1
" I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even, for a week, as the Mackinac Bridge, but it was as a werewolf that Timothy Stokes finally went too far. "
― Michael Chabon , Werewolves in Their Youth
3
" He walked straight out of college into the waiting arms of the Navy.
They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?
Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?
Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.
Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else. "
― Neal Stephenson , Cryptonomicon
6
" Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus’s face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I double over, retching, and his knee comer up into my forehead. The hallway spins, and I drop to my knees. Then I hear him laughting, a sadistic chuckle that stokes my defiance.
Sluggishly, I throw myself at his legs. It won’t be like before, like during the raid when I let that Mask drag me about my own house like some dead thing.
This time, I’ll fight. Tooth and nail, I’ll fight. "
― Sabaa Tahir , An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)
7
" A kiss, he said, is a conversation. Easing closer, he continued to speak as he caressed her cheeks with featherlight stokes of his thumbs. " A first kiss" , his lips neared hers, is an introduction and then his mouth brushed against hers. The contact sparked, sharp and bright like lightning, yet his lips were soft, unexpectedly so. Her breath caught the same instant his did. Against her mouth he whispered " That was Hello" His breath mingled with hers as he waited, his lips so close she could feel their warmth. For a moment she simply breathed him in growing heady on the scent of him and the tight anticipation gathering in her belly. Then she understood. Nerves fluttering, she brushed her lips across his as he had done. Again his breath hitched, as if he too felt that same spark, that hot need. Her eyes drifted closed and his voice poured over her like warm cream. " This is, 'I'm Jack'. "