A Spear of Summer Grass

But this is a thing that I know--to live with fear is not to live at all. A man will die every moment he is afraid.

Because if we're on the road to hell, we're going to dance the whole damn way and give them something to talk about when we're gone.

He had strong, steady hands, and I could tell from looking at them there was little he couldn't do. Mossy always said you could tell everything you needed to know about a man from his hands. Some hands, she told me, were leaving hands. They were the wandering sort that slipped into places they shouldn't, and they would wander right off again because those hands just couldn't stay still. Some hands were worthless hands, fit only to hold a drink or flick ash from a cigar, and some were punishing hands that hit hard and didn't leave a mark and those were the ones you never stayed to see twice. But the best hands were knowing hands, Mossy told me with a slow smile. Knowing hands were capable; they could soothe a horse or woman. They could take things apart -- including your heart -- and put them back together better than before. Knowing hands were rare, but if you found them, they were worth holding, at least for a little while.

I'd had my heart broken, you see. Fell in love with the wrong chap and he crushed me right down to the bedrock. Nothing left but humiliation.

She didn't look at me and I didn't look at her. Some questions are so direct the only way to ask them is sideways.

He isn't interested in simple. He wants what he wants. No matter how much trouble she is and no matter whether he even understands it himself.

You have to love someone completely to be willing to destroy them.

You have always been dazzling - the life of every party, the glamour girl who dances until dawn." "Well, I am. But I'm dancing on broken glass. I'm Miss Havisham's wedding cake, Kit. A frothy, expensive, mice-eaten confection. I'm the Sphinx's nose, the fallen Colossus. I'm a beautiful ruin, and it's time that has done the deed.

I hesitated for all the right reasons. And I accepted for all the wrong ones.

You men have been forcing us to change our names for the last four thousand years. Why don’t we switch it up? You lot can take our names for the next few millennia and see how you like it.

Second rule of the bush. Never get too close to anything that has offspring. What's the first rule? Food runs. If you don't want to be food, don't run.

A woman could love a jackass. She could not love a son of a bitch. Many have tried, Gideon. Many have tried.

I slammed the door in her face and applied my bloody shoe to the lurkers in the bathtub,

The men stood back, chanting a song of one who would not be forgotten, of loved ones lost and returned to the earth, and of the land itself which does not die but is always born anew with each fall of the long rains. They chanted of life, which is short as a spear of summer grass or long as the heart of the Rift itself, and of the silent land that waits beyond.

They said there was a curse on us and maybe there is. Maybe we were born under bad stars or maybe for us there’s always a bad moon on the rise. But if it’s true, if sorrow and loss follow us around like mean stray dogs, then that means somewhere, some fighting angel decided we were strong enough to take it. So shine up your dancing shoes and pinch your cheeks and lift your chin. Because if we’re on the road to hell, we’re going to dance the whole damn way and give them something to talk about when we’re gone.

might be more fun to spring it on you in court if