Air traffic control is going to have a steamy old fit on your dime, boy. They can get in line behind the police, the people whose cars we trashed, the Empire of Ob'enn, the Partnership Collective, and the Wormgate Corporation. Oh, and I think maybe s...
. . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with every new person, as if I am starting anew. These things are instinctive. What you need to learn is to lay aside your inhibitions, to go back to your ch...
And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is no secret that many people here think that you are a ...
You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.' 'What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji. 'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that ...
But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and grow...
I suppose men, even myself, are perpetually boys. The sons of parents who provide the staples of what makes up a life— a home, an example of what it means to be human, however fucked up that may be. We are molded by impressions and an example, sing...
You are my whole heart, Scarlet. And this is breaking it.' My heart cracked open and clear dropped out of me. My mouth opened, and I looked round me and stamped my foot. 'Does this look like a good time to tell me that, you damn stupid boy?' I meant ...
Whose boys are those with the holes in their pants?" I cringed. How would my grandpa answer such an embarrassing question? "Those are my daughter's children, my grandchildren," Grandpa spoke as if he'd just been asked who had won first place in a foo...
Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded...
It only took Alexis a day to read a five-hundred page book. Fiction stories took her to another world where she could lose herself for a while in someone else’s life. Its funny how things like loans to pay back, a broken home and family, and a futu...
A warm feeling fell over the boy. A mix of security and comfort, as if a blanket were wrapping its soft layers around his heart and nuzzling him snuggly. Gavin loved his mother, and he would be forever grateful to his father for protecting her. The w...
…the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects, we destroy his standards, per...
I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh no. I will find you, and I will drag you to the altar on your back if need be, no matter ...
War did not come like a hurricane, Rorimer realized, destroying everything in its path. It came like a tornado, touching down in patches, taking with it one life while leaving the next person unharmed.
[Charles] Nodier’s later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bea...
Robots are like Mars: they need girls. Boys won't do; the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp when they should kiss and they're none too keen on having things shoved inside them... It's not a robot until you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like tha...
His readiness to undergo persecutions for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement - all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an...
I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of the State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world i...
I do not dye my hair black so as to be young again and sin again but because people dye their clothes black in mourning, so I have dyed my hair black, mourning for my old age. -
One grey hair appeared on my head I plucked it out with my hand. It answered me: "You have prevailed against me alone - What will you do when my army comes after me?" -
Your life is a sum of counted breaths. With each breath that passes a part of life is lost. That which gives life brings death every moment nearer, and your caravan is led by one who will not jest with you. -
