J3 Golem Quotes

“According to Thomas, the city [of Bath] had once been a veritable hotbed of manifestations, with every sorcerer, bunyip, golem, goblin, pict, pixie, demon, thylacine, gorgon, moron, cult, scum, mummy, rummy, groke, sphinx, minx, muse, flagellant, diva, reaver, weaver, reaper, scabbarder, scabmettler, dwarf, midget, little person, leprechaun, marshwiggle, totem, soothsayer, truthsayer, hatter, hattifattener, imp, panwere, mothman, shaman, flukeman, warlock, morlock, poltergeist, zeitgeist, elemental, banshee, manshee, lycanthrope, lichenthrope, sprite, wight, aufwader, harpy, silkie, kelpie, klepto, specter, mutant, cyborg, balrog, troll, ogre, cat in shoes, dog in a hat, psychic and psychotic seemingly having decided that this was the hot spot to visit.”

— Daniel O'Malley

“You should have Hugo throw you in the pool."
The golem turned his head toward Seth, who shrugged.
"Sure, that would be fun."
Hugo nodded, grabbed Seth, and, with a motion like a hook shot, flung him skyward. Kendra gasped. They were still thirty or forty feet away from the edge of the pool. She had pictured the golem carrying Seth much closer before tossing him. Her brother sailed nearly as high as the roof of the house before plummeting down and landing in the center of the deep end with an impressive splash.
Kendra ran to the side of the pool. By the time she arrived, Seth was boosting himself out of the waster, hair and clothes dripping. "That was the freakiest, awesomest moment in my life!" Seth declared. "But next time, let me take off my shoes.”

— Brandon Mull

“Rhys was tempted to point out that the golem's heavy footfalls more or less announced their presence already. Even attempting to move quietly, it was a constant litany of thoom thoom thoom. The golem seemed in no mood for such a reminder, however  ... if a walking statue could be said to have a "mood." Rhys was reminded of the solemn templar statues in the mage commons, and wondered what they might be like if they suddenly got up and started walking around. Somehow he doubted they would be nearly as sassy.”

— David Gaider

“On a cloudless night, inky dark, with only a rind of a moon above, the Golem and the Jinni went walking together along the Prince Street rooftops.”

— Helene Wecker

“I look over at him. He stares straight ahead.
"So," I say. "Golem, huh?"
"I prefer the term 'Mineral-American.”

— D.D. Barant

“When you are born," the golem said softly, "your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk, and crusty things, and dirt, and fear, and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going, or else you'll never be brave again.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

“I think I'd miss the dreams.
Wecker, Helene (2013-04-23). The Golem and the Jinni (P.S.) (p. 59). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.”

— Helene Wecker

“GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE. "I Will Stay Here, Please." HERE? THERE'S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death. "Yes, I Know," said the ghost of the golem. "It Is Perfect. I Am Free.”

— Terry Pratchett

“I never wanted to be Protestant. Jews do, plenty of them. Not me. To be assimilated, to be respectable, to be detached like the Wasps, I understand the desire, but I knew never to try. I see all those distinguished Wasps with the beautiful gray hair and the pinstripe suits who don't have pimples on their ass. They're my lawyers ... These guys are quiet. I don't want to be that way. I couldn't begin to be that way. I'm the wild Jew of the pampas. I am the Golem of the U.S.A.”

— Philip Roth

“Rabbi Loew of sixteenth-century Prague. He is supposed to have formed an artificial human being-a robot-out of clay, just as God had formed Adam out of clay. A clay object, however much it might resemble a human being, is "an unformed substance" (the Hebrew word for it is "golem"), since it lacks the attributes of life. Rabbi Loew, however, gave his golem the attributes of life by making use of the sacred name of God, and set the robot to work protecting the lives of Jews against their persecutors.”

— Isaac Asimov

“In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.”

— Kage Baker

“According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots.”

— Kage Baker

“He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and ... love ... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul.”

— Laini Taylor

“Then, in spite of everything, he began to smile. So much of his existence in Everlost had been full of despair. Despair, and a fear of losing what he had. But Allie was not lost, she was just there across the river, waiting for him to find her. Nick was not lost either
not entirely.
It was then that Mikey McGill realized something. It must have been his sister who first called this place Everlost, because by naming it so, it stripped away all hope except for a faith in her, and the "safety" she could provide. Well, Mary was wrong on all counts, because nothing in Everlost was lost forever, if one had the courage to search for it.
Mikey held tightly on to this shining truth as he and the golem sunk into the earth. Then with all the force of his heart, his mind, and his soul, Mikey McGill began to dig.”

— Neal Shusterman

“Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled-"
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please-someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact ... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait-don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy-incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck.”

— Jonathan Stroud

“For an instant Stile was daunted by the improbability of it all: a man, a cyborg, a robot, an animalhead, and a wooden golem, all riding unicorns through a battlefield strewn with goblins and dragons, pursuing an invaluable ball of power-rock that rolled along a channel cleared by plastic explosive. What a mishmash!”

— Piers Anthony

“I knew you would say that," Dee said, and then the huge Golem launched himself at Perry. "Humans are so predictable.”

— Michael Scott

“Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat
was, literally, talked into life.”

— Michael Chabon

“The shaping of a golem, to [Joe] was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation. It was the expression of a yearning that a few magic words and an artful hand might produce something
one poor, dumb, powerful thing
exempt from the crushing strictures, from the ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation. It was the voicing of a vain wish, when you got down to it, to escape. To slip, like the Escapist, free of the entangling chain of reality and the straitjacket of physical laws.”

— Michael Chabon

“Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing - a golem. And, indeed, this image, sick-eningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.”

— Terence McKenna

“We see the Jew, then, in business, as promoter, money-lender, salesman par excellence, the author and chief instigator of a system of credit by which a nation-wide usury rises like a Golem (a created monster) with a million hands on a million throats, to choke the honor and the freedom-of-movement of a hard-working people.”

— Samuel Roth

“Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.”

— Kieron Gillen

“Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?”

— Hunter S. Thompson