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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 96e398a | And barely ten minutes later the soft sound of wingbeats came to their ears, and Balthamos stood up eagerly. The next moment, the two angels were embracing, and Will, gazing into the flames, saw their mutual affection. More than affection: they loved each other with a passion. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 73e9857 | And that was how sin came into the world," he said, "sin and shame and death. It came the moment their daemons became fixed." "But..." Lyra struggled to find the words she wanted: "but it en't true, is it? Not true like chemistry or engineering, not that kind of true? There wasn't really an Adam and Eve? The Cassington Scholar told me it was just a kind of fairy tale." "The Cassington Scholarship is traditionally given to a freethinker; i.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 3c10cc8 | Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 8b42519 | Waste of time," said the leper. "There's a dozen or more beggars who come here every day, pretending to be cripples, hiring themselves out to the holy men. A couple of drachmas and they'll swear they've been crippled or blind for years then stage a bloody miraculous recovery. Holy men? Healers? Don't make me laugh." "But this man is different," said Christ. "I remember him," said the blind man. "Jesus. He come here on the sabbath, like a fo.. | miracle religion social-commentary | Philip Pullman | |
| 18f6143 | Make a noise in there and I won't help you. You're on your own. | Philip Pullman | ||
| b1250a0 | That is a question with too complicated an answer. | Philip Pullman | ||
| af66f46 | On THE AMBER SPYGLASS: "If this plotline was a motorist, it would have been arrested for driving while intoxicated, if it had not perished in the horrible drunk accident where it went headlong over the cliff of the author's preachy message, tumbled down the rocky hillside, crashed, and burned." | literature philip-pullman plotting | John C. Wright | |
| 2e6aa13 | Speaking for myself, I've always found great intelligence in a woman a highly attractive feature. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 0c27aeb | Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We | Philip Pullman | ||
| d9b5107 | Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happened, they were clinging together, blindly pressing their faces towards each other. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 5a7522a | All things from the north are devilish. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 9a4fcd1 | Then it started to rain, so she went inside and made some coffee and did what she had never done in her life: tried the newspaper crossword. "What a stupid exercise," said her daemon after five minutes. "Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens." | Philip Pullman | ||
| 80fcf42 | such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 2e4f158 | Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even in that muffled, mist-hung world it raised an echo, but of course it wasn't an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. "My heart, Will ..." she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a grea.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 2067269 | There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 97e2260 | You're a bloodthirsty character, aren't you?" "I don't know," she said honestly. "I've never had the chance to find out. I'm pretty sure I would fight if I had to, though. I wouldn't give in, or flinch and cry and faint. People don't think girls are brave, but I'd love the chance to try... just once, perhaps; just once, so I could know what it was like to risk my life and fight to the death. It's not that I want to kill people, it's that I .. | Philip Pullman | ||
| fcf3cdf | Lyra at eighteen sitting intent and absorbed in Duke Humfrey's Library with the alethiometer and a pile of leather-bound books. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, pencil in mouth, finger moving down a list of symbols, Pantalaimon holding the stiff old pages open for her ... "Look, Pan, there's a pattern there--see? That's why they're in that sequence!" And it felt as if the sun had come out. It was the second thing she said to Will next.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 42891e3 | This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox. | secret-service dictatorship democracy | Philip Pullman | |
| c8b86ca | War asks many people to do unreasonable things. | Philip Pullman | ||
| d281eee | How can knowing something be sinful? | Philip Pullman | ||
| 3f2ae90 | Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, 'Come along o' me, it's time. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 6d11467 | The bureaucrat fell from the sky. | Michael Swanwick | ||
| 6fd2eef | Some things worked far better in imagination than reality. In imagination, she was intrepid and resourceful; in reality she wished she were home, wrapped in a quilt. | Lauren Willig | ||
| 1b1bb7d | with the complete lack of shame of the extremely deaf and the complete lack of grammar of the extremely inbred. | Lauren Willig | ||
| e487e62 | Take a deep breath, people suggested. Count to ten. Count sheep. Oh, wait, that was for sleeping. Even in her own head, her tongue ran ahead of her brain. It propelled her into all sorts of absurd situations. Elopements. Scandals. This. | Lauren Willig | ||
| ff14331 | She responded to Letty's well-meaning suggestions with the unblinking disdain perfected by cats in their dealings with their humans. | Lauren Willig | ||
| c9abe03 | Its nice to know that your common sense stands between me and the grave. | Lauren Willig | ||
| 333c475 | Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "incoming!" | spies lauren-willig funny-and-random spy | Lauren Willig | |
| 762d2fb | He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary. | inanimate-objects | Lauren Willig | |
| c3ab52e | That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter? | Lauren Willig | ||
| f9aae65 | I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum. | Lauren Willig | ||
| c9d8543 | These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She.. | David Nicholls | ||
| 750e7ce | By nine, Mildred was powdered, puffed, perfumed, and patted to that state of semi-transparency that a woman seems to achieve when she is really dressed to go out. | James M. Cain | ||
| d79139e | if he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody else, any more than a woman can have a baby by watching some other woman have one. It is a genital process, and all of its stages are intra-abdominal; | writing writing-a-book writers-on-writing | James M. Cain | |
| 2fb71ad | Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink. | James M. Cain | ||
| e12211a | All software you write will be tested--if not by you and your team, then by the eventual users--so you might as well plan on testing it thoroughly. | Andrew Hunt | ||
| 45bbf15 | the ferret, hunting, eyes on the ground, never hears footsteps of the hawk | Andrew Vachss | ||
| a733463 | You need to neuter him. Otherwise he'll spray all over the house. The stench is awful. And when he isn't out catting around, little female cats in heat will show up and wail under the windows." Kill me, please. "He is a nice cat. He's not like that." "It's instinct, Dali. Before you know it, you'll be running a feline whorehouse." | mom jim | Ilona Andrews | |
| 1badb17 | Audrey tapped Gaston's shoulder with her finger. "Think you can get into that barn?" Gaston shrugged his muscular shoulders. "Sure." "I need you to get down there, open the stalls inside, and panic the horses." " 'Panic'?" Gaston asked. "Smile at them or something." He gave her an insane grin. "I can do that." "What about me?" Kaldar whispered. "You lie here and look pretty. I'll be back." | gaston-mar kalmar-mar | Ilona Andrews | |
| 1eaf14f | Curran stood in the middle of the street, his hands still locked on the insect's front pair of legs. The spider-scorpion was lunging at him again and again, trying to grip him with its pincers. If those mandibles closed on Curran, they'd slice his arms off. Oh no, you don't. I charged the spider. | Ilona Andrews | ||
| 39c5817 | I'm going to punch you in the arm," I growled. "We can get you a throne with snakes. I'll stand next to you and roar at anybody who fails to grovel. Fear Kate Daniels. She is a mighty and terrible ruler. Grendel can anoint the petitioners with his vomit. It'll be great . . ." Oh God. I put my hands over my face." | Ilona Andrews | ||
| db52cff | Sit on him? What kind of battle strategy is that? | Ilona Andrews | ||
| 7125cfc | Curran never does anything without a reason," he said. "I was told you'd met him. Perhaps you indirectly challenged him at that meeting." Indirectly? I had challenged him " | Ilona Andrews | ||
| ae8ee1c | Myths tend to spiral out of control. Do you howl at the full moon and steal maidens to devour?" "Depends on the maiden," he said. | funny-ness werewolves flirting paranormal-romance | Ilona Andrews |