The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of t...
How is Angeline?" asked Dimitri. "Is she improving?" Eddie and I exchanged glances. So much for avoiding her indiscretions. "improving how exactly?" I asked. "Improving how exactly?" I asked. "In combat, in following the dress code, or in keeping her...
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of h...
What the hell’s the matter with you men? Are you cowards as well as stupid? You boys make me sick. I’m done with you. You hear me? I want you to go back to your places now and stay with your children until I say you’re needed. “Tell your wive...
What have you to trade for my silence?" ... He opened his mouth to beckon the men, but Eleri moved like lightning. With her right arm restrained, she couldn't cut him. However, her weapon of choice caught him completely off-guard. Her lips sealed to ...
As a people, we have been tolled farther and farther away from the facts of what we have done by the romanticizers, whose bait is nothing more than the wishful insinuation that we have done no harm. Speaking a public language of propaganda, uninfluen...
Cards and boards, [Johnny] thought. And the dead. That's not dark forces. Making a fuss about cards and heavy metal and going on about Dungeons and Dragons stuff because it's got demon gods in it is like guarding to door when is really coming up thro...
How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm.... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting.... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish whe...
You survived as a child because others helped to maintain your life. It continues to be true today, even when you think you are abandoned, rejected, neglected, and unloved: the tomatoes you eat sustain you, the crossing guard stops the traffic so you...
But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word INTERFERENCE. But Christianity placed at the centre what then...
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this", he begins. He doesn't blush, and his eyes don't dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. "You're very attractive." I've been c...
Nico strode forward. The enemy army fell back before him like he radiated death, which of course he did. Through the face guard of his skull-shaped helmet, he smiled. "Got your message. Is it too late to join the party?" "Son of Hades." Kronos spit o...
One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party’s demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effec...
Female Mercenary. This will be a companion on your Tour. She is usually tall, thin and wiry, silent, and neurotic. Sex scares her. This is because she either came from a nunnery or was raped as a child. Or both. Somehow this inspired her to become a ...
The borderline Queen experiences what therapists call "oral greediness". The desperate hunger of the borderline Queen is akin to the behavior of an infant who had gone too long between feelings. Starved, frustrated, and beyond the ability to calm of ...
An Irish Airman foresees his Death I Know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love, My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end co...
...So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how th...
What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please con...
I noticed some scratch marks and faded blood stains high up on a wall. “What happened there?” “An inmate must have tried to escape. I saw a guy use two suction devices like the ones used to carry glass sheets to help lever himself up. He reache...
Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and levity and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spi...
Korben Dallas: [shoves a bag into Ruby's hands] You guard this with your life, or you're gonna look like this guy here! You green? DJ Ruby Rhod: G-green. [cut to the President's office, where every word is being heard over the radio, transmitted gala...