Quotes by Game Designers

Do you smoke, Herr Cabal?""Only to be antisocial," replied Cabal, making no move.
Jonathan L. Howard
Over time, even the tiniest meaningful actions add up, each one bringing you closer to a life that is truer to your dreams and free of regret.
Jane McGonigal
He saw a figure in white robes near the bridge entrance and turned the tape over in his hand. He approached the woman and said, his tone respectful, "Your Highness. The transmission we received...", seemed younger every day, even as her responsibilities grew and grew.He held out his hand. Childlike fingers took the tape."What is it they've sent us?" he asked.Prince Leia Organa looked at him as if he'd placed another burden on her shoulders - another responsibility to add to a count of thousands - and she was proud to bear it."Hope," she said.Raymus believed her.
Alexander Freed
You're just being cryptic again. It's like soap opera sex. Lots of boring dialogue and when they finally do go to bed, everything's dark and covered by blankets.
Ragnar Tørnquist
Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations.
Neal Stephenson
I just saved your fucking life, Mom...It's like, if you--people of a certain age--would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures.
Neal Stephenson
One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered... I'm going to put a mask on and scrawl my name across the face of the world, build cities of gold, come back and stomp this place flat, until even the bricks are just dust. So you can just shut up. All of you. I'm going to move the world.
Austin Grossman
Nesse’s research focuses on the evolutionary origins of depression. Why does depression exist at all? If it’s stayed in our gene pool for so long, he argues, there must be some evolutionary benefit. Nesse believes that depression may be an adaptive mechanism meant to prevent us from falling victim to blind optimism—and squandering resources on the wrong goals.11 It’s to our evolutionary advantage not to waste time and energy on goals we can’t realistically achieve. And so when we have no clear way to make productive progress, our neurological systems default to a state of low energy...
Jane McGonigal
I'm not saying it's going to be easy; I'm saying it's going to be worth it. If it was easy, you would've done it by now
B. Dave Walters
Aunt Mercy put down her tiles, one at a time. I-T-C-H-I-N.Aunt Grace leaned closer to the board, squinting. "Mercy Lynne, you're cheatin' again! What kinda word is that? Use it in a sentence.""I'm itchin' ta have some a that white cake.""That's not how you spell it." At least one of them could spell. Aunt Grace pulled one of the tiles off the board. "There's no T in itchin'." Or not.
Margaret Stohl
It was an unfamiliar feeling, waking up with a place to go, a place I was actually beginning to comprehend and face without a sense of terror.More than that, I was even questioning the assumption that I was, in my bones, a scared and anxious and miserable person. It felt like the days were almost supernaturally good, that I could wake up without the usual wave of terror, that the days were admixed with some foreign substance dripping into them, some animating essence, like the dragonborn races of Endoria, dragonborn days. I felt like I'd stumbled on one of the open secrets of the world. Why hadn't I realized before that being a grown-up could be anything you wanted it to be?
Austin Grossman
You can't expect everyone to have the same dedication as you.
Jeff Kinney
Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again—making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. […] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics.
Neal Stephenson
Talent is a word lazy people use to explain why they can’t do things.
Edmund McMillen
He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths.He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding what must never be found, we all round that first corner by choice - and by then, we are lost.You too. You must decide what is false and what is true, and what is true for me but not for you. We are wandering the mazes, all of us, and we cannot hope to escape until we learn to tell between what is real and what is real for someone else. There lies the madness, and the truth as well.
Troy Denning
Honor is the only thing that separates us from animals.
Peter Tieryas
Why would a god sacrifice her life if she was God? Just show real power and send an army of angels and there'd be no debate.
Peter Tieryas
I think most people are afraid to love because they want the freedom to suffer alone.
Peter Tieryas
The windows on the Dovetail side of the gatehouse were larger, and she could see the two corgi dogs outside, peering in through the lead latticework, flabbergasted that they had, through some enormous lacuna in procedure, been left on the outside, wagging their tails somewhat uncertainly, as if, in a world that allowed such mistakes, nothing could be counted on.
Neal Stephenson
The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are.
Naomi Alderman
Doubt not your purpose nor your strength.
Joe Dever
Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.
Neal Stephenson
You want a happy family?""I'd love a miserable one where everyone hated each other.""Why?""So we could find redemption in each other's arms.
Peter Tieryas
There was this book Dad used to read to me every night called "The Giving Tree." It was a really good book, but the back of it had a picture of the author, this guy named Shel Silverstein.But Shel Silverstein looks more like a burglar or a pirate than a guy who should be writing books for kids.Dad must have known that picture kind of freaked me out, because one night after I got out of bed, Dad said: "IF YOU GET OUT OF BED AGAIN TONIGHT, YOU'LL PROBABLY RUN INTO SHEL SILVERSTEIN IN THE HALLWAY."That really did the trick, Ever since then, I STILL don't get out of bed at night, even if I really need to use the bathroom.
Jeff Kinney
Durkon: You're only saying that because you don't want the world t
Rich Burlew
The business of the dead belongs to the living.
Margaret Stohl
i know how it makes you feel...peaceful, permanent, unbroken
Margaret Stohl
I wrote a book on cats. In retrospect, I should have used paper, cause chapter six got hit by a car.
Wynne McLaughlin
No, General. I'm not your subordinate. And what I'm coming dangerously close to is violence.-General Wedge Antilles
Aaron Allston
I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she said, by way of explanation.
Alexander Freed
He hadn't known her, didn't know her, of course. There wasn't the time.
Alexander Freed
Frankly, I believe that identity is what's inside us.
Theo Coster
Never been here before. It's like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they've blundered into the mega jackpot" Hiro Protagonist - Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.
Neal Stephenson
This is the purpose of life, is it not? To create life is the greatest act a living creature can commit.
Michael A. Stackpole
Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.
Margaret Stohl