“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival… a survival of a hugely remote period when… consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity… forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…”
—Algernon Blackwood. Epigraph from “The Call of Cthulhu” by H. P. Lovecraft
June 2013
11 posts
“Moral reforms and deteriorations are moved by large forces, and they are mostly caused by reactions from the habits of a preceding period. Backwards and forwards swings the great pendulum, and its alterations are not determined by a few distinguished folk clinging to the end of it.”
—Sir Charles Petrie, The Victorians. Epigraph from The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
“By nature, men are nearly alike;
by practice, they get to be wide apart.” —Confucius. Epigraph from The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
by practice, they get to be wide apart.” —Confucius. Epigraph from The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
“We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.”
—
Andrew Ryan in BioShock, written by Ken Levine. Epigraph from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
“When trouble looms, the fool turns his back, while the wise man faces it down.”
—Kenji Kasen in Grand Theft Auto III, written by Dan Houser. Epigraph from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
“Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: Main screen turn on.
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.” —Dialogue from Zero Wing, the Toplan/Taito game for arcade and Sega Mega Drive, 1989. Epigraph from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
Operator: Main screen turn on.
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.” —Dialogue from Zero Wing, the Toplan/Taito game for arcade and Sega Mega Drive, 1989. Epigraph from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
“You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
consider whose fault it could be:
not a torch or a match in your inventory.
Does it descend from there, adventure to nightmare?
Did I battle a snake? Was the treasure intact?
Or did the TRS-80 in my brain get hacked?” —
If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
consider whose fault it could be:
not a torch or a match in your inventory.
Does it descend from there, adventure to nightmare?
Did I battle a snake? Was the treasure intact?
Or did the TRS-80 in my brain get hacked?” —
“It Is Pitch Dark” by MC Frontalot. Epigraph from All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved with mankind.”
—John Donne. Epigraph from Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
“Out beyond ideas of
wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I will meet you there.” —Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th Century. Epigraph from And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I will meet you there.” —Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th Century. Epigraph from And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
May 2013
9 posts
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.” —Albert Camus. Epigraph from Element4l video game.
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.” —Albert Camus. Epigraph from Element4l video game.
“
Sovay, Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man’s array
With a brace of pistols all by her side
To meet her true love, to meet her true love, away she’d ride
As she was riding over the plain
She met her true love and bid him stand
“Stand and deliver, young sir,” she said
“And if you do not, and if you do not, I’ll shoot you dead”
He delivered up his golden store
And still she craved for one thing more
“That diamond ring, that I see you wear
Oh hand it over, oh hand it over, and your life I’ll spare”
Sovay head
From that diamond ring I would not part
For it’s a token from my sweetheart
Shoot and be damned, you rogue” said he
“And you’ll be hanged, you’ll be hanged then for murdering me”
Next morning in the garden green
Young Sophie and her true love were seen
He spied his watch hanging from her clothes
Which made him blush lads, which made him blush lads like any rose
“Why do you blush you silly thing
I thought to have that diamond ring
T’was I who robbed you all on the plain
So here’s your gold, love, so here’s your gold and your watch and chain
I only did it for to know
If you would be a man or no
If you had given me that ring she said
I’d have pulled the trigger, pulled the trigger and shot you dead”
“But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.”
—Moby-Dick. Epigraph from The World Made Straight by Ron Rash
“Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
t is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” Epigraph from Goldengrove by Francine Prose
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
t is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” Epigraph from Goldengrove by Francine Prose
“The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist.”
—Barriers to Trans-Dimensional Travel, R. Lutece, 1889. Epigraph from Bioshock Infinite.
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
—Balzac. Epigraph from The Godfather by Mario Puzo
“There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.” —Sara Teasdale. Epigraph from Blessings by Anna Quindlen.
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.” —Sara Teasdale. Epigraph from Blessings by Anna Quindlen.
“In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.”
—Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouve. Epigraph from A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
—Stephen Hawking. Epigraph from The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey.
