“Long years later, when Schmendrick’s name had become a greater name than Nikos’s and worse than afreets surrendered at the sound of it, he was never to work the smallest magic without seeing Prince Lír before him, his eyes squinted up because of the brightness and his tongue sticking out.”
—The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
April 2009
46 posts
“Tridib could see them clearly, years later, walking down that street in the creeping darkness, holding tightly on to each other. But he knew that the clarity of that image in his mind was merely the seductive clarity of ignorance; an illusion of knowledge created by a deceptive weight of remembered detail.”
—The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh
“Life is brutal that way … the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.”
—Endymion by Dan Simmons
“I do not object to the title of shepherd. But in this tale I will be seen as a shepherd whose
flock consisted of one infinitely important sheep. And I lost her more than found her.”
—Endymion by Dan Simmons
“The prince had not yet noticed her offered hand, but in a moment he would turn and see, and touch her for the first time.”
—The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“She sat down, wiping her cheeks with the palm of one hand and reaching for the rucksack with the other. She carried it everywhere; when Will thought of her in later years, it was often with that little bag over her shoulder. She tucked the hair behind her ears in the swift movement he loved and took out the black velvet bundle.”
—The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
“And in the whiteness, of the whiteness, flowering in the tattered water, their bodies arching with the streaked marble hollows of the waves, their manes and tails and the fragile beards of the males burning in the sunlight, their eyes as dark and jeweled as the deep sea—and the shining of the horns, the seashell shining of the horns! The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships.”
—The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him, and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold: it spilled through his skin, sprang from his fingers and toes, welled up equally in his eyes and his hair and the hollows of his shoulders. There was too much to hold, too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
—The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“As far as I can tell, the underlying critical difference between me and people who lose their friends is that I judge people as stocks, while they judge them as flows. When a friend hurts my feelings, it’s almost always trivial compared to all the joy they’ve brought me. So why would I get upset at someone who, as a package, is still a great deal? In contrast, many other people focus on flows; their friends are just one faux pas away from getting purged. ”
—
Stocks, Flows, and Friendship, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“‘Mood?’ Halleck’s voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield’s filtering. ‘What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.’”
—Dune by Frank Herbert
“I had meant it as a feeble joke, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Smug is a game two can play.”
—The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters
“Schmidt tried to appear penitent. He didn’t really succeed; the very curve of his mustache was smug.”
—The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters
“Seemed to me we had already hit the first snag in the plan. Three people don’t lurk well, especially when Schmidt is one of the three.”
—The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters
“The woman sitting there, straight and still on the bright velvet cushions, was not young; nor was she less than beautiful. The black hair, loose and shining, and deep, fell back over her shoulder and forward down to her waist; her chin was high above the pure line of her neck, which you could have held in one hand. Her eyebrows were black, and arched in pride, or surprise, or over some deep, long-held thought; and below the black, silky lashes, the wide eyes were packed full of straw.”
—Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
“This reason failed to strike Catherine; and indeed she scarcely understood it. All her feelings were merged in the sense that he was trying to treat her as he had treated her years before. She had suffered from it then; and now all her experience, all her acquired tranquillity and rigidity, protested. She had been so humble in her youth that she could now afford to have a little pride, and there was something in this request, and in her father’s thinking himself so free to make it, that seemed an injury to her dignity. Poor Catherine’s dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far.”
—Washington Square by Henry James
“A long time afterwards, she was to remember what an excellent chess-player Francis Crawford was. And that, whether romance existed in him or not, sentimentality had no place at all.”
—Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
“Not to every young girl is it given to enter the harem of the Sultan of Turkey and return to her homeland a virgin.”
—Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett
“Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.”
—The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“You have the downvote. Use it or USENET.”
—Less Wrong: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
