Tor Quotes & Sayings

She can't believe she is going to compose her first love letter. She can hardly bear the exposure as if her body is a photographic film spooling into sunlight and everything is too bright, too vulnerable, the moments in the film now lost for ever. — Tor Udall

The World's a Printing-House, our words, our thoughts,
Our deeds, are characters of several sizes.
Each soul is a Compos'tor, of whose faults
The Levites are Correctors; Heaven Revises.
Death is the common Press, from whence being driven,
We're gather'd, Sheet by Sheet, and bound for Heaven. — Francis Quarles

Quiet," he repeated on a growl, "I'm about to fuck my wife and the only words I want her saying when I do it are 'yes', 'Tor', 'my prince', 'baby' and 'oh my God'. — Kristen Ashley

Chloe takes a mental snapshot, as if one day she will paint him. It will be a day's work getting to know his body. — Tor Udall

Ansel sighed. You know, this is the problem with you alphas, you're so concerned about taking over the new pack that you don't notice what's happening right in front of your face. — Andrea Cremer

We have a lot of In-SPECK-tor Gadgets in the body of Christ not qualified to remove specks! What do I look like telling you to take a bath if I stink? What do you look like telling me to brush my teeth when your breath smells horrible? Jesus would answer, "You look like a Hypocrite! — Sandra M. Michelle

Bellator silvae servi. Warrior of the forest, I, the alpha, call on thee to serve in this time of need. — Andrea Cremer

Don't let the title mislead you," Arlbeth told her. "The king is simply the visible one. I'm so visible, in fact, that most of the important work has to be done by other people."
"Nonsense," said Tor.
Arlbeth chuckled. "Your loyalty does you honor, but you're in the process of becoming too visible to be effective yourself, so what do you know about it? — Robin McKinley

Everyone needs company, some kind of consolation. This is the rough comfort of strangers, the sympathy of touch. — Tor Udall

As a senior editor at Tor Books and the manager of our science fiction and fantasy line, I rarely blog to promote specific projects I'm involved with, for reasons that probably don't need a lot of explanation. — Patrick Nielsen Hayden

ADJUTOR (ADJU'TOR) n.s.[adjutor, Lat.] A helper.Dict. ADJUTORY (ADJU'TORY) adj.[adjutorius, Lat.] That which helps.Dict. — Samuel Johnson

Faced with a totally controlled, monitored and owned online world, in which every utterance is immediately scanned and filed away, many have yet to make the connection that the best solution may not be running Tor and eighteen proxies, but writing things down on paper and talking face-to-face. Remember the mail? Remember conversations? Yeah, those still exist. Want to shake somebody out of their online trance? Send them a letter. Send them art. Want to record something that will last longer than a few seconds on Facebook or Twitter? Write a book. The physical world didn't go anywhere. In fact, physical artifacts and experiences have only grown in totemic power the more we've pushed them away. — Jason Louv

Look, I really hate it when people say this sort of things ... Do you know who I am?
He lean a little closer and whisperer something.
ALERT it cried, head spinning from side to side . EMERGENCY! IT IS THE DOC-TOR! — Trevor Baxendale

I want you to be my first. I want you to be my last. I want you to be all the in-betweens. I want you. Just you. Only you — Carian Cole

He gave River a couple of apples and some water, keeping an eye on Tor, who was now standing, shaking with anger. Jake decided it was a good thing he was mad at Tor, 'cause shit, the man was soaked, everything clung to him and he looked hard and lean and completely touchable. Yeah, best to be pissed at the jerk when he looked like that. — Chris Owen

To be aware of an experience means that it has passed — Tor Norretranders

The Universe began when Nothing saw itself in the mirror. — Tor Norretranders

It is not what we say to each other every day that establishes all the meaning and beauty and truth, it is everything we think before we speak — Tor Norretranders

Oh, my beauty!
Oh, my reflection of life!
Oh, my unmet desires!
I am longing for you
tor now and forever! — Debasish Mridha

Such compression of large amounts of information into a few exformation-rich macrostates with small quantities of nominal information are not only intelligent: they are very beautiful: yes, even sexy. Seing a jumble of confused data and shreds of rote learning compressed into a concise, clear message can be a real turn-on. — Tor Norretranders

Oh, God in heaven, kill me now ... " Rachel groaned. "I hate going to see Mrak. I always feel awkward going back to Velik Tor. After being a Scorpion for so long, after everything Oron's told us about Mrak's past ... " she shook her head darkly. "I don't know if I'll be able to resist the temptation to perforate his bowels."
Notak looked back down at the letter. "Post script," he read aloud. "Rachel, please leave Mrak alive and unharmed. We still need him, unfortunately, no matter how tempting it is to perforate his bowels."
"You made that up, he did not say that!"
Notak handed her the letter, pointing. "Right there at the bottom."
Rachel squinted at the writing. "Faul. — S.G. Night

Stand in nature before anyone else has woken and most people find something to believe in. — Tor Udall

Among the dog leads, phones and hats, there would be babies hoped for and lost. All this would be remembered: missed opportunities, mislaid friends, the smile of a wife. It would be a place for lost things. — Tor Udall

He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills. — Robin McKinley

They could at least part with love. It was like Tor to make the gesture; her father, for all his kindness, was too proud - or too much a king; and she was too proud, or too bitter, or too young. — Robin McKinley

You can possess a book without really owning it, though. Beyond ownership in a commercial or legal sense, there's ownership of an emotional or metaphysical kind - when a book speaks so powerfully to us that we feel it's ours exclusively: that it exists just tor us. People we meet sometimes have this effect too; they look into our eyes, and speak in a hushed, intimate voice, and make us feel we're uniquely important to them - before going on to do the same to someone else. In life, we call these people flirts. The best books are flirtatious, too, since they seem to be ours alone when in reality they're anyone's. — Blake Morrison

Emma this is not a joke. Look at your hands! They're ... they're ... wrinkled!"
"Yes that's because-"
"No way. I'm not going down for this. This isn't my fault."
"Toraf-"
"Galen will find some way to blame me though. He always does. 'You wouldn't have gotten caught if you didn't swim so close to that boat, tadpole.' No it couldn't be the humans fault for fishing in the first place-"
"Toraf."
"Or how about. 'Maybe if you'd stop trying to kiss my sister, she'd stop bashing your head with a rock.' How does my kissing her have anything to do with her bashing my head with a rock? If you ask me, it's just a result of poor parenting-"
"Toraf."
"Oh and my favorite: 'If you play with a lionfish, you're going to get pricked.' I wasn't playing with it! I was just helping it swim faster by grabbing its fins-"
"TOR-AF."
He stops pacing along the water, even seems to remember that I exist. "Yes, Emma? What were you saying? — Anna Banks

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Jake wasn't about to be seduced like some schoolgirl. Not by a man who went by the unlikely name of Tornado, not by anyone. He stood as firmly as he could in the mud and tore his mouth from the kiss, staring into too dark eyes. As his hands made their way into Tor's wet jeans he said, This doesn't mean I like you, you know. — Chris Owen

A thing not structured and organized contains more information, because it is more difficult to describe — Tor Norretranders

You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You're on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours. — Blythe Danner

Civilization is about removing information about our surroundings; discarding information about nature so our senses are not burdened with all that information and our consciousness can concentrate on other matters. — Tor Norretranders

Hey, ya'll!" I shouted and waved.
At my greeting, the cheer rose so high it nearly took the roof off.
Cool!
I smiled. Tor's arm around my waist squeezed.
"Princess," he clipped into my ear.
Oh shit.
Right.
I stopped waving like a friendly person, close my fingers, cupped my hand slightly and started waving like a royal person.
This had no effect on the crowd who kept shouting, clapping and stamping then someone yelled, "We love you, Princess Cora."
"Isn't that sweet?" I yelled back in the direction from where the words came even though I had no clue who said it.
"Deliver me." I heard Tor mutter from beside me and I looked to the side and up at him.
"What?" I asked.
"Just, gods, please sit down and eat," he said.
"Sure," I said, smiled at the crowd, did the royal wave again then Tor let me go and we sat down. — Kristen Ashley

Tearing the paper means you've stopped believing in the infinite possibilities of a square. — Tor Udall

The least interesting aspect of good conversation is what is actually said. What is more interesting is all the deliberations and emotions that take place simultaneously — Tor Norretranders

Consciousness is not about information but about its opposite: order. — Tor Norretranders

The words are merely references to something not present — Tor Norretranders

The dark breaks wide in fragile rays. Dawn on Ithiss-Tor is more subtle than other sunrises. I have lost count of the worlds where I have stood and watched the light rise, peeling away the sky, sometimes in quiet colors, and sometimes in raw, violent slashes, as if the goddess I don't believe in has cut her veins. And sometimes, as on Gehenna, the sky changes not at all, just endless night, or endless brilliance
and after a time, the constant uniformity makes you feel as if you are the thing that must give way. — Ann Aguirre

A few years ago, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, wanted to figure out why placebos were so effective. His experiment was brutally straightforward: he gave college students electric shocks while they were stuck in an fMRI machine. (The subjects were well compensated, at least by undergraduate standards.) — Jonah Lehrer

Nothing is set in stone. A bird can be refolded into a boat, a fish, a kimono, or any other extravagant vision. At other times it aches to return to its original folds. The paper begins to fray. It tires, rebels. — Tor Udall

Nev tossed his pen down. "Fine. Here goes:
Ren and Cals lives may be torrid
for the young ones in Vail are quite horrid
Bine and Cos aren't too frail
Dax and Fey never pale
while Ansel and Bryn might get sordid
Bryn spit Diet Coke all over the table. Mason and Ansel clapped. I was too dumbfounded to react.
This is qhat quiet Nev does in his spare time?
"'Bine'?" Sabine frowned while Cosette mopped up the soda that flowed to their end of the table. "Since when am I 'Bine'? And we never call Cosette 'Cos.'"
"It's about cadence," Nev said. "Sorry. I said it wasn't very good."
"Why aren't you and Mason in it?" Ansel asked.
"Oh, he has another one about us." Mason wiggled his eyebrows. — Andrea Cremer

Based on Tor, which is what they all use. Which was written by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, ironically. To provide a safe haven for political dissidents and whistleblowers, all around the world. Which is the law of unintended consequences, right there, biting the world in the ass. Tor stands for The Onion Router. Because that's what we're dealing with here. Layers upon layers upon layers, like the layers of an onion, in the Deep Web itself, and inside all of its separate sites. — Lee Child

The other night I discovered that 50 feet from our house,through a break in the trees, you can see St Michael's Tor at Glastonbury ... There is no question that there is magic here and all kinds of magic. (Bruton 1959) — John Steinbeck

It doesn't matter where she looks, there are always the beautiful imperfections of a marriage. — Tor Udall

Oh. Momma told me not to tell you that your bed squeaks. But I think you know, 'cause I could hear it this morning. Jake dropped his fork. Tor, for the first time Jake had ever seen, turned scarlet. Maureen looked at them both and sighed. Christmas is always so interesting with you, Mark. — Chris Owen

Hello, Satan. I know you've been waiting patiently for me since the demise of the good and noble Uncle Tor. I have a feeling I'll be staying here a while. — Carian Cole

A master of origami said he tried to express with paper the joy of life, and the last thought before a man dies. — Tor Udall

A Rose in Winter
A crimson bloom in winter's snow,
Born out of time, like a maiden's woe,
Spawned in a season when the chill winds blow.
'Twas found in a sheltered spot,
Bright sterling gules and blemished not,
Red as a drop o' blood from the broken heart,
Of the maid who waits and weeps atop the tor,
Left behind by yon argent knight sworn to war,
'Til ajousting and aquesting he goes no more.
Fear not, Sweet Jo, amoulderin' on the moor.
The winter's rose doth promise in the fading runes of yore,
That true love once found will again be restored. — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

You sense far more than you are conscious of. Whether you want to or not — Tor Norretranders

Brassa,' she whispered, 'what is the moon? Why does it grow in the sky?'
'Because the moon is the goddess Tor,' answered Brassa softly, smiling down at Larka, 'looking down on us all. As some say the fury of the sun is the hunter Fenris snarling at the Varg, so they say the moon is the wolf goddess, opening her eyes wider and wider and stroking the world with her kindness. — David Clement-Davies

She'd been trained to survive many things: starvation and bullet wounds. Winter nights and scouring sun. Double-tied knots and interrogations at knifepoint. But this? A boy's lips on hers. Moving and melding. Soft and strength, velvet and iron. Opposite elements that tugged and tor Yael from the inside. Feelings bloomed, hot and warm. Deep and dark. — Ryan Graudin

The last page of a book is a sacred space that even lovers respect. — Tor Udall

There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving like a farmer's son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith. — Robin McKinley

They talked in the supermarket, the butcher's and the post office of how they had watched a child collecting twigs, or was it flowers...? How they had noticed the sky, what a blue sky there was that day. Chloe remembers her walking through the trees, the branches growing bigger until she couldn't see her any more. A child had been lost and Kew would never be the same. — Tor Udall

Identify you as messenger ... to other Riders." The words were gasped as if he
were forcing air in and out of his lungs by sheer will to extend his life. "Fly ... Rider, with
great speed. Don't read m-message. Then they can't tor-torture ... it from you. If captured,
shred it and toss it to the winds." Then, because his voice had grown so faint, she had to
lean very close to hear his final words. "Beware the shadow man."
A cold tremor ran through Karigan's body. "I'll do my best," she told him. — Kristen Britain

It is a movement and a rest, you and I. — Tor Udall

If I recall correctly, I think I signed my first contract with Tor in 1983. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Gods, that you would have granted me this boon when she wed me and with it gave me one night of this hot, greedy tart rather than the cold, selfish fish you gave me, he muttered, my eyes moved to him and I saw he was speaking to the ceiling in audible prayer. — Kristen Ashley

thing, "Typhoon and the Tor Bay" it was called, — The Paris Review

And yet he held his tongue, wanting his farewell with Marina to be peaceable, not out of any magnanimity, but so that after Tor ruined her - he felt confident Tor would ruin her - and she was once more alone, she would think of Lucy's graciousness and feel the long-lingering sting of bitter regret. — Patrick DeWitt

A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list. — Brian Hodge

I don't want to return to the world outside these Gardens. All I want is to notice the dew on a leaf. The holy busyness of worms in the soil. — Tor Udall

Write and keep writing, not because people will like it, but because someone may get a kick out of thrashing your book. — Magus Tor

I walked across the snowy plain of the Tiergarten - a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there; the Brandenburger Tor, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky; and on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station, like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you. — Christopher Isherwood

He looked like a painting in restoration - that at some point in his life he had been beautiful. — Tor Udall

I caught my reflection in the tall mirror. I looked like one of Henry VIII's wives who'd been told she'd soon be replaced. — Andrea Cremer

Quitting is a hiccup for losers. And down they go. — Lorenz Font

She mourns the stillbirth of anything that craves to be born. It doesn't have to be a child. It can be an artwork, an idea, or a miscarried love. — Tor Udall

He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all. — Robin McKinley

I choose not to serve the Conglomerate as an ambassador, but that doesn't mean I've given up on humanity. Surrender isn't a word in my personal lexicon; there are other ways and means. If nothing else, Ithiss-Tor taught me there's always a choice. — Ann Aguirre

You can't be loyal to others if you're not loyal to your own nature first. — Tor Seidler

ABAC'TOR, noun [Latin from abigo, ab and ago, to drive.] In law, one that feloniously drives away or steals a herd or numbers of cattle at once, in distinction from one that steals a sheep or two. — Noah Webster