Outside, somewhere near, the world would soon be waking. He had watched it wake from the window of this very room, day after day, stirring itself to another round of fruitless pursuits, and he’d known, known, that there was nothing left out there to excite him.
But he’d brought new wisdom from the high places. He knew now that things forgotten might be recalled; things lost, found again.
No passion, only sudden lust, and just as sudden indifference.
Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.
Winning is beauty. It is like life itself.
I used to tell myself that,” he said. “Day in, day out. Used to try and dream the agonies away. But you can’t. Take it from me. You can’t. They have to be endured.
Then, having finished with his gesture of remorse, he sat down, like any decent man who has been deeply wronged, and planned murder.
He was not happier at his mother’s nipple than in that ring of demons.
It was what his mother would have done in the circumstances. Boiled some fresh water, warmed the pot and counted out the spoonfuls of tea. Setting domestic order against the chaos, in the hope of winning some temporary reprieve from the vale of tears.
Logic is the last refuge of a coward.
He’d never seen such a look on any human face: such a wilderness of innocent malice. A.
What marked this place as another Dominion was the people in the streets outside, some human, many not, all retreating from the wind or the commotions it carried.
He had certainly set his eyes on more voluptuous creatures, but something about her lack of glamour engaged him. Such women were in his experience often more entertaining company than beauties like Julia. They could be flattered or bullied into acts the beauties would never countenance and be grateful for the attention.
Living and dying we feed the fire,” Steep said softly. “That is the melancholy truth of things.
Whatever you do, don’t look back.
Ricky tasted something he hadn’t experienced since childhood: the panic of losing the hand of a guardian. In this case the lost parent was his sanity. Somewhere.
What are you trying to prove? Do you think if you kill enough people in the worst ways imaginable they’ll give you a name like the Madman, or the Butcher? It doesn’t matter how many abhorrent tortures you devise. You’ll always be the Pinhead.
Magic is the first and last religion of the world. It has the power to make us whole.
Revulsion gave heat to his heals.
Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.