Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't hav...
Narrator: [Tyler steers the car into the opposite lane and accelerates] What are you doing? Tyler Durden: Guys, what would you wish you'd done before you died? Ricky: Paint a self-portrait. The Mechanic: Build a house. Tyler Durden: [to Narrator] And...
Darth Sidious: [Vader's new mechanical body arises from the steam] Lord Vader... can you hear me? Darth Vader: Yes, Master. Darth Vader: [Vader looks at Sidious] Where is Padme? Is she safe? Is she all right? Darth Sidious: It seems in your anger, yo...
And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as looking out for himself and watching his tongue and not saying the wrong thing, the thing that might get him ...
The next minute he realized what had happened to him, but not before she’d caught him staring. For a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who unders...
For as men have fists and heads to defend themselves, so women have a gentleness of silence about them, a barrier built of things of the spirit, of pain, of quiet, of helplessness, of grace, of all that is beautiful and womanly an equal part, given t...
She released her weapon with one hand, twisted around, and kissed him. It was the deepest she had ever kissed him. Blood filled his face, and he went limp at the touch of her lips. Namine took the moment of dropped defense to put Zarrys flat on his b...
Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend'...
What we're doing, or, I should say, what doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. ...
Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, f...
My world burns severe. Pockets of sweltering air attack every inch of me exposed, heated by fire spewed forth from the lungs of dragons. For defense I raise a glowing sword that shines by virtue of powers contrary to those I fight against. It is a ba...
Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?" "We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we ...
He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL. Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That's how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time ...
What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson’s corridors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Myst-like discoveries thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? Or better yet: what is exciting...
Kaffee: Colonel, the 6am was first flight off the base? Col. Jessep: Yes. Kaffee: There wasn't a flight that left seven hours earlier and landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 2am? Judge Randolph: Lieutenant, I think we've covered this, haven't we? Kaf...
Madame Thénardier: [to male customer] I used to dream that I would meet a prince, but God Almighty, have you seen what's happened since? Thénardier: [defensive as others stare at him] What? What? Madame Thénardier: Master of the house isn't worth ...
Nigel Stone: This man is trying to help his country. Idi always seems to get it wrong, doesn't he? Nicholas Garrigan: Jesus fuckin' Christ! Get me out of here! Nigel Stone: You earn your passage, friend. Nicholas Garrigan: Wh-what? Nigel Stone: You k...
Radio Announcer: Civil defense officials in Cumberland have told newsmen that murder victims show evidence of having been partially devoured by their murderers. Consistent reports from witnesses to the effect that people who acted as if they were in ...
Dr. Peter Silberman: Why this elaborate scheme with the Terminator? Kyle Reese: It had no choice. Their defense grid was smashed. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence! Dr. Peter Silber...
All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of year...
Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness... focusing the consciousness... aortal dilation... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness... to be conscious by choice... blood enriched and swift-flooding t...
