When the President asks you to do something, you’d be surprised how keen you are to oblige,” Syme said.
I don’t save the world for glory or power. I have neither and I don’t care for them. In fact, I quite like it that the world doesn’t know my name. I just do what I do for the people I love.
The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.
Come not between the dragon and his wrath. – William Shakespeare King Lear.
Yo. Salt-and-Pepper. The name is Go-Go or Mr Go-Go, okay?
Myths arise from actual events, remarkable events that get talked about precisely because they are remarkable and which then get embellished in the retelling.
The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself. – Friedrich Nietzsche.
Sometimes you had to make the animals perform.
In so many ways, Ascham thought, she was beyond her years – but in the presence of her father she became a little girl again. So confident and assured in private, now she moved with the stilted awkwardness of every twelve-year-old girl. Ascham’s heart went out to her.
Lily just stared down in horror at Jack and Alby as they took off for the maze, fleeing from the advancing snake-headed warrior. THE.
The dragons are throwing cars at me!
A limitless supply of cheap labor might build you a new city every year, but it ultimately just makes you the factory floor for other countries’ companies.
What people do in the name of religion is not necessarily religious. It often has baser reasons behind it.
Feels like we’re driving into Mordor,” Hamish muttered. “What’s Mordor?” Syme asked. “Never mind.
In fact, the name ‘rook’ derives from ruhk, the Persian word for chariot. Pawns were footsoldiers, bishops were elephants, knights were mounted cavalry, and speeding along at the edges of the board were the swift and deadly chariots.
We didn’t come this far just to come this far.
The acquisition of knowledge, the sheer pleasure of finding things out, is the greatest gift in life.
The zoo’s “image consultants” from New York had been very clear about this: establish your believability first, then go tabloid.
A civilization is judged by how it treats the vulnerable.
This is how great knowledge dies, on bookshelves in plain sight.