Complete. What an awful word for an infected people, that final, animal stage that was the future of all of them. Chels swallowed, unsure what to say. “That’s…sad. I didn’t even know he was infected.” Semesz whispered, “He was just infect...
Sometimes I go to the beach and stand facing the wind, which I wish were icy, colder than we know it in these parts. I wish it would blow all the hackneyed words, all the insipid habits of language out of me so that I could come back with a cleansed ...
I often feel an aversion, even disgust at the same words written and spoken over and over – at the same expressions, phrases, and metaphors repeated. And the worst is, when I listen to myself I have to admit that I too endlessly repeat the same thi...
One who would really like to know himself would have to be a restless, fanatical collector of disappointments, and seeking disappointing experiences must be like an addiction, the all-determining addiction of his life, for it would stand so clearly b...
it is all clearer now than it was then. Rhea would say it is the vivid fabrications of an ageing mind. More likely, though, it is the clarity that comes from ageing - from the natural process of releasing the mind from imagined futures, and allow the...
It's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's lik...
—Hace dos mil años que lucho solo. —Bueno, nunca se es demasiado viejo para aprender. Kyrian resopló. —No puedes enseñarle trucos nuevos a un perro viejo. —No dejes para mañana lo que puedas hacer hoy. —El tiempo es oro. —Dios ayuda a...
You're going to throw me naked into a pit and make me drench myself in baby lotion, aren't you?" Bride You live in New Orleans, where they can't even dig a grave. So tell me where I'm going to find this pit?" Vane "It's an above ground pit." Bride "H...
On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a l...
Memory in the mind of man can adapt to the worst conditions. I'll give you an example, an analogy of sorts: Each night I sop rags with beer and lay them out in careful strips. With rags soaked in beer I tease cockroaches from a crack in the baseboard...
An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast ...
When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later beg...
She brought her hand to his chest. His chiseled muscles responded to her touch, and a moan escaped her as he clutched her tighter. Calisto’s fingers slid through her hair, and her lips parted, her tongue tasting him, tangling with his until her kne...
But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse—jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss go...
This was why people got mated, Rehv suddenly thought. Fuck the sex and the social position. If they were smart, they did it to make a house that had no walls and an invisible roof and a floor that no could walk on-and yet the structure was a shelter ...
The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried ...
Indelible, adj. That first night, you took your finger and pointed to the top of my head, then traced a line between my eyes, down my nose, over my lips, my chin, my neck, to the center of my chest. It was so surprising. I knew I would never mimic it...
Love your kids and just be there for them. You don't have to eyeball their every moment or to orchestrate all their comings and goings. They know this. They know that's too much. All they want is to be assured that there's a home fire cooking, that t...
... If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft bre...
And it seems people should not build houses anymore it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors under electric lights without shades; it seems there is a lot to forget and a lot not to do and in drugstores, markets, ba...
It wasn’t until I’d walked halfway across the parking lot that I realized: 1. I wasn’t wearing shoes. A. Or a shirt. 2. I didn’t bring my keys A. Or anything really. 3. I’d just left a complete stranger in m...
