You didn’t bring us here,′ Lettie said. ‘We came because we wanted to. And I came to give you one last chance to go.
Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
You must come to the Vicarage, then, next week,” said the vicar.
The treasures of ten thousand years ago were not the treasures of today.
Sometimes the ship would sail above dark storm clouds, as big as mountains, and the crew would fish for lightning bolts with a small copper chest.
And all the time we spent in this place would fade and vanish, like a dawn dream on waking that colours the day but cannot be touched or remembered.
All through the workday something was nagging at the back of his head, and he didn’t know what it was. He misplaced things. He forgot things. At one point, he started singing at his desk, not because he was happy, but because he forgot not to.
Shadow had made a face, but he had started to read, and had found himself hooked against his will.
The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show he had seen as a teenager, about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it’s only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins, it’s a threat. This grin was one of those.
This isn’t about what is,” said Mr. Nancy. “It’s about what people think is. It’s all imaginary anyway. That’s why it’s important. People only fight over imaginary things.
It’s true what they say, thought Shadow. If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.
Horus is crazy, really bugfuck crazy, spends all his time as a hawk, eats roadkill, what kind of a life is that?
And then he was silent; and from far above they heard the sounds of crows flying, cawing angrily. “Crows. Family Corvidae. Collective noun,” intoned Mr. Croup, relishing the sound of the word. “a murder.
If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each others’ tragedies.
Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind, Now slip, now slide, now move unseen, Above, beneath, betwixt, between.
But neither path is safe. Which way would you walk – the way of hard truths or the way of fine lies?” Shadow hesitated. “Truths,” he said. “I’ve come too far for more lies.
I walked out and I got a standing ovation from all these people, and it’s like a creepy thing... either you’ve become a cultural icon, or they are applauding the fact that you are not dead yet.
My hound hath no nose.
We’re going to San Francisco. The flowers in your hair are optional.
The marquis breathed heavily on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his coat. “I have always felt,” he said, “that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept.