She's elegant," Olivia stated. "I would kill to have her figure." "Really?" "Of course. I have always wished to look precisely like her. Though obviously, not enough to avoid food," she added. "That's madness. You have everything she doesn't." Olivia...
Oh please tell me we're not doing the Poirot thing again — the suspects in the library with the candlestick or whatever'. Max looked at him [DCI Cotton]. 'Fruitcake in this case. And what would you prefer? A car chase? It’s the most efficient way...
I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed on her heavily. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. She had told a secret and now had the s...
No, on the outside view there was nothing for anyone to notice about me. I remained one pillar of a trinity, another pillar was lying only temporarily (temporarily! temporarily! temporarily!) in the hospital, I was the pilot of a three-engine aircraf...
The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arg...
He's Darkness. Unpleasant. I wouldn't trust him. Nor do I trust every mortal I meet. I don't know where evil comes from, and frankly it doesn't matter. Not right now. Histories and myths are renamed and reinvented eternally across the world. I can't ...
The moonlight streaming through the sheer draperies revealed Taylor smiling, boneless and peaceful in Will's embrace. The most dangerous man Will knew rested sweetly in his arms, trusting him with his love as he trusted Will to guard his life. It was...
It is easy in retrospect to see why he’d want to go. There are two women who are furious at him. To make one happy, he must take the subway across town and arrive on her doorstep. To make the other happy, he must wear for some infinitely long perio...
Nick spoke for the first time. "Can I go to the nurse's office too?" Ms. Popplewell looked at him It obviously took her only one look to decide. "No." "I'm traumatized too," Nick claimed, his voice completely flat. "He's a delicate flower," Alan said...
He spiked the dirt, twisted out the deformed rose, tossed it aside. His palms sweated. 'Sorry,' Persephone suggested. 'Pardon?' She murmured, 'You should say sorry when you kill something.' It took him a moment to realize she meant the rose. 'It was ...
I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For t...
Lifting the pillow, he brought out kanarack's gun and hefted it in his hand. Tipping it toward him, he saw the hole where death came out. It looked easy. Even seductive. The Simplest way of all. No more fear of the police, or of the tall man. Best of...
How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. ...
Mawdryn stared at the Brigadier with such a look of pain and longing. For a moment the old soldier's mind went back thirty-five years to his first taste of action as a young lieutenant in Palestine, with his platoon badly shot up by terrorists, and h...
I should have forgiven him.” “Maybe. Maybe there’s more we all could have done,” he says, “but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.” I frown and pull back. That is a lesson that members of Abnegation learn – g...
This is what I chose. This is it." I look over Robert's shoulder. The Dauntless guards seem to have finished examining the truck. The bearded man gets back into the driver's seat and closes the door behind him. "Besides, Robert. The goal of my life i...
At most, a hundred paces separated him from them. The powerful beast, seeing the riders and horses, rose on his fore paws and began to gaze at them. The sun, which now stood low, illuminated his huge head and shaggy breasts, and in that ruddy luster ...
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' pe...
Rory stood up with some difficulty, the chair still tied to him. He leaned over me [Maria] and managed to pull my ropes free. Then he turned to Dr Bloom. 'We're escaping,' he said. 'Goodbye.' Chair still tied to his back, he ran with me from the room...
One longs and longs to be grown up, doesn't one?," she said, "I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But lif...
Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him. "Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her. "It takes a man with real heart" —he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest— "to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us wee...