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simply  QUOTES

66 " For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity.

And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval.

But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time. "

Salman Rushdie , The Ground Beneath Her Feet

74 " Breeze strolled over to the table and chose a seat with his characteristic decorum. The portly man raised his dueling cane, pointing it at Ham. 'I see that my period of intellectual respite has come to an end.'

Ham smiled. 'I thought up a couple beastly questions while I was gone, and I've been saving them just for you, Breeze.'

'I'm dying of anticipation,' Breeze said. He turned his cane toward Lestibournes. 'Spook, drink.'

Spook rushed over and fetched Breeze a cup of wine.

'He's such a fine lad,' Breeze noted, accepting the drink. 'I barely even have to nudge him Allomantically. If only the rest of you ruffians were so accommodating.'

Spook frowned. 'Niceing the not on the playing without.'

'I have no idea what you just said, child,' Breeze said. 'So I'm simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.'

Kelsier rolled his eyes. 'Losing the stress on the nip,' he said. 'Notting without the needing of care.'

'Riding the rile of the rids to the right,' Spook said with a nod.

'What are you two babbling about?' Breeze said testily.

'Wasing the was of brightness,' Spook said. 'Nip the having of wishing of this.'

'Ever wasing the doing of this,' Kelsier agreed.

'Ever wasing the wish of having the have,' Ham added with a smile. 'Brighting the wish of wasing the not.'

Breeze turned to Dockson with exasperation. 'I believe our companions have finally lost their minds, dear friend.'

Dockson shrugged. Then, with a perfectly straight face, he said, 'Wasing not of wasing is. "

Brandon Sanderson , The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)

76 " Merda! Her lace panties had snagged on his ring, the signet ring he'd inherited from his father, Giacomo Casanova. His father had seduced hundred of women without any problems whatsoever, and he was having trouble with just one. This was the real reason he never used the Casanova name. He could never live up to his father's reputation. The old man was probably laughing in his grave.Nine circles of hell," Jack muttered.Hell?" Lara asked. " I thought I was the Holy Land." You're paradise. Unfortunately, I am stuck there." Her eyes widened. " Stuck?" Normally, I would love being stuck to your lovely bum, but it would look odd if we go sightseeing with my hand under your skirt. Especially in the basilica." She glanced down. " How can you be stuck?" My ring. It's caught in the lace. See?" He moved his hand down her hip, dragging her undies down a few inches.Okay, stop." She bit her lip, frowning, then suddenly giggled. " I can't believe this has happened." I assure you, as much as I had hoped to get your clothes off, this was not part of my original plan." She snorted. " No problem. Just rip yourself loose." Are you sure?" It will destroy you undies." She narrowed her eyes with a seductuve look. " Rip it." Very well." He jerked his hand away, but the panties came with him. He yanked his hand back and forth, but the lacy, latex material simply stretched with him. " Santo cielo, they are indestructible." Lara laughed.He continued to wage battle, but to no avail. " They could use this material to build spaceships. "

80 " One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term " Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. "