Lawrence M. Schoen Quotes

I’m not accusing you of anything, but we both have studied too much history to ignore coincidence.

Besides, prophecies are tricky stuff. It's only after that people recognize them as important. At the time they're spoken most people don't want to hear about them."
"Really? But aren't they truth?"
"Especially then. Truth is tough."
"Why? I mean, it's the truth. It just is."
"I think that's so, in the abstract, but none of us get to really know the abstract. We only know what we think.

I gave destiny a push to make it happen. You study history, so stop your pathetic whining. You know better than most that destiny happens to us, it is never something we call forth.

As a historian, he understood that what in hindsight were taken to be grand events really consisted of a myriad of tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices. Often as not, great moments hung on coincidences and random luck.

There will be paperwork, no government action can occur without it, but that can come later.

Oh! This isn't possible. You're dead."
"So are you, but we're not going to let that get in our way.

She hated politics and she had no patience for the ultra-serious, wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to change your world whether you wanted to live with those changes or not.

Ah, self-interest at last. Despite all of our differences, of race and time and distance, we achieve commonality. I understand self-interest.

I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do.

I mean, sure, like all prophecy the wording is vague.

So you're saying, people not only may not want to hear a thing that's true, that sometimes they make sure other people can't either?"
"Yeah. Not all people, and not all the time, but yeah.

Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift.

It all seemed like madness, but was madness anything other than desperation blended with hope?

In all the rest of my life’s wanderings, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics.

Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!