The conservatives had started bringing demagoguery to the table on the [Afghan] war issue the previous fall [fall 2006]. Whenever opposition members criticized the war policy, assorted Tories accused them of being disloyal and of failing to support t...
This is your first lesson.” He went from Arkûl to Arkûl, taking spears, belt knives and shortswords from their corpses. When he was finished, he tossed the weapons into the crowd. “A man without a weapon is a subject,” he said to them as they...
She had a hand on his belt, ready to show him exactly what she had in mind for the night, when he lowered to his knees between her legs, his hands spanning her ribs. Nervousness had vanished from his expression, replaced by eyes that gimmered with te...
I was rolling the dead warrior over to steal his cloak, too, knowing it would be far too large on me, when I noticed the blade stashed in the back of his belt. It was solid in my hand, and its blade was sawlike. It would be perfect for gutting the As...
Okay, first of all, I didn’t sleep with you to make amends. I slept with you because I wanted to.” He still didn’t say anything, and she pointed at him again. “And you know what? It was your own damn fault. It was those jeans you wear, and th...
Ransom Stoddard: [looking into Doniphon's coffin, angrily] Where are his boots? Undertaker: Well, I thought... well, they was an awful nice pair of boots, almost brand new, and I thought... Ransom Stoddard: Put his boots on, Clute. And his gun belt, ...
Alicia: Look, I'll make it easy for you. The time has come when you must tell me you have a wife and two adorable children... and this madness between us can't go on any longer. Devlin: Bet you've heard that line often enough. Alicia: [hurt] Right be...
Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and da...
Sicarius, are you ready for a hike?” She faced him only to find he had armed himself—more so than usual. In addition to his daggers and throwing knives, he held two rifles, two pistols, two cargo belts laden with ammo pouches, and a bag of his sm...
If I don't keep this job, then my only future career-options are working in Argos, or being a prostitute,' I say, wildly. 'Maybe you could work in Argos a prostitute,' my mother says, merrily. She appears to be enjoying this conversation. 'They could...
He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped...
The air felt thick with the feeling between us, like it was filling the room: a room full of our carnal heat, our hot desire for each other. Both my hands were clenched on the tablecloth, bunching it tightly, as he continued to swipe the belt against...
At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and N...
The conditions necessary for devastating epidemics or pandemics just didn't exist until the agricultural revolution. The claim that modern medicine and sanitation save us from infectious diseases that ravaged pre-agricultural people (something we hea...
If only Myrtle would pay attention to the Boy's Own Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, etc., she would know that these creatures were Threls, who come from a worldlet called Threlfall on the far side of the asteroid belt. This Threlfall is a cheerless, c...
In an ideal world, he’d simply scrape the surface of his bottomless courage, carelessly slip off his horse, scratch his massive balls, and then stroll over to the Lair in his own good time. But this wasn’t an ideal world, Rawley’s courage reser...
Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots and search for wild grass. We'll eat anything, and we have. But you can't eat a leather belt like it's a cri...
LaBoeuf: You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin' I gave some thought to stealin' a kiss... though you are very young, and sick... and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good...
On that trip I learnt something very important. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken he...
Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, ...
When I was writing my column, I would almost always be recognized when I was in a restaurant, even if I was reviewing it and had booked under a fake name, so free stuff would start coming out of the kitchen on a conveyer belt, fantastic wines would b...
