Highlights from February: Lines Worth Repeating

One thing I’ve learned lately is that if I don’t get this done right away at the beginning of the month, it slips away from me. Good to know, I guess, eh? On with these lines from my February reads…

The Hero Interviews by Andi Ewington

It’s worth noting that ‘success’ in the adventuring business is usually measured by whether you’re still breathing after completing an adventure. Those who aren’t successful typically wind up dead.

“My father taught me that you always get out of life what you put into it. If you’re only paying a Dwarf in crumbs, then you’re only going to end up with a pissed- off Dwarf who is still hungry.”

Balstaff: … I just hoped someone would come to my rescue before I froze to death— or worse.”

Me: “What’s worse than freezing to death?”

Balstaff: “Being eaten alive by hungry Snow Wolves.”

Danger is just death’s distant cousin once removed— many an adventurer has fallen foul of it.”

Bad Memory by Jim Cliff

“Discretion is my middle name,” I said. “It’s a shame it doesn’t fit on my business cards.”

The dealer button moved around to me and I picked up the cards and gave them a shuffle. The six of us fitted around Scott’s kitchen table so long as everyone breathed in and nobody minded the odd elbow in the ribs.

Her glasses were designer – I could tell because the designer’s name was discreetly embossed on the frame. Her suit didn’t have any names on it, but I figured clothes designers were just more humble

“You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood. I just got a hole in one on the 17th. What is it?”

I resisted the urge to say ‘it’s when the ball goes in the hole on the first hit, but that’s not important right now’ and asked my question.

The Silk Empress by Josepf Matulich

“So, that’s what air pirates really look like.” They resembled none of the flamboyant descriptions of the penny dreadfuls he’d grown up on. He’d expected striped pants, velvet coats, and satin sashes. This group looked the type to rob pig herds on the way to Newcastle.

His mother would have approved of his lack of possessions, a sign of spiritual freedom. He tried to feel in his heart the way she did, but he would have still have preferred to have had a few more books.

He hurt. His right leg felt to be filled with blades and broken glass. One of his arms ached to the bones from shoulder to fingertips; he couldn’t feel or move the other. A slow catalogue of all his injuries actually made him chuckle. I should be happy to hurt so much, he thought. You don’t feel anything when you’re dead.

With the long guns they carried, seven of them could shoot Algie as he engaged the eighth. He had been shot once already this year, and he’d like to keep it that way at least until Christmas.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Alan Conway’s home was a couple of Framlingham and it would’ve been almost impossible to find without Sat-Nav. I’ve lived my whole life in a city roads actually go somewhere, because frankly they can’t afford not to.

You’d have thought that after twenty years editing Murder Mysteries I’d have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one.

It had all come to me at Paddington Station. The extraordinary moment that all of them must have felt–Poirot, Holmes, Whimsey, Marple, Morse–but which their authors had never fully explained. What was it like for them? A slow process, like constructing a jigsaw? Or did it come in a rush, one last turn in a toy kaleidoscope, when all the colors and shapes tumbled and twisted into each other forming a recognizable image?

Finley Donovan Jumps the Gun by Elle Cosimano

My phone vibrated again as I reached for the keyboard.

Vero: I hope you remembered gloves….

I dug my mittens from the pockets of my coat and drew them on, wishing I’d been prepared with something a little more Temperance Brennan and less Bernie Sanders.

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

“A child’s portion of Don Julio,” I said.

I always order alcohol that way–stole it from an old mentor, a cop long dead. But he used it for food because he had diverticulitis. I use it for alcohol because I’m Irish. But that’s not entirely ture. I’m also half Jewish. On my mother’s side. I’m half Jew, half Mick, all ish.

We both stared at the little hip of ice on his desk, at $289,000 worth of sparkling carbon. Which up close, under a microscope, looked like a palace.

It was bumper to bumper, thousands of cars jammed together, going nowhere and somewhere, reaching speeds as high as five miles per hour, ten if we were lucky; and even with the recent rain, the white smog, which we live in all the time, was especially thick,and you would never know that just a few miles to the east the whole valley basin was ringed by beautiful mountains, the San Gabirels.

But they were obscured by the white filth, and it’s old news, of course, but we are forced in this modern life, to always hold two ideas in our mind at once: one, the natural world is beautiful, and two, we are destroying it.

The Foundling, the Heist, and the Volcano by K.R.R. Lockhaven

“Why did you bury the treasure?” Azure asked.

Wakeman looked to her with an extremely confused expression. Even Mr. Threepbrush, who was usually over- the- top respectful, looked at her like she had just said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

“Uh… cause that’s what one does with treasure.” Wakeman couldn’t keep the condescension from his voice.

“Aye, Captain,” Mr. Threepbrush added, “what other choice did he have?”

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.

I learn more when I make mistakes, so long as they don’t kill me.

Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire

Airplanes: essentially buses that fly, and hence have the potential to drop out of the sky at any moment, spreading your insides—which will no doubt become your outsides sometime during the collision—across whatever you happen to have been flying over. Since we were flying mostly over ocean, I was sure the sharks would appreciate our sacrifice.

“Family matters more than anything else in this world, Family doesn’t have to love you. Family doesn’t even have to like you. But when you need them, family has to have your back.”

Broken by Don Winslow

Behavior that was cute when you were in your twenties becomes aggravating in your thirties, pathetic in your forties and tragic in your fifties.

“father” and “mother” are verbs before they’re nouns.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)