Surely Dorian Purcell has secretly authorized this extreme measure, his idea of a fail-safe.
When he turns his attention once more to Katie, he makes a noise that in part is an expression of distress.
To justify murdering tens of millions, Stalin is reputed to have said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
This man on sixteen people’s directories was named Alexander Gordius.
Built in the 1940s, her small house is a sturdy structure of stone.
He no longer has any doubt that he will pass along what the billions – trillions! – of archaea have installed within him.
In days of old, a good king might reward one of his subjects for courage and service to the crown by having a trusted knight deliver a guerdon, a bag of gold coins.
Dorian Purcell, focused intensely on archaea, the third domain of animal life. The first domain is eukaryotes, which includes human beings and all other higher organisms. The second domain is bacteria. Microscopic archaea, which lack a nucleus, were long thought to be a kind of bacteria. But they have unique properties, not least of which is the ability to effectuate horizontal gene transfer.
Without a window between me and this absolute-black sky, the effect of such undetailed heavens was profound, frightening not just because of the uncanny darkness but also for a reason that eluded me. Or perhaps the reason was not elusive. Maybe I dreaded acknowledging and considering it, for fear that contemplation would soon sweep me out of the main currents of sanity, into a tributary of madness.
The house is on a knoll, surrounded on four sides by a yard, on three sides.
The why of a life could never be solved in this world, although vast libraries of solemn books speculated on the meaning and purpose of existence. Nothing could be known other than the what of any single life: what happened, what actions were taken, what events occurred beyond the person’s control, what obvious consequences ensued, what impact for better or worse that one life was seen to have on others.
At last her mother looks up from the book and smiles and says, “I read to keep from being sad.
The front door faces a slope to a shingle shore, a dock, a boathouse, and open water.
Katie hurries toward whatever confrontation awaits.
It was unnerving to have allies who struck you as goofy; it made your own opinions seem suspect.
Fear is useful when it’s on a leash, Avi once said, but it’s always a bad dog when you let it run free in your mind.
The Demolished Man.
They were stories of things that had never happened and could never happen, but she told them with such quiet verve and conviction that we believed them and wanted to continue believing even after time robbed us of our sense of wonder.
And I think a lot more than I used to.” “I wouldn’t recommend thinking too much.” “I don’t carry it so far as brooding.” “Even pondering is sometimes too far.
To speak of the past, to describe her ordeal, she has nothing but words, and words are insufficient to the task; mere words will reduce the sacred to tabloid-newspaper sensationalism. And then she’ll have nothing.