{"author":"David Benioff","author_id":"David+Benioff","total_quotes":18,"quotes":[{"text":"‎I was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["city-of-thieves","history","inspirational","jewish","jews","pessimism","russia","russian","story","world-war-ii","ww2"],"id":42726,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["city-of-thieves","history","inspirational","jewish","jews","pessimism","russia","russian","story","world-war-ii","ww2"],"id":60731,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?","author":"David Benioff","tags":["courage","heroism"],"id":74899,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"He gave me a small, secretive smile, a smile that said he knew many things but couldn’t share them all at once.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["secrets","smile"],"id":142953,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"So many die without our caring, decline to silence in rooms beyond hearing. We honor the dead and abhor the dying.- from the story 'De Composition.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["dying"],"id":195589,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["happiness","nostalgia"],"id":203917,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"Stalin goes to visit one of the collectives outside of Moscow,” began Kolya in his joke-telling voice. “Wants to see how they’re getting on with the latest Five-Year Plan. ‘Tell me, comrade,’ he asks one farmer. ‘How did the potatoes do this year?’ ‘Very well, Comrade Stalin. If we piled them up, they would reach God.’ ‘But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.’ ‘Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["communism","stalin"],"id":269304,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"The front door is usually unlocked and there is no alarm system. They don't wear their seat belts in the car; they don't wear suntan lotion in the sun. They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["city-of-thieves","courage","death","fearless","god"],"id":277474,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"It made me happy that poems are referred to in the present tense even when the poet is in the past tense.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["city-of-thieves","poems","poet","poetry"],"id":296008,"author_id":"David+Benioff"},{"text":"Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail, and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but refuse. They cling to the realm, or love, or the gods…illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is. But they’ll never know this. Not until it’s too late.","author":"David Benioff","tags":["chaos"],"id":318776,"author_id":"David+Benioff"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}