“I have seen what comes of being patient," Amanda said with a boding look. "And I have no opinion of it."
"What does come of it?" Inquired Sir Gareth.
"Nothing!”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“After eyeing her for a moment or two, he said: ‘If you let this chance of achieving a respectable alliance slip, you are a bigger fool than I take you for, Hester!’ Her eyes came round to his face, a smile quivered for an instant on her lips. ‘No, how could that be, Papa?”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“But perhaps I might feel strange, and unlike myself. It wouldn't be comfortable, not to be acquainted with myself.”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“I too have been badly deceived in myself," he said, shaking his head. "Would you believe it?—I had no notion that I was such a monster of inhumanity as I have proved myself to be”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“The sight which met her eyes held her frozen on the threshold, and the thought flashed across her mind that she knew now how it felt to die”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“When I think of all the pretty and lovely girls who have done their best to attach him, and he tells me that he has offered for an insipid female who has neither fortune nor any extraordinary degree of beauty, besides being stupidly shy and dowdy, I – oh, I could go into strong hysterics!”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit.”
― James Howe, quote from The Misfits
“And then she saw Lord Gareth's friends, lying about the bedroom in various states of repose — Chilcot, perched on a window seat, his forefinger stuck in an empty bottle and swinging it back and forth; Perry, sprawled in a damask-backed chair with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat askew, and a bleary smile on his handsome face. The names of the others had escaped her. There was the one with the big nose, his eyes bloodshot beneath the straggles of wavy brown hair that had escaped his queue; the one who was as wide and burly as a draft horse, flat on his back and snoring, his wig looking like a dead rat on the floor beside his head; a third, thin and cocky, hiccupping drunkenly and saluting Juliet with his bottle: "To the lady ... hic! ... o' the hour!”
― Danelle Harmon, quote from The Wild One
“Go on,"Lexy said. "What do you want to be today?”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, quote from The Dogs of Babel
“You always underestimated me. You thought you made me harmless when you gave angelhood to me. You forgot that some angels are warriors. Where there's warriors, there's war. I will fight to the death. It's my duty. I am not afraid.”
― Sonya Hartnett, quote from Surrender
“. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . .
But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?”
I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich.
He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.”
“Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked.
After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.”
― Ryan Boudinot, quote from Blueprints Of The Afterlife
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