Soothsayers are like that. They see many futures but never their own.
~ Jasper Fforde
There are two schools of thought about the resilience of time. The first is that time is highly volatile, with every small event altering the possible outcome of the earth's future. The other view is that time is rigid, and no matter how hard you try, it will always spring back toward a determined present. Myself, I do not worry about such trivialities. I simply sell ties to anyone who wants to buy one...
The sky was like ebony and the only illumination was the harsh white light of the central streetlamp, which cast shadows so hard it seemed you might cut yourself on them.
…although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom.
She had large, questioning eyes that seemed to draw me in and a sense of quiet outrage that simmered just beneath the surface. More than anything, within her features, there was a streak of wild quirkiness that made her dazzlingly attractive.
For myself, I favored the abstract. I collected not just obsolete terms and words, but ideas.
Another one of your quippy japes?
Rouge of my heart, intertwined with double-hued destiny,Thread of my thoughts, constant and rubicund legacy,Filament of my future, endeared unto my expectation,Cord of my emotion, seared with eternal elation.
7. 3. 12. 31. 208: Reckless disrespect of the lightless hours will not be tolerated.
People don’t change just because you know more about them.
Though his death would not fill me with any sense of sadness, I would probably feel the loss. Even enemies are part of one.
Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.
Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.
Magic is the fifth fundamental force and is even more mysterious than gravity, which is really saying something.
But that was what research and development were like. Full of semi-triumphs and perplexing unforeseen consequences like the whole violent hiccuping thing when conjuring up fire - or the propensity for fillings to fall out of bystanders' teeth when attempting to tease a rainstorm out of a cloud.
I liked him, but since his particular field of interest was Remote Suggestion--the skill of projecting thoughts into people's heads from a distance--I didn't know whether I actually liked him or he was just suggesting I like him, which was both creepy and unethical. In fact, the whole Remote Suggestion or seeding idea had been banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient in promoting talent less boy bands, which had until then been something of a mystery.
Books - Snell smiled - are a kind of magic.
The best plans are always the simplest.
They had just digested a recent meal of prepositions and were happily farting out apostrophes and ampersands, the air was heav'y with th'em&.
PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done.And it's our job to stop them.
The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they’ve written, they write some more.
True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...
The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts--and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field--is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...
Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.
Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.
I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can't be usual to go to your favorite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.
Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.
I'm beginning to think you're the sort of person who does a great deal with very little.He meant a liar.
The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.
In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.
I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton--go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday--I don't know why--and my father had no name at all--his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...
Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.
Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.
Believe me, you're going to have to do much worse than this--in the pursuit of freedom, the innocents will suffer--and at your hands.
There's more to good or bad than what's written in the Rulebook.
No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid--with interest...
Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstances.
You're just a huge romantic at heart, aren't you?If there's cash involved, I'm anything you want me to be.
Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.
