Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Vera Nazarian

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Vera Nazarian.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian is an Armenian-Russian American writer of fantasy, science fiction and other "wonder fiction" including Mythpunk, an artist, and the publisher of Norilana Books. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and the author of ten novels, including Dreams of the Compass Rose, a "collage" novel structured as a series of related and interlinked stories similar in arabesque flavor to The One Thousand and One Nights, Lords of Rainbow, a standalone epic fantasy about a world without color, the Cobweb Bride trilogy, and The Atlantis Grail books.

Some people prefer eating dessert to the main course. These people have never been really hungry.
Short stories are like individual jewel stones on a necklace, wonderful in themselves like standalone gleaming entities of semantic intensity.
If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options. You can climb it and cross to the other side. You can go around it. You can dig under it. You can fly over it. You can blow it up. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there. You can turn around and go back the way you came. Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.
Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind. Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things. Their language has been lost. But not the gestures.
It is interesting that we call something good a “dream,” but being called a “dreamer” is somewhat of a putdown. Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world. If you are a secret dreamer, it’s your time to announce yourself.
A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.
Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it. — © Vera Nazarian
Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that’s out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.It is the one true and perfect symbol of the universe.And it is the one most accurate symbol of you.Spread your arms in an embrace, throw your head back, and prepare to receive and send coordinates of being. For, at last you know—you are the navigator, the captain, and the ship.
Thoughts are slippery fish in a cold shallow stream.If you are intent on capturing a worthwhile one, you need to stand very still, focus very hard on somewhere outside yourself, and then simply ignore it until it gets so close that it tickles your ankles.Then, pounce.
There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.
Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.
Don't be afraid of the dark. Shine!
When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow.
I am happy. I have something to accomplish, create, and achieve. I am happy.
Responsibility and Trust -- these two are like Yin and Yang, together perfectly complete, and each one requiring the presence of the other. The next time you mistrust someone, consider this -- does that person feel responsible for you in any way? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and trust them. Very likely, they are looking out for your best interest.
I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.
Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding.
Strange dreams are better than no dreams at all.
You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself. Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self. Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy. Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself. Otherwise, cede your gavel.
Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot. — © Vera Nazarian
Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.
A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.
Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.
Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure: 1. Acceptance 2. Understanding 3. Appreciation Remove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart. Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions? So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.
When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.
A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.
Freedom is not a license to act but a license to exercise free choices in any given situation.
Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator. So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.
If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.
Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder. Another is Deity. The choice to be a fool is yours.
Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.
We often engage the defense mechanism of tunnel vision, just to keep ourselves focused on our daily lives. This makes us terribly jaded in our perception of what is really around us.
All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.
When you wake up from a dream you have only a few precious moments before the details of the dream begin to dissipate and the memory fades. Not all dreams are significant or worth remembering. But the ones that are . . . happen again. So, wait for the dream to return. And never be afraid. Instead, consider it an opportunity to learn something profound and possibly wondrous about yourself.
A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.
I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.
Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.
Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING.... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point.... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion.
For as long as there's anyone to ask 'Why?' the answer will always be, 'Why not?
A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.
It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other.
Once upon a time there were two countries, at war with each other. In order to make peace after many years of conflict, they decided to build a bridge across the ocean. But because they never learned each other’s language properly, they could never agree on the details, so the two halves of the bridge they started to build never met. To this day the bridge extends far into the ocean from both sides, and simply ends half way, miles in the wrong direction from the meeting point. And the two countries are still at war.
It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice.The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole.The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it.And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it.
Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.
When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.
Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it. — © Vera Nazarian
Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.
Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.
What we need in fantasy is the sudden balm of clarity - a temporary reprieve from life's white noise and clamor of pain, a kind of time-out. Such clarity, a new perspective, is made possible by fantastic metaphor.
What is blood but the wine of life?
It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.
I've just been bitten on the neck by a vampire... mosquito. Does that mean that when the night comes I will rise and be annoying?
Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn’t complain. What's your excuse?
The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember.
Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss. We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends. It is laughter.
Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all.
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. — © Vera Nazarian
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine.
Q: Why do I love thee, O Night? A: Because you know I will never answer.
Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower.
Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor. Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something. But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.
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