September had no natural defense against lost things, being one herself. She could not quite have put it into words, but she felt profoundly, at the bottom of her new, shining heart, that she could find lost things. She could make them un-lost if she were brave enough. After all, if enough lost things band together, even in the darkest depths, they aren’t really lost at all anymore.
And the heart of Ivan Nikolayevich broke inside the body of Marya Morevna, and the pieces of him lodged deep in her bones, and through the window, the stars watched.
Some switches must be flipped, and some children cannot help turning off to on and on to off, just to see what will happen.
Opium ain’t got nothing on the promise of tomorrow turning up better than today. Snow.
Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself.
I heard there’s fire in hell, but I’ll bet the devil just hands you a bucket and tells you to get moving, this place ain’t gonna clean itself.
It takes energy for new roads to diverge in new woods, and no energy is spent with complete efficiency, without waste. Where wood has burned, there will be ash. The waste product of the constantly dividing multiverse is a fine, drifting mist of regret, and no wormhole has ever starved.
It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That’s what death is for. That’s why they keep telling this story. It’s the only story.
But I am a sly and wicked narrator. If there is a secret to be plumbed for your benefit, Dear Reader, I shall strap on a head-lamp and a pick-ax and have at it.
I don’t see where you get off fretting about whether or not the end of the world is family-friendly.
Twelve mothers and twelve fathers were stacked into the long, thin house, each with four children, drawing the old cobalt-and-silver curtains down the center of rooms to make labyrinths of twelve dining rooms, twelve stting rooms, twelve bedrooms. It could be said, and was, that Marya Morevna had twelve mothers and twelve fathers, and so did all the children of that long, thin house.
But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If.
Any story told is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.
Who knows what wild things Sleeping Beauty dreamt of while waiting to awake?
The Sibyl Slant stared out of her slit eyes, the disc of her face showing no feeling at all. “Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces – the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old.
She always gave the impression of having accidentally wandered in from a mad scientist’s conference, and felt rather desperate to get back.
She didn’t like to say things flatly, but sometimes it is the perfect antidote to someone trying to convince you the noose in their hand is a lovely silk ribbon for your hair.
No one is a cup for another to drink from.
I did not see the appeal of a wife. We had never had one before. She would not be half as interesting as our buffalo.