“He waved to the city and said good-bye.
The city responded by carrying on the way it always did, traffic moving forward uninterrupted, without slowing, as if it were trying to demonstrate its permanence and show him it would still be there if he ever wanted to return. That promise was the best and only thing he could ask of it.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“Giuseppe would miss them as well, but in a different way than he would miss the city. A city would stay the same. The same buildings. The same streets. Not forever, but for a great long while. But Frederick and Hannah would never again be the people they were right now, standing on the dock, wishing him farewell. Tomorrow they would wake up and be a little bit different and a little bit different the day after that, and in no time they might become people he did not recognize. Giuseppe knew it because they were already different from when he had first met them. He knew it because he was different from when they had first met him.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“Clockwork could not run counter to its nature. The seconds, minutes, and hours moved only forward. Patient, precise, and unstoppable. Memory was an indulgence, an illusion that broke like a wave upon the juggernaut of time. The past remained the past.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“In the early morning hours, Hannah read at the table by the dim light of dawn. She leaned in close to the pages, chin resting on her folded arms, eyes racing over the words, like chasing butterflies over the hills, to catch as many as she could before going to work. She wondered at how such tales of magic could be contained by mere paper and ink for her to read again and again.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“I hate them!' she cried. 'It's not fair!'
'No, it isn't,' Frederick said gently.
'I can't do it all!'
'No. You can't.' After a long moment he said, 'But you can do what you can.'
'And what if that isn't enough?'
Frederick held her shoulders and took a step back. He looked in her eyes. 'Enough for what?'
'For my family.'
'What more could they ask for than what you've given?”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“Sharing his memories felt like handing over a sharp knife. A knife that others might handle carelessly. A knife that could be used to hurt him.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“The hours trampled her on their way through the day.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“It was his fault too,” Fredrick said. “He never really asked her why. It was like he didn’t want to know.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“You see, in all his travels through the fallen ruins of civilizations, he picked up this notion that mankind is insignificant. That nothing we create will last. That we will all turn to dust. And it is only in nature that we find constancy and immortality.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“Giuseppe was not tied down, not by rope, not by fear. He stood up, and spoke with a loud voice in the language of his parents, his brother and sister. "You kidnap children because they're the only ones you can bully. You tie up an old reverend and think you're getting back at a city that hates you. You try and make everyone afraid of you because you think that makes you powerful." Giuseppe looked him up and down. "I say you're weak. I say you're a coward.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
“If you’re going to rattle my cage, you better make sure I’m padlocked in it.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Born of Defiance
“Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if all that failed, to bribe, flatter, exaggerate, and lie. I was uncertain whether these traits were genetic, deeply cultural, or simply a rapid evolutionary development. We had been forced to adapt to ten years of living in a bubble economy pumped up purely by American imports; three decades of on-again, off-again war, including the sawing in half of the country in '54 by foreign magicians and the brief Japanese interregnum of World War II; and the previous century of avuncular French molestation.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, quote from The Sympathizer
“Lorelai smirked at Leo, who raised a brow and then glared up at the sky. "The two of you are conspiring against me again, aren't you?"
"She just wants to share her lunch with you."
Leo blanched. "Last time she shared, I got a face full of rabbit guts from above. Tell your bird to keep her victims to herself.”
― C.J. Redwine, quote from The Shadow Queen
“one of the key features of a black hole: different observers have paradoxically different perceptions of the same events. To”
― Leonard Susskind, quote from The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
“Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily.
"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from Peter Pan (Illustrated with Interactive Elements)
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