It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action; and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, r...
It's true, I did say I wanted girlfriends," I capitulated hesitantly, "but couldn't we start with something smaller and less terrifying? Like maybe spend a weekend at a crack house? I heard those people are very nonjudgmental, and if you accidentally...
...I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a confli...
...and on some nights in bed, in that moment before sleep erased the day, I would picture the way the sky in Lapland looked the morning I left, how the train had sped south beneath a sky that was brighter than it had been in weeks. It had pulsed with...
Everyone, he continued, wants his life to stand for something other than what it would, which is about eighty years – in the West, at any rate – eighty years of working, eating, sleeping, shitting, breeding, and dying. Lives of buttoning and unbu...
Buy potatoes,” he said. “Gotta hop.” Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other ...
Like almost all girls I don't know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carryi...
The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will l...
A Skalan trader tried to tell me the streets of his cities were paved with gold," Alec went on. "I didn't believe him, though. He was the one who tried to buy me from father. I was only eight or nine. I could never figure out what he wanted me for." ...
The Doctor was strapped to a wide table of some kind, and Turlough immediately started on the straps that held him. "We must stop meeting like this." "Very amusing," the Doctor replied with an irritated look. Sharma made quicker work of them with his...
There's an emergency link to the defence grid, but that's only for use in the direst emergencies." "And of course a mile-long unknown intruder approaching your main source of power isn't an emergency?" Karan hesitated, his chins wobbling slightly wit...
Is he well educated?" "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important th...
I miss women,” he went on. “I miss that kind of intimacy. But I think whatever people do; they do in search of pleasure. Or trying to get rid of pain or fear, which is the same thing, basically. Everything, everything is really about that. Everyt...
Why must a woman always surrender? I am not prey!" "No I am. Your arrow struck me long ago." Paris took her hand and placed it on his chest."Right here. And every time I try to pull it out." He used her hand to demonstrate. "You force it back in.
If you are the lantern, I am the flame; If you are the lake, then I am the rain; If you are the desert, I am the sea; If you are the blossom, I am the bee; If you are the fruit, then I am the core; If you are the rock, then I am the ore; If you are t...
He did not speak; merely looked at her with an expression she had seen traces of before but never fully understood until that moment. It was more apology than accusation---a dark stare of acknowledgment that told her he had long since seen his own fa...
Normally I give permission to take my daughter for a walk after only the building of a wall and a stone pathway.' He smiled. 'For future reference.' 'But, Pan, I knew after the first week that a walk was not the only thing I would request,' the Pigeo...
After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this: A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A ...
Corvina must have been so different then ... really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don't get to be Corvina anymore. Now you're Corvina 2.0 - a d...
[...] The alpha-wolf has hurt himself [...]." "What happened to the alpha-wolf?" "LEGOs." "Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasnt it an island? "He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement a...
Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?” His eyes flashed. “Got any to spare?” I could’ve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idi...
