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1e7a5f6
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The question is always the answer, provided you want the answer badly enough.
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fantasy
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Barbara Hambly |
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c347081
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I simply don't shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.
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Barbara Hambly |
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862fd37
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God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours.
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religion
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Barbara Hambly |
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1be8f25
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We love people differently at different stages of our knowledge of them. As love changes its hape and its nature, we have to decide what we're going to do about that love on any given day.
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Barbara Hambly |
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dbdc53c
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As Cinderella would probably tell you, even a prince who only recognizes your footwear is preferable to a lifetime of cleaning grates.
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Barbara Hambly |
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a0346c6
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But that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the hardest I've ever learned about anything--that she is her own, and what she gives me is of her choosing, and the more precious because of it. Sometimes a butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but if you close your hand, one way or the other, it--and its choice to be there--are gone.
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Barbara Hambly |
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a1b6049
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To the pure, all things are pure," Antryg remarked, in Magister Magus' best soothsayer voice, "and to the unimaginative, all things are devilish."
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Barbara Hambly |
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7513b51
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One shouldn't allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one's arm.
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intimidation
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Barbara Hambly |
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83daa99
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The music had ceased. Alex walked over to the gramophone, wound it up again, and put on more blues, a woman singing this time, gay and sad at once, like a stranded angel who had traded holiness for humanity but remembered what it used to be like to know God.
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music
singer
fallen-angel
singing
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Barbara Hambly |
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b925769
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Dragonsbane, they called him. Slayer of dragons. Or a dragon, anyway. And, he'd later found out, not such a very big one at that.
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Barbara Hambly |
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3593770
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Lexington wasn't a great city, like Philadelphia or New York, but around the Courthouse square, and along Main Street and Broadway, brick buildings reared two and three stories tall, and it was possible to buy almost anything: breeze-soft silks from France that came upriver from New Orleans, fine wines and cigars, pearl necklaces, and canes with ivory handles shaped like parrots or dogs'-heads or (in the case of Mary's older friend Cash Cla..
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lexington
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Barbara Hambly |
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0e1c0ff
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The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.
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Barbara Hambly |
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1d5f568
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Of course I'm frivolous," [Antryg] replied mildly. "You yourself must know how boring gravity is to oneself and everyone else."
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Barbara Hambly |
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19bec41
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Can you tell me the difference between a witch and a wizard? Sure, a wizard is what they call you when they want to hire you, and a witch is what they call you when they're getting ready to run you out of town.
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humour
witty
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Barbara Hambly |
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2e215a8
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Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon's cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion's double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted towards wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the ..
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fiction
mystery
suspense
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Barbara Hambly |
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6fb4515
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She barely hid a smile. "That's a wizard's answer if I ever heard one." "Meaning that mages deal in double talk?" His grin was impish. "That's one of our two occupational hazards." "And what's the other one?" He laughed. "A deplorable tendency to meddle."
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Barbara Hambly |
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41aa281
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There is no temptation from outside the heart.
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Barbara Hambly |
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1bb3abb
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If the other novice wizards on the row hadn't broken into Raeshaldis's rooms, pissed on her bed and written WHORE and THIEF on the walls, she probably would have been killed on the night of the full moon.
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Barbara Hambly |
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58f1181
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Funny," [Antryg] said, "if you're a mage, they always ask you to read the future, as if knowing it will help. I think three-fourths of all prayers prayed are for two and two not to equal four."
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Barbara Hambly |
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d6e8577
|
The costumes help. They make it less real, disguise what it really is both for the actors and for the people who'll see it on the screen. It's like the people who read and because it's in Russia they can say, 'Oh, that's not my pain they're talking about.' And Chris is tough. She goes from one thing to the next and doesn't worry about the past. When a cat sits mere purring on your lap, you know for a fact she isn't thinking about her form..
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fiction
mystery
suspense
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Barbara Hambly |
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a32e46c
|
The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead a month was seeing him every day at work.
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Barbara Hambly |
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2333552
|
After long years of solitary meditation, Jenny had come to accept that, for her, magic was a depth and a stillness rather than the moving brilliance that it was for the great.
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solitude
stillness
meditation
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Barbara Hambly |
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c5f760a
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The room was a magpie-nest of picked-at knowledge, the lair of a tinkerer to whom the universe was one vast toyshop of intriguing side issues.
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magpies
knowledge
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Barbara Hambly |
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a73357b
|
The Dead always find ways," Ysidro said, "to get the living to serve them."
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Barbara Hambly |
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c51008f
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We are like the whales that live in the sea, he said, civilizations without artifacts, living between stone and sky in our islands in the northern oceans.
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Barbara Hambly |
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cd7f5f2
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It is a terrible mistake to put the rifles of tomorrow into the hands of the ignorance of yesterday.
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Barbara Hambly |
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8938a25
|
You mean magic is predicated on hope?" "Hope," [Antryg] said, "and belief in life. We move blindly from second to second through time. Hope and magic both involve the casting forward of the soul. In a way, both magic and hope are a kind of madness."
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Barbara Hambly |
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7c090b1
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If any town in Europe would have vampires, he knew it would be Prague.
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Barbara Hambly |
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58323d4
|
She understood that even the worst days contained only twenty-four hours. One did what one had to do to get through them, and afterwards, one slept.
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Barbara Hambly |
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648ab37
|
Somewhere, there is a German scientist working with a vampire. And you need a vampire to help you destroy the threat of what that scientist will unleash on the world.
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Barbara Hambly |
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d69c518
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Luke talks about the power that lies in the dark side. The Force isn't the only thing that has a dark side, Han. And the tricky thing about the dark side is that it's so easy to use--and it gets you what you think you want.
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Barbara Hambly |
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ddba79b
|
Refrigeration works, you must know, my dear Frau Asher, by compression of ammonia gas, much better than the old sulfur dioxide system. Sulfur dioxide--that's a chemical compound--has the inconvenient habit of becoming corrosive and eating up the machinery which stores it.
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Barbara Hambly |
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f79cb7f
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From them her hands moved on, random as her passing thoughts. She sketched vagrant airs, or snatches of jigs and reels, slowed and touched with the shadow of an inevitable grief that waited in the hidden darkness of future time. Through them she moved to the ancient tunes that held the timeless pull of the ocean in their cadences; sorrows that drew the heart from the body, or joys that called the soul like the distant glitter of Stardust ba..
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Barbara Hambly |
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36c58e9
|
It is the blood that feeds the flesh," Ysidro said. "We can--and do, at need--live upon the blood of animals, or blood taken from the living without need of their death. But it is the death that feeds the powers of our minds. Without the kill, we find our abilities fading,"
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Barbara Hambly |
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c7fb594
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Dave, I didn't make it to work Monday because I was helping a wizard rescue a baby Prince out someplace between Barstow and San Bernardino?
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Barbara Hambly |
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2413817
|
If a Jewess from the East - her family comes from Cairo, I gather - were to find herself in need of help in Paris, where would she go?' 'To her family,' replied ben-Gideon promptly. 'I'm not sure she has one in Paris.' 'Benjamin, my mother spends eleven and a half hours out of twenty-four going from sister to sister, from aunt to aunt, from the houses of her sisters-in-law and second-cousins to the grandparents of my father's old business-p..
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Barbara Hambly |
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a5ef673
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Only a fool wants to go back to the land of childhood . . . Or perhaps it is the longing for the certainties of childhood that makes a man a fool.
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Barbara Hambly |
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ce766a3
|
That's the damn thing about falling in love with your second-in-command," and resumed his stride up to the balcony with its row of arched doors, Starhawk unsmiling at his heels. "They are with you too long and they know you too well."
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Barbara Hambly |
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bd8b10f
|
We command the fire and the serpents and the stinging insects, but we cannot wield the power that sends fever away.
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Barbara Hambly |
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ce836eb
|
the jury was overwhelmed by the tangle of conflicting tales of Austrian spies, slave-smugglers, mysterious veiled ladies, nameless hired bravos, Italian politics, and enraged divas
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Barbara Hambly |
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cb9abb9
|
She had come to terms with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius in the single thing she had ever wanted.
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insecurity
|
Barbara Hambly |
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910e9f8
|
However, her own lack of power had taught her a curious appreciation for small joys and hard beauties and for the simple, changeless patterns of life and death.
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powerlessness
|
Barbara Hambly |
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55aa76a
|
The key to magic is magic, Caerdinn had said. To be a mage, you must be a mage. There is no time for anything else, if you will come to the fullness of your power.
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Barbara Hambly |
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66d3bb3
|
Maggots from meat,'" quoted John, "'weevils from rye, dragons from stars in an empty sky."
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Barbara Hambly |