I don’t put up with being messed around, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I’m a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references.
The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you’re fussing that he’s tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.
But I’m going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I’m leaving out, because there’s still stuff I’m just not going to tell you. Get used to it.
The story is always better than your ability to write it.
…there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.
When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.
As I have said, you have no reason to trust me, and an excellent reason not to.
[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.
Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.
I’d always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.
Despair was a private weakness she could not afford to indulge.
Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.Can I trust him?What do I have to lose?
I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.
Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too-particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the b
Her betrothed is a lout, her father is a boor; and now her brother is trailing around looking like a thunderstorm about to burst. Men are not sensible creatures.”Thank you,’ said Robin.
What this world doesn’t have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?
[the sheep] sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. “I am sorry, you ugly creature,” he said. “I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.
You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you’re scared enough. I was scared enough.
The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.
Everything was an adventure, at night, when you were where you shouldn’t be, even if it was somwhere you could go perfectly well in daylight, and it was then only ordinary.
It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.
I wondered what you’d have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?
When you’re feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren’t thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.
She thought, I need no cup. I am Chalice. I am filling with the grief and hurt and fear of my demesne; the shattered earthlines weigh me down; I am brimming with the needs of my people.
The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?
If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.
One has various things in the back of one’s mind. Occasionally an opportunity presents itself to bring one forward. Most of these opportunities come to nothing. Once in a very great while one — or two — do come to something.
There are always cats around Charlie’s, but they are usually refugees seeking asylum from the local rat population, and rather desperately friendly.
Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.
How does a hundred-and-eighty-pound man turn into a ninety-pound wolf? Where does the leftover ninety go? Does he park it in the umbrella stand overnight?
Dogs are very comforting when your world has exploded.
I disliked promises on principle because my conscience made me keep them.
Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.
I have a mastery of the art of worrying that is a burden to me if I may not use it. –Robin
Jesse reached into a bottom drawer and brought out a bottle of… oh, hey, single-malt scotch. Some SOFs did know how to live.
Fairy godmothers?” said the king dubiously. “We’ll have a time getting that past the court council — and the bishop.
She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names.
[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.
Sylvi wished she could gouge out the look in Dorogin’s stony eyes, and change the course of history. She wished Fthoom had been eaten by a sea monster.