4
" And one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way—" Jessica breaking down in a giggle as he reaches for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can't bear to be tickled in. She hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back of the sofa but making a nice recovery, and by now she's ticklish all over, he can grab an ankle, elbow— But a rocket has suddenly struck. A terrific blast quite close beyond the village: the entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed—the casement window blown inward, rebounding with a wood squeak to slam again as all the house still shudders. Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop..... "
5
" Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense.
If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose.
It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon. "
― Guy P. Harrison
7
" Now that his children had grown into their lives, their own children too, there was no one who needed more than the idea of him, and he thought maybe that was why he had this nagging feeling, this sense that there were things he had to know for himself, only for himself. He knew, of course he knew, that a life wasn't anything like one of those novels Jenny read, that it stumbled along, bouncing off one thing, then another, until it just stopped, nothing wrapped up neatly. He remembered his children's distress at different times, failing an exam or losing a race, a girlfriend. Knowing that they couldn't believe him but still trying to tell them that it would pass, that they would be amazed, looking back, to think it had mattered at all. He thought of himself, thought of things that had seemed so important, so full of meaning when he was twenty, or forty, and he thought maybe it was like Jenny's books after all. Red herrings and misdirection, all the characters and observations that seemed so central, so significant while the story was unfolding. But then at the end you realized that the crucial thing was really something else. Something buried in a conversation, a description - you realized that all along it had been a different answer, another person glimpsed but passed over, who was the key to everything. Whatever everything was. And if you went back, as Jenny sometimes did, they were there, the clues you'd missed while you were reading, caught up in the need to move forward. All quietly there. "
― Mary Swan
11
" Never had there been a time when sound, color, and feeling hadn’t been intertwined, when a dirty, rolling bass line hadn’t induced violets that suffused him with thick contentment, when the shades of certain chords sliding up to one another hadn’t produced dusty pastels that made him feel like he was cupping a tiny, golden bird. It wasn’t just music but also rumbling trains and rainstorms, occasional voices, a collective din. Colors and textures appeared in front of him, bouncing in time to the rhythm, or he’d get a flash of color in his mind, an automatic sensation of a tone, innate as breathing. "
― Lisa Ko , The Leavers
14
" I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137) "
― , A Year in the Merde
16
" I squinted through the big window, a portal to another world, trying to get a better view of the primal love scene before us. All I could see was a mass of wriggling fur and finger-like toes until my eyes focused in on one male and two females kissing, ear-tonguing and giving each other enthusiastic oral sex, punctuated with occasional somersaults, smacks and nibbles on fruit and leaves. Sometimes they interacted as a threesome. Other times, two would cavort together, while the third played with herself, alternating between fingering and using a red rubber ball as a kind of sex toy, rubbing and bouncing it vigorously against her large pink vulva. "
― Susan Block , The Bonobo Way
18
" Of the Phoenix kids, the one Derek got along best with was Daniel. In him, Daniel had found a good sparring partner. And a plotting partner, too. Derek wasn’t just the biggest and strongest in our group. He was also the smartest. Scary, off-the-charts smart. That intimidated Daniel a little at first—he’s bright, but he needs to work for his grades. But Derek wasn’t a show-off or a know-it-all, so they got past that and we would hang out together, the two guys, Chloe, and I planning and plotting our future, bouncing ideas off one another. "
― Kelley Armstrong , The Rising (Darkness Rising, #3)
19
" He stared down at her for a moment, wanting to heal every
cut on her soft skin. But he couldn’t, not yet. He needed to get her,
and her car, far from this place so neither he nor Kate would be
implicated in any way with the gruesome murder site.
It also meant he would have to drive.
In all his years, he had never driven an automobile. The closest he
had come was watching various assistants through the years as they
chauffeured him. He wasn’t sure he could even remember how to
start the car, but right now he had no choice.
Grudgingly, he got into the driver’s seat, and finding the lever
underneath, he pushed it back so he sat comfortably behind the
wheel. After trying three different keys, he found one that slipped into
the ignition.
From what he had seen over the past hundred years, driving was
not a complex operation, and he was an immortal with reflexes far
more keen than a human man.
How difficult could it be?
He turned the key and nearly jerked the wheel off the steering
column when the car surprised him by lurching forward. The car went
silent. The engine wasn’t running. What was he doing wrong?
He stared at the gearshift, wondering if he should move it. His
frustration reared up, but his agitation would not make the car drive
itself. He had to keep a cool head.
Not knowing what else to try, he pushed one of the pedals at his
feet to the floor and turned the key again. This time the car didn’t
move, and it roared to life. Grasping the gearshift, he jammed it into
the first position and glanced over at Kate.
Why couldn’t she have owned a car with an automatic
transmission?
Shaking his head, he put some pressure on the gas pedal and
slowly released the clutch. Thankfully the car rolled a few feet, but
without warning it jumped forward. He pressed the clutch back to the
floor before the engine lost power again.
Calisto slammed his hand against the wheel, muttering under his
breath in Spanish. At this rate it would take him all night to drive her
home.
The faded yellow convertible pitched forward again, threatening
to stall as he continued out of the parking lot, thankful it was late. The
streets were fairly empty. At least he wouldn’t get into an accident
with another car. Her car staggered ahead, lurching each time he
tried to release the clutch, bouncing and jostling them both until Kate
finally stirred and woke up.
§
“Are we out of gas or something?”
Calisto watched her with a tight smile. “Not exactly.”
Kate winced in pain when she laughed. “You can’t drive a stickshift,
can you?”
“Does it show?” Calisto pulled over, finally allowing the engine to
stall.
She nodded her head slowly to avoid more pain. “Just a little.
What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember being mugged. And I remember seeing you, but
everything after that is blank.” She watched his eyes as Calisto
reached over to brush her hair back from her face, and his touch sent
shivers through her body. This wasn’t how she had hoped she would
run into him, but she learned a long time ago fate didn’t always work
out the way you expected. "
― Lisa Kessler , Night Walker (Night, #1)