In any theological struggle, the first thousand years are always the bitterest.
There are worse things than being robbed..." I could smell the sick old-meat stench on his breath, like he really had eaten my grandmother. "...worse things than dyin' even. You be a good boy, Little Red, and maybe you'll get to live awhile. Maybe yo...
The ordinary traveler, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package," Ro...
They wanted a Grisha queen. Mal wanted a commoner queen. And what did I want? Peace for Ravka. A chance to sleep easy in my bed without fear. An end to the guilt and dread that I woke to every morning. There were old wants too, to be loved for who I ...
Air traffic control is going to have a steamy old fit on your dime, boy. They can get in line behind the police, the people whose cars we trashed, the Empire of Ob'enn, the Partnership Collective, and the Wormgate Corporation. Oh, and I think maybe s...
. . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with every new person, as if I am starting anew. These things are instinctive. What you need to learn is to lay aside your inhibitions, to go back to your ch...
And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is no secret that many people here think that you are a ...
You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.' 'What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji. 'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that ...
But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and grow...
I suppose men, even myself, are perpetually boys. The sons of parents who provide the staples of what makes up a life— a home, an example of what it means to be human, however fucked up that may be. We are molded by impressions and an example, sing...
You are my whole heart, Scarlet. And this is breaking it.' My heart cracked open and clear dropped out of me. My mouth opened, and I looked round me and stamped my foot. 'Does this look like a good time to tell me that, you damn stupid boy?' I meant ...
Whose boys are those with the holes in their pants?" I cringed. How would my grandpa answer such an embarrassing question? "Those are my daughter's children, my grandchildren," Grandpa spoke as if he'd just been asked who had won first place in a foo...
Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded...
It only took Alexis a day to read a five-hundred page book. Fiction stories took her to another world where she could lose herself for a while in someone else’s life. Its funny how things like loans to pay back, a broken home and family, and a futu...
A warm feeling fell over the boy. A mix of security and comfort, as if a blanket were wrapping its soft layers around his heart and nuzzling him snuggly. Gavin loved his mother, and he would be forever grateful to his father for protecting her. The w...
…the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects, we destroy his standards, per...
I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh no. I will find you, and I will drag you to the altar on your back if need be, no matter ...
War did not come like a hurricane, Rorimer realized, destroying everything in its path. It came like a tornado, touching down in patches, taking with it one life while leaving the next person unharmed.
[Charles] Nodier’s later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bea...
Robots are like Mars: they need girls. Boys won't do; the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp when they should kiss and they're none too keen on having things shoved inside them... It's not a robot until you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like tha...
His readiness to undergo persecutions for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement - all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an...
