Everyone can do a bit,” I said, wondering where Kevin Zipp was. “If you’re thinking of somebody and the phone rings and it’s them, that’s magic. If you get a curious feeling that you’ve been or done something before, then that’s magic, too. It’s everywhere. It seeps into the fabric of the world and oozes out as coincidence, fate, chance, luck, or what have you. The big problem is having enough magic to make it work for you in some useful manner.
We’re all something we’re not,′ he said. ‘Every one of us is stuck between the person we want to be and the person we can be. And there doesn’t have to be a why. All things have to do is feel right.
Of all the Winter Service Industries, the Winter Consul was the most dangerous. Few who joined expected to last out the decade, yet recruitment was never much of a problem. You didn’t find the job, they said, it found you. No-one ever who entered the Winter voluntarily wasn’t trying to leave something behind.
Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn’t collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.
Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Joffy had decided many years before that the problem with religion wasn’t religion itself but its flagrant misuse as an absolutist argument to promote narrow tribal agendas.
Clarke’s Second Law of Egodynamics: “For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
Punching goblins, replied Sprockett soothingly, while offering short-term relief, has no long-term beneficial value.
Do you know what happened when they tried to upgrade SCROLL?” said Bradshaw. “The system conflict wiped out the entire library at Alexandria – they had to torch the lot to stop it spreading.
Staying awake in the winter requires considerable pantry, a lot of luck, warm clothes, and several dozen good books.
Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
Now and again. Good residency is about having the power to ask someone to do something, but not necessarily exercising it.
Those that can be troubled to muse upon the meaning of life are generally disappointed when they figure it out.
Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstances.
Just because of an unusual genetic abnormality, Hollywood thinks it can portray us as dysfunctional social pariahs. Ask yourself this: Have you ever been, or know anyone who has ever been, a victim of albino crime?” The protest follows hot on the heels of last week’s demonstrations when Colombians and men with ponytails complained of being unrelentingly portrayed as drug dealers. – Extract from The Mole, July 31, 2003.
I’m always surprised that you all don’t take more interest in other creatures. It’s like living on a street and not knowing your next-door neighbor. If I were human, I’d start investing in a little kindness. When the arthropods rule the planet, all those lobster dishes and crab sticks could well be a cause of some regret.
Take no heed of her,” explained Jones apologetically. “She reads a lot of books.
The very possibility of death focuses the mind wonderfully.
The only thing you really get to figure out after a lifetime of study is that there’s more stuff to figure out. Frustrating and enlightening at the same time.
In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.