The Library at Mount Char

Steve sighed, wishing for a cigarette. “The Buddha teaches respect for all life.” “Oh.” She considered this. “Are you a Buddhist?” “No. I’m an asshole. But I keep trying.

Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.

The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.

Buddhism, he thought, is a clean religion. You never heard about how eight people—two of them children—just got blown the fuck up as part of the long-standing conflict between Buddhists and whoever.

Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.

As illustrated in any number of footnotes, men are almost always 50 to 60 percent dumber in matters involving their crotch.

Carolyn – I need you to go back into America. We need an innocent heart. We will offer it to Nobununga when he arrives. Do you think you can handle that?” “An innocent heart? In America?” She hesitated.

Aren’t you violating the building codes? Or the laws of physics?

That’s the risk in working to be a dangerous person,” she said. “There’s always the chance you’ll run into someone who’s better at it than you.

I was just wondering why you did that. Pretend to be a dipshit, I mean.” The president grinned. “Prolly the same fuckin’ reason you do.

Steve looked through the scope. The house was quiet now. Thin trickles of smoke leaked from the windows. As he watched, Mrs McGillicutty staggered outside. She was bloody and dazed, but very much alive. “Hey, there’s the old lady! What’s that she’s holding?” Carolyn took the scope and looked for herself, then handed it back. “Muffins. She’s got muffins.

OK, think of it this way. Do you know how microwaves work?” “No.” “It’s based on microwaves.” “Oh, wait. I just remembered. I do know how microwaves work, and what you’re saying is bullshit.” “Fine. It isn’t microwaves.

As the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.

No real thing can be so perfect as memory, and she will need a perfect thing if she is to survive. She will warm herself on the memory of you when there is nothing else, and be sustained.” Rubbing

We’re still waiting on the lab work.” “It was a shotgun what did it, though. The same one?” Dorn popped an eyebrow. “Good eye. You in forensics?” “Not really.” He had killed a lot of people with shotguns.

He understood, I think. The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.

Some people have an enormous capacity for feeling guilt, deserved or otherwise.

Stay away from windows. And if you see people with tentacles, stay away. Don’t let them touch you.” Harshen

Are you a Buddhist?" "No, I'm an asshole. But I keep trying.

Steve didn’t like the stairs. It bothered him that they hung in midair, unsupported. Steve said this “weirded him out." This wasn’t surprising. The list of things that Steve found objectionable was long and growing. It included the Library itself (“How can the furniture hang on the ceiling like that? It’s creepy.”); the jade floor (“Jade isn’t supposed to glow.”); the apothecary (“What the hell is that thing? I’m out of here.”); the armory (David’s trophies made him throw up); the Pelapi language (“It sounds like cats fighting”); her robes (“Did you borrow those from Death?” She hadn’t.); and, of course, Carolyn herself.

Erwin especially relished that last phrase. ‘Like we was morons.’ He only trotted it out on special occasions.

A few moments later Marcus was a member of a fairly exclusive club. He had no idea how many people had been firsthand witnesses to not one but two lion attacks, but he thought that the number would be very, very small. Gangsta, baby, he thought, and wet himself.

Jennifer, like Father, had something of a fetish for office supplies. A

For all intents and purposes, the power of the Library is infinite. Tonight we’re going to settle who inherits control of reality.

It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.

Before I move closer towards my vision of the Buddha, I would respectfully plead that you adopt a stance of compassion towards the small things of this world.” He

I’m making progress.” He turned and rumbled to Naga in the language of the hunt: “Thank you for not eating me today.” Naga’s voice came from the darkness: “Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.