R. Lee Smith > Quotes

“It's one slice of shit-cake after another with me, isn't it? Why did you marry me?"
"God gave you to me."
"Did you keep the receipt?"

- Amber and Meoraq”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“I don’t know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Yet for all the aggravation of tending them, it was not so terrible an ordeal. He’d never kept a pet before and keeping close to fifty of them all at once in the wildlands was not how any man ought to begin, but he seemed to be having some success at it and he had to admit, he liked having someone to talk to, even if she couldn’t talk back.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“You were all my best days…and most of my worst ones, too, but that’s all right. The worst ones weren’t any worse than they might have been with anyone else, but the best ones were so much better. I love you.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“If you cannot have an easy journey, have an interesting story.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Don’t make fun of me,” Lan snapped. “I’m illiterate, not stupid! I know there’s no B in subtle!”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Because you told me the truth, even when you thought it was something I did not want to hear. That is how I know how much you love me. I do not need to be told.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“if you throw a man in a cage, he will spend the rest of his life fighting to escape. But if you tell him no one else in the world gets the cage but him, dress it up and throw in a few pillows, then he’ll walk in on his own.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Meoraq swung around and raked his eyes over the whole of them. “Who dares order me to silence?” “I do,” said Amber. “Shut up.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Father, forgive me," he thought, staring into the sky where the light of the sun stared back at him behind the clouds. "Truth does not care if it comforts her. But I do.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Women are like handfuls of sand. They all rub up under your scales now and then, but the finest ones do put a polish on a man.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“The bad nights made the good ones impossible to enjoy; the good nights made the bad ones worse.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Strange, how the world could move on even when it had been shaken to its foundations.”
― R. Lee Smith, Cottonwood

“Jesus Christ, really? How did you ever survive living with me as long as you did without having sex every other hour?” “With God’s aid alone,” he said seriously. “It was a terrible time.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!” she cried suddenly, switching Lan’s hand three times in rapid succession. “Never lick your knife!” “Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!” The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. “Ladies,” she sputtered at last. “Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!” “But beshitted’s all right?” Lan asked cautiously. “No, it is not!” “You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it’s rude to yell at the table.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“In the end, she realized that anytime you weren't fucking for fun, regardless of what you told yourself, honey, it was hooking.”
― R. Lee Smith, Heat

“But once that question popped out there, it couldn’t be ignored. You couldn’t put toothpaste back in the tube; once you’d seen Waldo, you might as well throw the book away.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“No, it is not. I give you a portion of my stolen wealth. You give me all you have.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“There is no night, however dark and filled with woe, that is not followed by dawn.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“A bad book begins and ends with the words on the pages. A good book gives you the feeling that it began long before you ever started reading. But a great book goes on long after you stop.”
― R. Lee Smith quoting her mother

“Did you mark that?"
"Most of it."
"Then I have your obedience."
"I didn't exactly plan to go anywhere this morning, " she told him testily. "But, I wasn't lost. I was just hunting. And I wasn't in trouble."
"Human, you are not yet out of trouble.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“It is a wife’s duty and pleasure to lessen her husband’s burdens.” “Says who, lizardman?” “Prophet Lashraq, as written in Sheul’s true Word.” “You mean a man wrote it.” “But”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“And the moral of this story is?” asked Amber, and immediately regretted it because it didn’t sound tough and bored at all, just snotty. “That everything looks small on paper,” Meoraq replied. “But in Gann’s world, shit happens.” The”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Men may perish, but the world will neither celebrate nor mourn. It will go on.' His smile thinned. 'Would you like to know how?'
'No.'
'Animals will swell to fill the void left by men," he told her. 'And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. Those ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this-' He waved at the walls. '-and this-' He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. '-forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by this fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under and uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the worlds will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lonely.' His mouth curved into a bitter line. 'But I'll live.'
'Stop it,' Lan whispered through numb lips.
'I read once that the sun will someday swell and engulf this world before it burns itself out. Perhaps I will finally die with it. Or perhaps I' will continue to endure... my ashes pulled eternally apart through the frozen vacuum of space, and I with no more mouth to scream... still alive.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Think, not of what you win or lose, but of what you learn and what you teach, and you will always have the advantage.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You can make a story mean anything Meoraq. But that's the think with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

“Well? Sanford prompted. She looked at him.

"Well what?"

"What was the point? Why did you do this?"

She stared at him in obvious confusion. "I wanted to help."

"Shouldn't that count for something?”
― R. Lee Smith, Cottonwood

“Damn you! Hear me now and hear me well. If you die, I will raze your Norwood. I will raze all of them--every village every waystation, every wall. I will make the whole of this world your grave. Do you hear me? How could you do this to me? How could you dare? Answer me!”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“I'm not enjoying this-"
"Lies! You'd fuck this moment if you could!”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann