Home > Work > One Word Kill (Impossible Times #1)
21 " ugliness multiplies, and hurt spills over into hurt, and sometimes good things are just the fuel for evil’s fire. "
― Mark Lawrence , One Word Kill (Impossible Times #1)
22 " Mia felt increasingly precious to me, even though so little had passed between us. To John, I knew she would simply be a conquest. Not treated badly. But not . . . valued to her true worth. "
23 " nodded. With most people, almost everyone, there’s some level at which enough is enough. The level varies from one person to another, but there is a level. You didn’t have to spend long in Rust’s company to realise that he had no threshold. He would escalate any situation with startling rapidity to the point where he could count it as a victory, which meant the other party had to lose. His wasn’t a personality built to last. At least, not in a society with laws and police to enforce them. But he would make quite a mess before he was finished. I was pretty sure of that! "
24 " Creeping to the telephone in the hall, dialling her number, easing the dial back after each digit so the noise of it resetting wouldn’t bring Mother out as witness. ‘Hi,’ Mia would say. ‘Hi,’ I would say back, voice low, hopefully sounding seductive rather than like a boy scared his mother might come into the hall to ask what he was doing. "
25 " my view of the future had narrowed to tunnel vision, aimed squarely at the next week, next month . . . would I have a next year? I was carrying not only the burden of my sickness but the pressure of making something worthwhile of each day now that my towering stack of them had fallen into ruin and left me clutching at each hour as it slipped between my fingers. "
26 " You didn’t have to spend long in Rust’s company to realise that he had no threshold. He would escalate any situation with startling rapidity to the point where he could count it as a victory, which meant the other party had to lose. His wasn’t a personality built to last. At least, not in a society with laws and police to enforce them. But he would make quite a mess before he was finished. I was pretty sure of that! "
27 " He deserved acne. You want people’s badness to show. "
28 " My father had been a mathematician. A famous one. At least as far as any mathematician or scientist not named Einstein can be famous. Other mathematicians in his field knew his name. Nobody else did. "
29 " the arrival of the time traveller is an event like any other and branches a new timeline off from the reality he went back to. So, it’s never crowded. And because his arrival creates a new branch he can do all those paradoxical things you hear about. He can kill his father as a little boy to prevent his own birth. He can meet himself. It won’t matter, because he isn’t affecting the timeline that leads to him, he is changing events on a new timeline. "
30 " You marry him. Your friends and family come to the wedding.’ Her eyes glistened. ‘Who is “him”?’ ‘I’ve got an idea. But in the end it’s not the important part,’ Elton said. ‘I want the future Demus has seen. "
31 " we all dance around each other in a kind of terror, too petrified of stepping on each other’s toes to understand that we are at least for a brief time getting to dance and should be enjoying the hell out of it. "
32 " The ground starts to shake. Small stones dance on the hardpan. Dust lifts around your ankles. You feel the vibrations through the soles of your boots. The ground starts to break. The— Yes, Fineous?’ Simon lowered his hand. ‘Fineous starts to run.’ ‘In any particular direction?’ ‘Away? "
33 " The ground starts to shake. Small stones dance on the hardpan. Dust lifts around your ankles. You feel the vibrations through the soles of your boots. The ground starts to break. The— Yes, Fineous?’ Simon lowered his hand. ‘Fineous starts to run.’ ‘In any particular direction?’ ‘Away?’ ‘It’s happening all around, as far as you can see.’ ‘Fineous stays where he is, then, and starts to limber up in preparation for running. "
34 " We were a tribe who had always felt as if we were locked into a box that we couldn’t see. And when D&D came along, suddenly we saw both the box and the key. "
35 " The equations that govern the universe don’t care about time. There’s no “now”, no past or present, just a solution to the equation. That’s how rocks see it. How atoms see it; planets, stars; antimatter, dark matter. None of it cares about “now”. Time is just a variable. We make now. Consciousness makes now. We live it "
36 " The room was white. Too white. The sheets could star in any washing powder commercial. And, in their midst, staining their perfection, the uncooperative human stubbornly dying amid this array of cleverness and invention. "
37 " The equations that govern the universe don’t care about “now”. You can ask them questions about this time or that time, but nowhere in the elegance of their mathematics is there any such thing as “now”. The idea of one specific moment, one universal “now” racing along at sixty minutes an hour, slicing through the seconds, spitting the past out behind it and throwing itself into the future . . . that’s just an artefact of consciousness, something entirely of our own making that the cosmos has no use for. "
38 " Walking along in the cold night it occurred to me that, in the great multitude of humanity, creatures like Ian Rust were like the cancer cells among the crush of blood cells in my veins. Rare, but requiring only one to begin to pollute everything around them. Because ugliness multiplies, and hurt spills over into hurt, and sometimes good things are just the fuel for evil’s fire. I "
39 " On the day he died, he told me: ‘The equations that govern the universe don’t care about “now”. You can ask them questions about this time or that time, but nowhere in the elegance of their mathematics is there any such thing as “now”. The idea of one specific moment, one universal “now” racing along at sixty minutes an hour, slicing through the seconds, spitting the past out behind it and throwing itself into the future . . . that’s just an artefact of consciousness, something entirely of our own making that the cosmos has no use for. "
40 " I was for the first time, in a short and self-absorbed kind of life, starting to really see it for what it was. The beauty and the silliness, and how one piece fitted with the next, and how we all dance around each other in a kind of terror, too petrified of stepping on each other’s toes to understand that we are at least for a brief time getting to dance and should be enjoying the hell out of it. "