Scott Westerfeld Quotes

Anything that's given to you can be taken away from you at any time.

You can't even stand without risking to fall.

We're just a bubble in a boiling pot.

I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability - the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

There is no such thing as security. There never has been.

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

Life is a mystery. Life is uncertain. It makes one feel a bit wobbly to realize that.

...our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

That's the nature of this business. Something that took ten years to make can crumble in an instant. It could be snatched away from you at any moment.

Nothing is fixed or foolproof; I have no delusion about that.

The great risk of being alive is always that something can happen to you - or to someone you dearly love - at any moment.

Confidence is a fragile thing.

It's so easy for all the success in the world to suddenly end, and I'm quite aware of that.

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor

This world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

Life is a toy made of glass; it appears to be of inestimable price, but in reality it is very cheap.

All human things hang on a slender thread, the strongest fall with a sudden crash.

Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.

Anything can go away. There's no such thing as safety and security. You can do things that give you the illusion of safety and security, but there's really no such thing.

But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.