A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... th...
-On creating a false identity for Pheobe- "A widow," Ava insisted. "How did her husband die?" Greer asked. "I hardly know," Ava said with a shrug as she rocked Jonathan in her arms. "How do men typically die? A fall from a horse or some such thing." ...
Seeking those elusive individuals is like mining for rare gems. It will take hard work, patience, and a persistent attitude. To find that rich seam of colourful stones, you will have to chip through dirt and rock. You will have to learn how to hold r...
Adam stared down at me, his expression thunderous. “It was you. I know it was you.” My head was rocking side to side before I could stop it. “No.” I wrenched my hand free of his. “You’re wrong.” “I’m not!” Anger blazed hot behind ...
Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the sti...
Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers, that she is so sick; yours, that you are so well. Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare...
Warlock: Four thousand and fifty-three metric tons of inert rock, metal and organic matter, frozen solid. Quasar: Frozen in what? Drax: Time. Quasar: "Time", Drax? Drax: Uh-huh. Old, old frozen time. Quasar: Right. And that tastes like what? Drax: Re...
Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts. “There is a rock of greed over here, Father. I can’t budge it. And that tree of guilt near the fence? Its roots are long and deep. And may I show you some dry soil, too crus...
A gunshot rang out, blasting a hole in the door. A crossbow quarrel zinged through the hole and stuck quivering into the opposite wall. Seth heard the rocking horse clattering down the staircase, the twang of bowstrings, and the overlapping beat of s...
Charles Sumner; “A Smacking breeze has sprung up, and we shall part this company soon; and then for the Atlantic! Farewell then, my friends, my pursuits, my home, my country! Each bellying wave on its rough crest carries me away. The rocking vessel...
To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, peop...
Research suggests that the earliest flying reptiles swallowed small pieces of volcanic rock and could breathe out flammable gases like hydrogen produced in their own bodies. It is hypothesized that their ingenious “fire breath” was used as a defe...
A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destina...
There’s nothing to be scared of, right Akhol?” He said nothing as he stepped toward the rushing water that rolled around a big rock and was swallowed whole by impenetrable darkness. “Right?” Andrew repeated, his voice swallowed by the sound o...
She lowers her forehead to the floor, curling starlight tendrils under her face when she rocks in the yoga pose, so tempting and sexy even in her deepest despair. Her courage is failing and I wait it out, watching the prone woman bend subconsciously ...
When he expressed his feelings for her - always here like this, while he touched her or made love to her - he used words of possession and passion. He told her they belonged to each other, that she was his, that he was her mate. And he made love to h...
I had a dream about you. You were my main competition for the 2014 Rocking Chair Race Championship Series. It’s the most movement you can make without actually moving anywhere. I won that race—and I lost—because no surprise, we all tied.
The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defen...
Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separated from his mother’s milk f...
I am afraid of reduction. After a lifetime's independence- yes, selfish independence- I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals. I don't...
As recently as the grunge era, there remained a bohemian cachet in casually mentioning that you didn’t own a TV. But nobody thinks like that anymore. Today, claiming you don’t own a TV simply means you’re poor (or maybe depressed). In one ten-y...
