“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.”
“You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause.”
“He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.”
“A vida tem de ser paga. A vida é fazer-se o que tem de ser feito, mesmo que se morra por causa disso.”
“Mas em diplomacia nada é duradouro, nada é absoluto e uma conspiração entre assassinos não é motivo para interromper o fluxo da conversa”
“In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.”
“And what am I thinking? I am thinking that a man who cannot speak clearly cannot think clearly.”
“After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod? Every”
“He sounded flustered. Juliette watched him busy about the stove, his movements jerky and manic, and realized she was the one cloistered away and ignorant, not him. He had all these books, decades of reading history, the company of ancestors she could only imagine. What did she have as her experience? A life in a dark hole with thousands of fellow, ignorant savages? She tried to remember this as she watched him dig a finger in his ear and then inspect his fingernail.”
“I’m getting my stuff,” he said, and bolted for the steps.
“You don’t have to move out,” Astrid called after him.
Sam stopped halfway up the steps. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that the voice of the council telling me where I can go?”
“There’s no point having a town council if you think you don’t have to listen to it,” Astrid said. She was using her patient voice, trying to calm the situation. “Sam, if you ignore us, no one will pay attention.”
“Guess what, Astrid, they’re already ignoring you. The only reason anyone pays any attention to you and the others is because they’re scared of Edilio’s soldiers.” He thumped his chest. “And even more scared of me.”
“The two women worked easily together, but I soon sensed that, though Belle was in charge of the kitchen, Mama Mae was in charge of Belle.”
“Kell wore a very peculiar coat.
It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible.
The first thing he did whenever he stepped out of one London and into another was take off the coat and turn it inside out once or twice (or even three times) until he found the side he needed. Not all of them were fashionable, but they each served a purpose. There were ones that blended in and ones that stood out, and one that served no purpose but of which he was just particularly fond.”
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