Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it’s what you believe, and the heck with everybody.
For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.
Consider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitude. We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles.
How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words.
The memory was unpleasant; he’d taken an instant disliking to the man. Compounding Peter’s distrust, Chase was wearing a necktie, the most incomprehensible article of clothing in the history of the world.
It’s children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust.
What is left when there is no love? A rope and rock.
It was as if I’d lost some cosmic game of musical chairs; the song had stopped, I was left standing, and there was simply nothing to be dine about it.
All things fell into the past but one; and what that was, was love.
What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as wormword, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell
His son’s transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.
Peter held up the book he had been reading: ‘Moby-Dick; or, The Whale’.”To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure this is English,” Peter said. “It’s taken me most of today to get through a page.
All stories end when they have returned to their beginnings.
What is home but a place where you are truly known?
It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Peter managed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that…it’s only a story.””Perhaps.” She shrugged. “And perheps someday someone will say those very words about you, Peter. What do you say to that?
Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.
And then, despite all these concerns, Arnette felt her mind begin to loosen, the images of the day unwinding inside her like a spool of thread, pulling her down into sleep.
It was like leading people to the edge of a cliff, showing them the view, and then shoving them off.
Would somebody please tell him whose idea it had been to kill the entire state of Colorado?
I like cats as much as the next person, in the right quantity.
Drinking myself blind seemed like the next logical step.
Perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.
You are Entering the Red Zone.Proceed at Own Risk.When in Doubt Run.
This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.
Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books … Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.
The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant
It is an interesting truth that the human body, liberated from its head, is in essence a bag of blood with a built-in straw.
His father had always said, Son, the most important thing in life is to make a contribution. Who would have thought Kittridge’s contribution would be video-blogging from the front lines of the apocalypse?
And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.
My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.