Only the most formulaic authors always knew when they began a story what the fate of their lead would be. When writing organically, allowing characters their free will, the author could be surprised by who died and who lived in the final act.
Once you’ve loved someone, the love is always there, even after they’re gone.
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. – Maurice Maeterlinck.
Love is the only thing that endures.
A lot of the time, I don’t much care where I go, just so I go somewhere.
Americans were brought up to respect what was new and progressive – and more often than they wanted to admit, they died for their faith in what was bright and shiny.
The gasoline at the two pumps is an overpriced brand he’s never heard of, and the building housing the store is fissured pale-yellow stucco with a blue ceramic-tile roof.
This was a theory of Kipp’s: There are parallel universes, and when we die, we go on living in other realities. Dorothy was lost here, but not lost everywhere.
Stories were the greatest blessing of intelligence. They were food for the soul. They were medicine.
Evil is not just a word and that it can’t be casually redefined to comply with changing standards, that Evil walks the world and that it must be resisted at any cost. The failure to resist, any compromise with Evil, would eventually ensure a jackboot on the neck of humanity, the murder of every innocent, and an eternal darkness that every sunrise would fail to relieve.
We are born with the dead: See, they return and bring us with them.” – T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding.
A dog’s love is pure and can inspire the repressed angel in even the most corrupted heart.
The focal point.
The world was a maze of mysteries and puzzles, but it was a world of rational design that did not present puzzles without answers. There was always an answer.
Shacket has been in a foul mood since leaving Cedar City. Mile by mile, the arid Mojave leaches out of him what little human kindness has not been drained away by the endless injustices he has suffered.
I was born under a glass heel, and have always lived there,’” Tim quoted.
The moon floated in the west, not yet behind those mountains, as radiant as some exotic jellyfish in the sea of space, and the sky twinkled with more stars than Woody could count in a lifetime.
In this brave new world, there is no place for a lone paladin venturing forth on tasks of knightly honor. Both Galahad and Shane would be toast. In times as complex as these, any caped crusader must work sans cape, but with backup that amounts to scores of specialists.
I’m sure that your life is filled with as much happiness, charm, wonder, and abiding fear as anyone could wish.
As the last of the debris fell behind her and the crash of thunder rolled away through the city, as she came to the east end of the park, the once-dark sky paled, abruptly glaucous, and cataracts of rain fell hard, fat droplets hissing through the trees and grass, snapping off the pavement, plinking the metal hoods on trash cans, carrying with them the faint bleachy odor of ozone, a form of oxygen created by lightning’s alchemy.