrefragable," I told him solemnly. — Patricia Briggs

When your teeth are gone, learn to like mush. — Tad Williams

It was an hour before dawn. When all the Whos down in Whoville were asnooze in their beds without care. Sorry, wrong book. If I get to stay awake until dawn, I get just a tad slaphappy. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Life is like eating artichokes; you have got to go through so much to get so little. — Tad Dorgan

Not fair? Oh, I'm sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you'll survive until your eighteenth birthday." Then the kid was going, "Uh, I didn't mean ... " But Tad wasn't done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, "Why don't you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat. — Jordan Sonnenblick

I mean, you could lie here day after day, if you wanted to, and think about nothing but waterbugs. Not chase waterbugs, mind you, just think about them. You could spend your whole day, every day, just wondering and pondering about waterbugs, and talking to others about waterbugs ... and before you realized it, you'd be old. One day you'd realize that you'd never actually seen a waterbug ... but by then you wouldn't want to, because it would spoil all your beautiful ideas. — Tad Williams

To fight a war, you must believe it can accomplish something. We fight this one to save John's kingdom, or perhaps even to save all of mankind ... but isn't that what we always think? That all wars are useless - except the one we're fighting now? — Tad Williams

I'm pretty much a cat that way. Scratch my stomach, and I'll purr at you, but I'll want to gut you with my claws even more than if you'd ignored me. — Tad Williams

I guess you don't want to leave copies of Genocide Illustrated out for the UPS guy to see.) — Tad Williams

I've always been partial to werewolves, perhaps because there's a desperation to their plight that resonates. — Tad Williams

About the Story

Not all the details in this story are true. The times some events occurred have been changed, and the conversations are made up. Most of the things Tad Lincoln did in this story reportedly happened, including saving Jack the turkey and bombarding the Cabinet Room door with his toy cannon. Tad really was determined to raise money to help wounded soldiers and did persuade his father to pardon a woman's husband so he wouldn't be shot. Although Tad's antics often annoyed his father's staff, most agreed he had a big heart and a special way with animals. Once he even hitched goats to a chair and ran them through the White House, upsetting a gathering of dignified ladies. Nothing was too surprising when it came to Tad.
Although several presidents had declared occasional days of thanksgiving, none had ever officially made it a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln finally did so with his Proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1863. — Gary Hines

He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had — Tad Williams

The powers of the Atonement do not lie dormant until one sins and then suddenly spring forth to satisfy the needs of the repentant person. Rather, like the forces of gravity, they are everywhere present, exerting their unseen but powerful influence. — Tad R. Callister

Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered. — Tad Williams

and everywhere books, books, books, — Tad Williams

I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones. — Tad Williams

Skulduggery: It would be a tad redudant to encourage you to hurry up, wouldn't it? Whatever you do, do not fall over. Falling over, I think, would be the wrong move to make at this moment
Valkyrie: Hate...
Skulduggery: Yes?
Valkyrie: Hate... You...
Skulduggery: Breathe some more air, the lack of oxygen is making you delirious. — Derek Landy

Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds.
No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds. — Tad Williams

He turned up the car radio and punched buttons until he found something loud and thumpingly exultant, some piece of jolly stupidity from AC/DC. — Tad Williams

How can you care for a rough man like me?' he asked me. 'How can you love a man who can bring you no lands but the farm a soldier's pension can buy? Who can give your children no title of nobility?' Because love does not do sums, I should have told him. Love makes choices, and then gives its all. Had he seen himself as I first saw him though, he could have had no questions. — Tad Williams

Sleep. To lie down and shut out the noise, the fear, the unceasing misery. — Tad Williams

The Atonement of Jesus Christ outweighs, surpasses, and transcends every other mortal event, every new discovery, and every acquisition of knowledge, for without the Atonement all else in life is meaningless. — Tad R. Callister

We tell lies when we are afraid ... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. — Tad Williams

It's amazing the stupid things I say sometimes. I mean, you could start an entire branch of scientific research about the stuff I say that gets proved wrong while I'm still busy saying it. — Tad Williams

Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor. — Tad Williams

A man whose wisdom is true does not sit in waiting for the world to come at him piece by piece for proving its existence! — Tad Williams

Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth — Tad Williams

The man who lives beside the water hole does not dream of thirst. — Tad Williams

The pages were yellowing a tad but sometimes it was best to go old school for reliable facts. The internet was a flaky and unreliable tool sometimes. — M.E. Harmon

Skyla's back," he continues, "and before she's formally charged with yet another homicide, a few things are going to change around here. For one, your mother and I will be around the house more often because we no longer have to babysit that linebacker your sister tried to force feed her Michelins. — Addison Moore

Lucien had never prayed before, never imagined that there might be a deity listening who would be interested in what he had to say, so his supplication skills were a tad rusty.
But now Lucien prayed.
Please don't take her from me just as I've found her. If you do, I'll come for your ass.
Any gods listening would do well to heed him. Lucien never made a promise that he couldn't keep. — Aimee Roseland

It was only after they had left the bridge and its gaurdian far behind that Theo realized he had left Tansy's telephone-brooch in the pocket of his jacket. He had no plans to go back for it, of course: as far as Theo was concerned, that piece of two-legged ugliness was welcome to blow out Tansy's long-distance bill or download a ton of troll-porn and charge it to the Daisy commune.
Betray me, huh? Taste the Revenge of Vilmos! — Tad Williams

Is that why you came?'
'No, I came because I simply can't get enough of people looking down their noses at me. The girls at school are getting frightfully lax about it.'
'Are they? How remiss of them. We're taught from the cradle how to look down our noses, you know, we rich sons of bitches. Perhaps Westcliffe's curriculum is a tad too liberal these days. — Shana Abe

Then it occurred to her (Elizabeth Keckley) that if Tad (Lincoln's son) had been a colored boy rather than the son of a president, and a teacher had found him so difficult to instruct, he would have been ridiculed as a dunce and held up as evidence of the inferiority of the entire race. Tad was bright; Elizabeth knew that well, and she was sure that with proper instruction and hard work, a glimmer of his father's genius would show in him too. But Elizabeth knew many black boys Tad's age who could read and write beautifully, and yet the myth of inferiority persisted. The unfairness of the assumptions stung. If a white child appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent. It seemed to Elizabeth that if one race should not judged by a single example, then neither should any other. — Jennifer Chiaverini

Yes, I am a tad obsessive. For a nonreligious woman, this is my faith. — Rabih Alameddine

Something gurgled in his throat. It took a moment before he realized it was a scream bottled in his innards, a blast of misery trying to force its way out. — Tad Williams

If God is all-powerful, then the Devil must be nothing more than a darkness in the mind of God. But if the Devil is something real and separate, than perfection is impossible, and there can be no God ... except for the aspirations of fallen angels ... — Tad Williams

The Savior's message was essential to our salvation, but his personal exposition of it was not. President J. Reuben Clark Jr. gave this caution: "Brethren, it is all right to speak of the Savior and the beauty of his doctrines, and the beauty of the truth. But remember, and this is the thing I wish you ... [to] always carry with you, the Savior is to be looked at as the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world. His teachings were ancillary and auxiliary to that great fact."6 — Tad R. Callister

A cathedral without windows, a face without eyes, a field without flowers, an alphabet without vowels, a continent without rivers, a night without stars, and a sky without a sun - these would not be so sad as a ... soul without Christ. — Tad R. Callister

Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once. — Tad Williams

As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney. — Tad Williams

Every time you open your mouth," Clarence said, "you just seem older and weirder. — Tad Williams

Now, ten or more years later, far away from her home or even any thought of having a home, she again touched the feeling from that long ago day, being alone but not lonely, of being solitary yet sufficient. — Tad Williams

One can change the small minds, but it is tad difficult to do it with the small heart whose soul is in small mind only. — Anuj

A piece of writing is a trap," he said cheerily, "and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive - which is knowledge - alive forever. — Tad Williams

If we do not reach our hands will always be empty. — Tad Williams

Why were men so caught up with their honor, their solemn word, their promises?
Half the time the promises were never asked of them in the first place.
And yet the wars that were fought over such things, the hearts broken and the lands ruined..! — Tad Williams

Thank you for your news, Princess. It is none of it happy, but only a fool desires cheerful ignorance and I try not to be a fool. That is my heaviest burden. — Tad Williams

It's always difficult when people compare me unfavorably with other contemporary writers. It's much easier when they use examples from earlier eras of fiction. Because then I can say, Well, I may not be talented, but at least I'm not DEAD. — Tad Williams

My stomach was a tad soft, my arms did that weird jiggle thing when I waved, and there was always this damn little pooch over the top of my jeans if I didn't keep that shit sucked in. — Christina Lauren

A wolf is clever-clever-clever, and they are as faithful as a debt unpaid. — Tad Williams

Every night when I watch you sleep, I breathe you in. Every time I make you smile, my heart beats a tad bit faster. You are the blood flowing through my veins. If I had to go back to the life I had before, I would go freaking insane. — Shannon Eckrich

You show me what someone listens to, I'll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.) — Tad Williams

The duke's son and the pauper girl. I suppose as a couple we were the most interesting thing in view.
I took the champagne glass from Armand and finished what he hadn't. As Sophia had said, it wasn't swill.
So much for my manners.
"Why am I here?" I asked curtly, handing back the empty flute.
"Because I invited you."
I dropped my voice. "Did you find out anything about Rue?"
"Is that why you came?"
"No, I came because I simply can't get enough of people looking down their noses at me. The girls at school are getting frightfully lax about it."
"Are they? How remiss of them. We're taught from the cradle how to look down our noses, you know, we rich sons of bitches. Perhaps Westcliffe's curriculum is a tad too liberal these days."
"Why, yes, my lord," I said very audibly. "I would enjoy seeing the rest of the boat."
"The yacht."
"That, yes. — Shana Abe

Wicked Tribe, Rooling Tribe! is the mejor hacker tribe. Too small, too fast, too scientific! — Tad Williams

As innocent as the gesture was probably meant, it seemed to connect with some untouched spot in Maddie's soul. Oh, who was she kidding? She didn't use the word soul and the area she meant lay a tad further down south than where one would assume the soul to reside. — Harper Bliss

A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good. — Tad Williams

[K]nowing one's fate never made a whit of difference, except it made the fated a tad more anxious. — Gene Doucette

Welcome to the Information Jungle. — Tad Williams

She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best. — Tad Williams

His virtual home showed none of the ostentation of others in the Brotherhood, no Gothic-fortress-perched-on-impossible-cliffs or Caligulean excesses of decor (usually accompanied by an equally Caligulean want of decorum.) — Tad Williams

Tad socked him. Hard. Twice.
Someday the bad guys would realize monologues were a bad thing. — Vivian Arend

I don't get it," Clarence whispered to me. "We're the only ones in the place. When are your friends supposed to get here?"
"Why, bab?" asked the cream pitcher, its top opening and closing like a tiny silver mouth. "Are you thinking about asking one of the waitresses out instead?" The chuckle that followed was a little coarser than the silvery-bell variety one usually expects from invisible spirits. Clarence let out a yelp like a dog whose tail has just found its way under a foot and was halfway to the front door before I could convince him to come back. At the other end of the long room the waitresses looked up without interest, then went back to discussing particle physics or whatever else was keeping them from bringing me a glass of water — Tad Williams

They were all becoming brothers, in the manner he had seen before: facing death together was the greatest of levelers. — Tad Williams

I was worried for a while that it was some sort of reflection of me that all I seemed to be getting were these characters that were a tad bit loony. But I love it. Those are the most fun characters to play! — Torrey DeVitto

One of the acid tests of our integrity is whether or not we keep the commitments and promises we have made or whether there are loopholes in our word. We might appropriately ask: Do we live the honor code with exactness, or are there loopholes in our word - cracks in our foundation of integrity? Do we honor our commitments as home teachers and visiting teachers, or are there loopholes in our performance? In other words, is our word our bond? — Tad R. Callister

There's sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That's the way it's meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time. — Tad Williams

My mothering needed a tad more Mother Theresa and a lot less Lizzy Borden. — Irene Tomkinson

The road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work. — Tad Williams

Fear goes where it is invited. — Tad Williams

My parents, neither one of them went to college. That wasn't available to them. But, you know, we had a wonderful life. You know, it - you know, we lived in what would now be considered poverty, but, you know, it didn't feel like poverty when I was living it. I had a great time and got a - had a great experience. I went to Catholic school through high school. I had a wonderful education. — Tad Devine

It was frighteningly close to what he believed of his father at the worst moments - that he really was the kind of man who would send a letter signed "Sincerely, Cpl. Peter Vilmos" to someone he'd seen naked. — Tad Williams

Even fans of actively managed funds often concede that most other investors would be better off in index funds. But buoyed by abundant self-confidence, these folks aren't about to give up on actively managed funds themselves. A tad delusional? I think so. Picking the best-performing funds is 'like trying to predict the dice before you roll them down the craps table,' says an investment adviser in Boca Raton, FL. 'I can't do it. The public can't do it.' — Paul Samuelson

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder. — Tad Williams

Piercing My Hearte there is A Golden Dagger; That is God

Piercing God's Hearte there is a Golden Needle; That is me — Tad Williams

What's the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it's so beautiful it's embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever. — Tad Williams

After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious about products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.
I tell this to the account people, and they say, "But it comes from trees!"
To which I reply, "Yes and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn't mean I'm going to spread them on my English muffin. — Augusten Burroughs

Those people who believe in previous lives always think they were dukes or queens or something, ignoring the fact that most people back then spent their whole lives up to their knees in shit before dying of toothless old age at thirty. — Tad Williams

Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash) — Jay McInerney

The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad - well, more than just a tad, a lot more than a tad - old-fashioned compared with themselves. — Lynn Cullen

Since your father has escaped my justice, it is you who must hear my words."
"Words. You keep saying ... "
"Because that was the gift your father gave to me. And the curse that ruined me as well, changed my life to wretched misery. There are hours yet before the guard comes - nay, eons. An eternity, in fact. This is my time, Miranda. Now you will have your words back: before I kill you, you will hear my tale ... and you will know what you have done. — Tad Williams

But sometimes when things go very wrong and even the highest are frightened, innocence is not enough for salvation. — Tad Williams

For Hillary, gangsterism is not merely a matter of means; it is also her end. Hillary wants to be the crime boss of America. That is the only way to satisfy her unquenchable desire for money, power, and social control. As we will see in this book, Hillary is a criminal who found the criminal practices of Saul Alinsky to be too weak-kneed for her taste, and Alinsky was a gangster who found the criminal practices of the Al Capone gang to be a tad sentimental. In short, Hillary is the true Democrat, the gangster par excellence. I suspect this is why the Democratic establishment lined up so quickly behind her. While the Republicans had a real primary, hotly contested, the Democrats had a primary in which Bernie seemed to win again and again but never seemed to make a dent in Hillary's lead. That's because the Democratic super-delegates were uniformly in her camp, even though there was throughout the campaign the risk that she would be indicted. — Dinesh D'Souza

Stairs. This is Hell. Hell is stairs, was all Theo could think. I'd sell my soul for a goddamn elevator.
But I don't have a soul, do I? I'm some kind of fairy.
Okay, settle for an escalator, then. — Tad Williams

Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival. — Tad Williams

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men. — Tad Williams

Are you going to drink my blood?" he wanted to know. I think I had expected him to be a little more afraid of me and his casual tone was a tad bit frustrating to my ego. "Well, I was planning on it, yes. — Cyma Rizwaan Khan

What does that mean, 'real'? Amn't I real, you? If you cut me, do I not bleed? If you piss me off, will I not kick you up the arse? — Tad Williams

It is precisely in that relationship to the Reader that you will find most of the classic faults of style: pretension, condescension, servility, obscurantism, grandiosity, vulgarity, and the like
even academicism. That's why most faults of style can be described in language relevant to human relations. Is your style frank and open ... does it have some understated agenda ... is it out to prove something it does not or cannot admit ... is it trying to impress ... show off ... is it kissing up ... groveling ... maybe just a tad passive-aggressive, with a mumbling half-audible voice that is unwilling to explain ... is it trying to convince ... overwhelm ... help ... seduce ... give pleasure ... inflict pain ... There is no area of the writer's work that is more responsive to the psychology of human connection than style. — Stephen Koch

You dog!" she said, so loud that half the crowded tavern turned to watch. "A few days past the walls of the inner keep and you think your pizzle has turned to solid silver? At least when Nevin Hewney falls asleep on top of a girl, drooling and farting and limp as custard, he doesn't pretend he's done her a favor. — Tad Williams

Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build
but what happens when in all the world there are only termite hills left but no bush? — Tad Williams

The man of integrity who is true to self and to God will choose the right whether or not anyone is looking because he is self-driven, not externally controlled. — Tad R. Callister

Integrity is the very core of our being. It is who we really are. When all the scaffolding is removed, it is our integrity that both defines us and identifies us. Men of integrity are like the Rock of Gibraltar - steadfast and immovable. Men without it are like the shifting sands on the Sahara Desert - tossed to and fro by every variant wind of life. — Tad R. Callister

But a mouse can be brave. Small as they are, though, they learn it is wiser not to challenge the cat. — Tad Williams

People wanted to get me published, and my early work was so weird that they weren't getting anywhere. I thought, okay, I'll do something that's just a tad more normal. — Nell Zink

President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke of its relationship to other events in world history: When all is said and done, when all of history is examined, when the deepest depths of the human mind have been explored, there is nothing so wonderful, so majestic, so tremendous as this act of grace. — Tad R. Callister

A part of me, of course, was reminding myself over and over and over again that I should never have tried to lie to the higher angels of the Ephorate. Hubris, the Greeks called that. "A dumbshit move," might be a more contemporary way of putting it. — Tad Williams

Do they always flirt with biblical quotes?" Asil asked Tad.
In long-suffering tones, Tad said, "They can flirt with the periodic table or a restaurant menu. We've learned to live with it. Get a room you guys. — Patricia Briggs

Dear Diary
Went out shopping today. Picked up half a dozen sheep, two pigs, and a princess. The sheep are rather depressingly thin, the pigs and princess only slightly less so. Dear Diary
Went out shopping today. Picked up half a dozen sheep, two pigs, and a princess. The sheep are rather depressingly thin, the pigs and princess only slightly less so. — Tad Williams

Piglets and pawprints!" cried Eatbugs, then paused and looked quickly around. He leaned toward his companions. "Let's be off!" he added, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. — Tad Williams