To face a man in combat is challenge enough. To find the goddess in a woman is the life work of a man. Hard though the first may be, the second is the harder longer road. But every man seeks the woman of the dream, and only the best of men finds what...
Lilac curled her upper lip in a dead-eyed sneer, and it made my skin crawl. The girl looked like she might fillet me and have me for a snack later. She made the Dale R. Fielding High School Cheer Squad look like Barney and Friends, and I vowed to giv...
Olenna: Margaery, you're clever, be a dear and tell your poor old half-daft grandmother the name of that queer fish from the Summer Isles that puffs up to ten times its own size when you poke it. Margaery: They call them puff fish, Grandmother. Olenn...
I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical dat...
Do Engineers have stories, Jack?" he asked. "What?" Jack said, without moving. "Stories. Myths. Things to keep the boredom out on a long shift." "I think they play cards, mostly," Jack answered. It was a lie, but he told it with surprising deftness; ...
I realized that with Chance and me, there were no secrets. Or at least none that I could otherwise explain. I said, "I trust you more than I trust my own family, you know that?" "Well, they don't set the bar real high." He smiled at me, a silly, play...
To be certain you're consuming the real deal, look carefully at the label. W-h-i-s-k-e-y indicates the heavenly liquid from the Emerald Isle. Without the "e," it's from Scotland or some other godforsaken place.
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, yo...
The sudden halt of all touches and movements made Lorenz look up. “Vha…whas ist…What’s wrong?” Lorenz stammered, trying to focus so he could speak properly. Cyrus blinked his eyes. “Hmm? Nothing’s wrong. I’m just admiring how beautifu...
Both Lorenz’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “The island? Are ju suggesting that the island is alive?” The vampire shrugged. “I don’t know. I do feel something here. It’s almost like a vampire presence but something else as well. It’...
Surely there was at least one other girl on campus not sporting a French pedicure (do girls really think we’re fooled by the little white lines painted across their toenails?), who had some black in her wardrobe, and actually thought about things. ...
But first whom shall we send In search of this new world, whom shall we find Sufficient? Who shall tempt, with wand'ring feet The dark unbottomed infinite abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight Upbo...
Since its sudden birth the city had expanded, swallowing up acre upon acre of the surrounding grasslands and drawing thousands into its domain. Hardly built on the most advantageous ground, miles from the open waters, decades from the mines at the mo...
While the TV show 'Rizzoli & Isles' may have been inspired by my books, show runner Janet Tamaro has total control over where the TV characters go from there. As Janet once put it, I'm the birth mother, but she's the mother who adopted them, and now ...
You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, l...
You say great artists sell their souls for their art?" "Maybe," she ventured. "That's true, I suppose. If you're doing it right, anyway. I've probably sold mine. Jack's certainly sold his. And you, I imagine." "I have not!" she said, anger showing cl...
You're the most important person in my life," I whispered. "You're the only man I ever let in." "But I'm not in, Stace. I'm standing on the porch in the pouring rain, waiting for you to open the door. I've been waiting ever since you left after gradu...
All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What ma...
Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neg...
He challenged the world with his genius, and the world defeated him by ignoring the challenge and starving him. He stopped writing because he had failed and because he had no choice but to accept the world’s terms: there is no mystery here. This wa...
It's a bird of some sort. It's like a duck, only I never saw a duck have so many colors." The bird swam swiftly and gracefully toward the Magic Isle, and as it drew nearer its gorgeously colored plumage astonished them. The feathers were of many hues...
