He hurried back. Walls seemed to shift and advance. Right here, it must be. Wasn’t this passage too short? No, it wasn’t a wall that blocked his way, only fog. The fog retreated before him—then at once yielded up a wall. Staggering crimson lett...
Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a h...
Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could...
She once told him about the mysterious trampled-down places found in fields, which the peasants superstitiously called werewolves' nests. Coming across one of these sites, she fell to her knees and buried her face in the flattened yellow grasses, hop...
Somehow, Sydney had an internal clock that told her when time was up. I think it was part of her inherent ability to keep track of a hundred things at once. Not me. In these moments, my thoughts were usually focused on getting her shirt off and wheth...
The girl, Gary's girl....would keep bowls of Hershey's Kisses on the coffee table, and she'd decorate the house for all the big holidays and most of the small ones. Probably she'd be class mother, and PTA president, and she'd deliver meals to the eld...
I once read that love is like a rose: we fixate on the blossom, but it's the thorny stem that keeps it alive and aloft. I think marriage is like that. Like my father said, the things of greatest value are the things we fight for. And in the end, if w...
Although once when we were talking after class, Herr Silverman told me that when someone rises up and holds himself to a higher standard, even when doing so benefits others, average people resent it, mostly because they’re not strong enough to do t...
You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer onc...
I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night." He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke sof...
I am still drunk that you were here, and you were mine. And once again I stretch my hand out for that wine; As your drunk eyes could not bestir themselves, I too Can’t move; as you love wine, I love the wine that’s you;
I think you’re the only person I know who gets excited over these dead things.” Freya returned his smile with her own grin and let the crossbow in her hands rest against her hip. “If you don’t think they’re even the teensiest bit fascinatin...
The keys to liberation are universal and essentially simple: disengage from all the stories you've been telling yourself about life and who you are or should be as you negotiate your way through, and all at once you know yourself as divine, all-power...
I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up ...
The Chinese considered the moon to be yin, feminine and full of negative energy, as opposed to the sun that was yang and exemplified masculinity. I liked the moon, with its soft silver beams. It was at once elusive and filled with trickery, so that l...
Where had they all gone to, he often pondered; those threads he had once held together, how far had they scattered, some to break, others to weave into unknown patterns? The strange randomness of the world beguiled him, that randomness which never wo...
Yes, life is hard,” whispers Erika, “but knowing about other people, other civilisations, other ways of living, other places – that’s your escape route, a magical journey. Once you know about these things, no matter what happens, your mind ca...
There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do ...
Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations—that we are more than ourselves; th...
Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, ...
He felt an appetite for once, one that it'd take more than a drink or two to satisfy. He strolled along for breakfast at Harga's House of Ribs, the habit of years, and got another unpleasant surprise. Normally the only decoration in there was in Sham...
