12 Quotes by Scott Davis Howard

Women don’t place as much value on what can be seen with the eyes as men do—it fades, you see, and the man who is an attractive fool at twenty becomes simply a fool by fifty.

You cannot be a great bard unless you’ve had at least one great experience, and you cannot sing of valor, villainy, heroism, loss, love, or betrayal unless you’ve experienced them firsthand.

I warn you, my cynicism is so strong that it borders on optimism.

You know, that’s the trouble with humanity—half of the dreamers want to carry us forward, kicking and screaming, into an unrealistic and unattainable future, and the other half want us to fall back into an imaginary ‘simpler time’ when everything was easy.

So you truly believe in nothing?” she asked.“No,” he coughed. “I don’t believe in anything—which isn’t the same as believing in nothing. Belief in nothing, it seems to me, takes quite as much faith as belief in something. I am utterly incapable of that kind of commitment.

The holly grove, carved a century ago by the druids, was designed to amplify emotion to a cathartic crescendo. You see, druidism (as did most early religions) realized the essential truth that faith is an emotional, rather than a logical, response to the world. They designed their places of worship around this fact. Love, fear, guilt, rapture, these are religious words. Believers feel their belief. Skeptics contemplate their doubt.

And speaking of fair, why is it we useA new set of words for female abuse, Different from men, and twice as offensive,That often puts women upon the defensive? And their best defense, sometimes is attackAnd then they all hurl the same insults backUpon other women, and judge them as harshlyAs they were once judged, incredibly starkly,And so they begin the whole cycle once more

Life ends with death for each of us—for kings, and slaves, and gods—we are tied together by the final knot of death and failure, so there is no reason to look down on any other or for the gods to be patronizing or judgmental. We all lose. We all fail. We all die. But we all fight, and struggle, and defeat is not refutation.

One more interesting tidbit about Jörmungand: it is the offspring of Loki, the Norse god of mischief, and an evil giantess. Sadly, I must admit to once trying to fathom the logistics of the monster’s conception (Loki being only the size of a man), only to remember that Loki, a shape-shifter, could easily accomplish the deed. Even more horrifying, though, is to imagine the birth process of such an endless snake. . .