As she looked in the full-length mirror in her dressing room, she added a few ropes of pearls, pinned a white silk camellia, and draped the Chantilly lace shawl. In that moment, Dana thought of fashion's most enduring icon who created this elegant an...
The secret to success: Don’t stop to admire yourself too often. I only stopped to admire my work after I wrote eight books, before that, I never once admired myself for accomplishing anything in my profession. Don't stop to admire yourself too much...
Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that’s holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It’s gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, ...
[passing over the wreck of the Montana] Lindsey Brigman: Coffey, these are the missile hatches, is that right? Lt. Hiram Coffey: That's right. It looks like a couple of hatches have sprung. Radiation's nominal. Warheads must still be intact. Lindsey ...
Johanna: 6'3", 6'1", maybe 5'9" - You can't be sure, you know the flippers, they add height or they take it away, or something. Anyway short dark hair... Not punk or anything, just short. And the cutest smile. He wasn't smiling at me, I don't think -...
I'm seven hundred years old, Alexander. I know when something isn't going to work. You won't even admit I exist to your parents." Alec stared at him. "I thought you were three hundred! You're seven huundred years old?" "Well," Magnus amended, "eight ...
You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile po...
I glared at him. “You didn't leave me alone for five minutes, you left me alone for a week. I could have hacked myself to pieces if there's been more than one mango in the house. You could have come home to a very gory scene. The press would have h...
She bit the inside of her cheek. “You wouldn’t keep secrets from me, would you? I mean we’ve been friends how long?” "We have been friends, thirteen years, eight months, two weeks, four days,” The wheelchair stopped and Ari watched the long...
She was right: school was lonely. The eighteen and nineteen year olds didn't socialize with the younger kids, and though there were plenty of students my age and younger [...] their lives were so cloistered and their concerns so foolish and foreign-s...
But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was still a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a lot of mistakes, a fact Tess compulsively shared on first dates, but she g...
every session I had no fewer than sixteen girls with “allergies” to dairy and wheat—cheese and bread basically—but also to garlic, eggplant, corn, and nuts. They had cleverly developed “allergies,” I believe, to the foods they had seen th...
Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ...
Is this your holiday homework?" asked Sarah. "Don't do it, Rose! And Eve will write you a note to say it's iniquitous to give eight-year-olds homework. You will, won't you, Eve?" "I could never spell 'iniquitous,' Sarah darling!" "Hot concrete," said...
My dear Mrs. Ali, I would hardly refer to you as old," he said. "You are in what I would call the very prime flowering of mature womanhood." It was a little grandiose but he hoped to surprise a blush. Instead she laughed out loud at him. "I have neve...
Choreographer Twyla Tharp, who directed the opera and dance scenes for the film Amadeus, has this to say about the film’s portrait of Mozart: There are no ‘natural’ geniuses… No-one worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight y...
It was more than just material prosperity. America in 1960 was a country where restraint and boundaries were the natural conditions in all arenas. People married younger and stayed married; even with those added twenty-eight million, there were fewer...
It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but ." Jace was looking at Simon as if he were some bizarre species of insect. "It's like what?" "It's a game," Clary explained. She felt vaguely embarrassed. "People pretend to be wizards and elves, and they kill mons...
Harry: Well what I'm doing for the guy who likes to bluff is I'm playing a little game called "Am I Bluffing?" [Loads one round into the revolver to play Russian Roulette] Harry: Where is she? Where the fuck is Harmony? You want to play hardball? I c...
Harry: [insistent] *You* are creating the mystery here obviously y'have something you'd like to say. Say it. John Oldman: [Hesitant] Maybe... I... Harry: [sing-song] Ten, nine, eight, seven, si... Sandy: [Chiding] Harry, stop. John Oldman: There is s...
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Relinquishing junk. Stage one, preparation. For this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large ...