"In general, it’s a good idea to avoid people who take themselves too seriously. As individuals, we have only so much seriousness to go round, and people who take themselves very seriously don’t have enough seriousness left over to take other people seriously. Instead they tend to look down on them, and are secretly pleased when they get stuff wrong, because they just prove to the too-serious types that they were right not to take them seriously to begin with." — John Connolly — The Gates (via pretendpsychiatrist)
"Anyway, the scientists figured, if the end of the world did happen, there wouldn’t be anybody left to blame them. There would probably be just enough time for someone to say, “Hey, you said it wouldn’t cause the end of—” before there was a bit of a bang, and then silence. Scientists, while very intelligent, don’t always think things through. Take, for example, the first caveman who found a nice rock, tied it to a stick with a piece of vine, and thought, “Hmm, I’ve just invented a Thing for Banging Other Things into Things With. I feel certain that nobody will use this to hit someone over the head with instead.” Which someone promptly did. In fact, they probably hit him with it so that they could steal it. This is how we end up with nuclear weapons, and scientists claiming that they’d only set out to invent something that steamed radishes." — John Connolly—The Gates (via pretendpsychiatrist)
“Inside,” said Reverend Ussher. ” Quickly!”
He and the verger retreated into the church and locked the door. Outside, they could hear gargoyles beating against the wood and scratching at the lock, but the door was very old and very thick, and it would take more than a bunch of foot-high stone monsters to break it down.
“What do we do now?” asked the verger.
“We’ll call the police,” said the vicar.
“And what’ll we tell them?”
“That the church is under siege from gargoyles,” said the vicar, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Right,” said the verger. “That’ll work.
The Gates, John Connolly
"Nefarious” means very wicked indeed, in a cunning way. If you plan on being nefarious, it pays to look the part: dress in black; wear a hat, preferably one with a wide brim and no flowers; and perhaps grow a mustache that you can twirl. It also helps to have a deep and sinister laugh, to indicate when you’re being nefarious. You know the kind: “BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!” That kind." — The Gates, John Connolly
"Whenever someone uses the word “glitch,” which means a fault of some kind in a system, you should immediately be suspicious, because it means they don’t know what it is. A technician who uses the term “glitch” is like a doctor who tells you you’re suffering from a “thingy,” except the doctor won’t tell you to go home and try turning yourself on and off again." — The Gates, John Connolly
"Most people are not bad. Oh, they do bad things sometimes, and we all have a little badness in us, but very few people are unspeakably evil, and most of the bad things they do seem perfectly reasonable to them at the time. Perhaps they’re bored, or selfish, or greedy, but, for the most part, they don’t actually want to hurt anyone when they do bad things. They just want to make their own lives a little easier." — The Gates, John Connolly
Okay, so Gods Behaving Badly. I do not recommend. This book is awful
Don’t read this b/c spoilers and blahblahblahblahblah if you care
First off, rape jokes. Not funny. Like, I understand that Greek mythology is riddled with tales of the gods assaulting mortals, but to joke about it? Not okay. And another thing: it’s really as if the author did not think this through. I understand that she was casting Apollo as a self-centered narcissist, but he fell in love with Alice, and I think that a god who’s been around for however many thousands of years would have enough common sense to understand that rape=/=love
My second major problem is that she ((the author)) seriously wanted the reader to believe that Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, had figured out the solution to their problem yet was unable to communicate it in a way her godly peers could understand for over two thousand years. Do not go dissing Athena; she is the bamf-est deity who ever strutted across Mount Olympus. The goddess of motherfucking wisdom, we are supposed to believe, is not smart enough to convey that being worshiped is like food to a god. Not just that, but none of the other gods could figure this out? I figured it out not even half-way through the book. Does this make me smarter than Artemis and Hermes and Zeus? Look out, Athena, you’ve got competition apparently. I think the author simply had something against Athena
My third largest issue was when Alice died. Now I understand that I don’t view death and love the same way that most people seem to, so it was difficult for me to try and understand why Neil spent nearly a month moping in the solitude of his flat, but really? This is not love. This is some sort of obsession or idealization. This is pathetic. Now I’ve never lost anyone I loved ((just pets, but I know most people won’t count that)), but I know that there has to be a certain amount of self-love that has to go into loving someone else. You can’t love someone and hate yourself. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t spend nearly a month neglecting your mental and physical well-being along with your friends, co-workers, family, and life and yet claim to be in love with someone. This isn’t love; this is obsession
And then Alice. Despite being dead and living in the Underworld, she somehow still remembers Neil perfectly and refuses to move on with her
lifedeath. Again, this is not loveAnd Persephone. She’s been around for thousands of years, yet Neil and Alice’s relationship is the very definition of love to her? Just no. I don’t think even the God of Stupidity would be that dumb
And the ending was just dumb. Like, I have no other way of describing it. It was just terrible
I don’t know how the author managed to do this, because it was a fine idea—Greek gods in modern times, seriously, great idea—but it was just so poorly executed
tl;dr: I found this book very insulting to the reader’s intelligence and just poorly written. Not worth staying up until 6 this morning reading it
