Stephen R. Donaldson Quotes

He smiled because he was alive.

Power was dreadful and treacherous. When it was not great enough to accomplish its wielder’s desires, it turned against the hands which held it.

You know, where I come from, the people who did this to a forest would be called pioneers—a very special breed of heroes, since instead of killing other human beings they concentrate on slaughtering nature itself.

One word more," Foul said, "a final caution: Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment. But now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!

A good laugh, Covenant sighed morosely. Did I do a whole life’s laughing in that little time?

That's madness!" Covenant gasped thickly. Elena's gaze wavered on the edge of focus, and he could not bear to look at her. "Do you think that some existence after death is going to vindicate you after you've simply extirpated life from the earth? That was exactly Kevin's mistake. I tell you, he is roasting in hell!

The bluff stone of the tower, with Revelstone rising behind it like the prow of a great ship, answered his gaze in granite permanence as if it were a prophecy by the old Giants—a cryptic perception that victory and defeat were human terms which had no meaning in the language of mountains.

Do not be too quick to judge the makers of worlds. Will you ever write a story for which no character will have caused to reproach you?

The answer to death was to make use of it rather than fall victim to it—master it by making it serve his goals, beliefs. This was not a good answer. But it was the only answer he had.

We will soon know."
"Yes, indeed," Covenant muttered. "Only I hate surprises. You never know when one of them is going to ruin your life.

It was gray cold and dead from horizon to horizon under the gray dead clouds—not the soft comfortable gray of twilit illusions, of unstark colors blurring like consolation or complacency into each other, but rather the gray of disconsolation and dismay, paradoxically dull and raw, numb and poignant, a gray like the ashen remains of color and sap and blood and bone. Gray wind drove gray cold over the gray frozen hills; gray snow gathered in this drifts under the lees of the gray terrain; gray ice underscored the black, brittle, leafless branches of the trees barely visible in the distance on his left, and stifled the gray, miserable current of the river almost out of sight on his right; gray numbness clutched at his flesh and soul.

Abruptly Loerya joined the probing. “And if there is no Creator? Or if the creation is untended?”
“Then who is there to reproach us? We provide the meaning of our own lives. If we serve the Land purely to the furthest limit of our abilities, what more can we ask of ourselves?”

That was a joke. Or a metaphor." Covenant made another effort to turn his sarcasm into humor. "I can never tell the difference.

I would say that happiness lies in serving the Land. And I would say that there is no happiness in times of war.

The prevailing breeze from the Forest blew into his face, and for the first time in many days he was able to distinguish the tang of the season. He found that the autumn of the Land had turned its corner, traveled its annual round from joy to sorrow. The air no longer gleamed with abundance and fruition, with ripeness either glad or grim. Now the breeze tasted like the leading edge of winter—a sere augury, promising long nights and barrenness and cold.