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5b29225
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Time is the fire in which we burn. --Delmore Schwartz
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Connie Willis |
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edd56a5
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face Lady Schrapnell. And I promised I'd help
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Connie Willis |
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bdd580c
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Don't come all the way across town. There's a Metro station right outside of Arlington. I'll meet you there, all right?
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Connie Willis |
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568e876
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We weren't even a halfway decent detectin' team. We hadn't solved the case. The case had been solved in spite of us. Worse, we had been such an impediment, we'd had to be packed off out of the way before the course of history could correct itself. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.
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Connie Willis |
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cb414cf
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How much of an effect on history can an animal have? A big one. Look at Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus, and "the little gentleman in the black fur coat" who'd killed King William the Third when his horse stepped in the mole's front door. And Richard the Third standing on the field at Bosworth and shouting, "My kingdom for a horse!"
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Connie Willis |
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c89efdf
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Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it's my duty after work to encourage the trends I'd like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake. And reading. Also,
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Connie Willis |
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242e2d2
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The perfect metaphor," he said, "looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along. [...]"
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Connie Willis |
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edac96a
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io sui ici en liu dami amo' ('I am here in place of a friend love')
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Connie Willis |
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a14bb0f
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Nothing can save you, not youth or beauty or wealth, not intelligence or power or courage. You are all alone, in the middle of the ocean, with the lights going out.
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Connie Willis |
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0070c54
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Sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to inflict my rantings on you, even though we are destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I don't suppose you fave any thought to where we should be married while I was in with that lot of fools, did you?" "Yes," she said. "I decided we shouldn't, that wartime attachments are a bad idea. Particularly if you're going to be lassoing flying bombs."
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marriage
wartime
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connie willis |
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8896199
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what the hell is 'emotional bonding,' anyway? It sounds like something out of Fifty Shades of Grey.
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Connie Willis |
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36b188c
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She was afraid she'd have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her,
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Connie Willis |
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e59bf90
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Which one's in the main theater?" "I don't know. I just work here part-time to pay for my organic breathing lessons." "Do you have any dice?" I asked, and then realized I was going about this all wrong. This was quantum theory not Newtonian. It didn't matter which theater I chose or which seat I sat down in. This was a delayed-choice experiment and David was already in flight."
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Connie Willis |
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5b964e3
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History was full of divergence points nobody could get anywhere near--from Archduke Ferdinand's assassination to the battle of Trafalgar. Events so critical and so volatile that the introduction of a single variable--such as a time traveler--could change the outcome. And alter the entire course of history.
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Connie Willis |
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bb7e809
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Show tunes are great. Stephen Sondheim. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Wicked. Rent. The Music Man. Almost any musical will do. Except Cats." "Why? Doesn't it shut out the voices?" "No, it shuts them out fine. But it's a terrible musical."
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Connie Willis |
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72dc5fb
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For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
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Connie Willis |
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626ab84
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Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.
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Connie Willis |
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170c5ad
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This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.
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Connie Willis |
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c192fc7
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of legend. It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dying and the already dead.
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Connie Willis |
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e36be8b
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There's no need to say anything to Mr. Turing. I was the one who wasn't watching where I was going" "You were the one?" Mavis said indignantly. "Turing never pays the slightest attention to where he's going. He simply plows through pedestrians" Elspeth nodded. "Someone needs to tell him he must be more careful! He could have injured you!" And I could have injured him, Mike thought. Or killed him. If Turing had lost control of his bicycle..
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humor
bad-drivers
bletchley-park
ultra
wwii
driving
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Connie Willis |
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c4238b3
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Oh, it'll definitely fool the Germans," Cess said. "There's no clearer proof that there's an army in the area than beer bottles and used condoms."
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humor
wwii-fiction
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Connie Willis |
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c68589c
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Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." --ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY, The Little Prince If"
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Connie Willis |
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cdd0d83
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The multinationals who'd been backing Darby and Gentilla lost interest, and time travel had been handed over to historians and scientists,
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Connie Willis |
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a4a4a8f
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She nodded. "The Michigan State Library fire was caused by a student trying to burn the state draft board files so he wouldn't be drafted and ended up destroying twenty thousand volumes."
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Connie Willis |
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54d175b
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Well, at least she's asserting herself, and you don't have to worry about her having 'squelched girl syndrome,' " she said. Mary Clare ignored that."
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Connie Willis |
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0c8f087
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Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying 'See the Siamese twins,' and everybody pays a buck, thinking they're gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it's a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.
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Connie Willis |
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d7b654a
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Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there?" Mel shook his head. "By the wolves," he said."
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Connie Willis |
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dc16835
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This gave me an early taste for humorous authors, of which there were--and are--far too few (though there are lots who labor under the misapprehension that they're funny.)
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Connie Willis |
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4b95984
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Madame Iritosky opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again, looking exactly like Colonel Mering's globe-eyed ryunkin. "Fish?" Baine said, bending over her with the platter of sole. Round One to our side. Now, if only the seance would go as well."
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Connie Willis |
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2829e23
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her. I never felt properly sorry for schizophrenics, she thought, unable to escape the voices in their heads and fighting for their sanity with a maelstrom of noise all around them, making it impossible to think. No
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Connie Willis |
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c18e256
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'I promise you calm seas,' " Sir Godfrey called, and raised his hands in benediction, " 'auspicious gales, and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off.' "
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Connie Willis |
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9256202
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Kneeling on St. Mary's stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat's face and worn-out hose. She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I'm glad I came, she thought. In spit..
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Connie Willis |
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1f8c3f7
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Are you making something up in your head, miss?" --FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT, A Little Princess Zener"
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Connie Willis |
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d4c601a
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Do it on the radio." --Educating Rita Saved"
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Connie Willis |
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51dbaab
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The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her surprise, they all thought in chorus." -- LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking-Glass"
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Connie Willis |
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f98487d
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But the vital thing is that we act. We do not rely on hope alone, though hope is our bulwark, our light through dark days and darker nights. We also work, and fight, and endure, and it does not matter whether the part we play is large or small. The reason that God marks the fall of the sparrow is that he knows that it is as important to the world as the bulldog or the wolf. We all, all must do 'our bit.' For it is through our deeds that the..
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Connie Willis |
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b6c67cd
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Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong."
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science
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Connie Willis |
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4505e2e
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Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by--
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Connie Willis |
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b2ed221
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sophisticated
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Connie Willis |
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2161169
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To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart." --DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN"
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Connie Willis |
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791db14
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Do you want to see his picture?" She pulled out her phone and began busily swiping, and at the next stoplight, held it over for Briddey to see. "His name's Xander."
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Connie Willis |
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7c0a081
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And I wouldn't feel any loss because I wouldn't ever have met her. I wondered suddenly if Terence did, if he knew on some level that he hadn't met his true love. And if he did, what did he feel? Mawkish sorrow, like one of his Victorian poems? Or a gnawing of some need unsatisfied? Or just a grayness to everything?
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true-love
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Connie Willis |
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d8d7e6d
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Three o'clock's when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. 'The dark night of the soul,' F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.
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Connie Willis |
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629be85
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You can't go back," Gilchrist said. "Haven't you heard? We're under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy's carelessness."
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Connie Willis |