2
" I bought you something" Willows blurts out." You bought...What?" Willow closes her eyes for a second. She's a little surprised she's going to give it to him after all, but there's no going back now. She has to." At the bookstore." She reaches into her bag again, and pushes the package across the table towards him.Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly, Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old-" I love it when used books have notes in the margins, it's the best," Guy says as he flips through the pages. " I always imagine who read it before me." He pauses and looks at one of Prospero's speeches. " I have way too much homework to read this now, but you know what? Screw it. I want to know why it's your favorite Shakespeare. Thank you, that was really nice of you. I mean, you really didn't have to." " But I did anyway," Willow says so quietly she's not even sure hears her.Hey," Guy frowns for a second. " You didn't write anything in here." " Oh, I didn't even think...I, well, I wouldn't even know what to write," Willow says shyly." Well, maybe you'll think of something later," he says.Willow watches Guy read the opening. There's no mistaking it. His smile is genuine, and she can't help thinking that if she can't make David look like this, at least she can do it for someone. "
8
" Suicides - you read of it…but you don’t know the truth, if you were to see it you would go insane! Cut throats, cut wrists, hangings, suffocating, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, more shit. Suicides always shit themselves, did you know that! Life’s final shit, the final act of madness; smell that you rats! Clean me up you pigs, zip me up in the bag you scum and get me out of here… Get me the fuck out of here…get me out! "
― , Insanity: My Mad Life
9
" Rosy’s mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny’s wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge.
There on Franny’s coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects.
“Please, may I have a biscuit?” Rosy says.
“Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling,” Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy’s prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. “Help yourself, my wee hen.”
Rosy settles for a reject.
Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach. "
― R.G. Manse , Screw Friendship (Frank Friendship, #1)
12
" Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things, there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them, too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool's joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered and room in the bag of stars. "
― Ursula K. Le Guin