Tag: Highlights: Lines Worth Repeating

I’m a couple of days late with this, it took a bit of choosing (and I had to verify selections from a couple of ARCs, too). Here are the lines from August that really stood out to me.

Hell of a Mess by Nick Kolakowski

Don’t worry, sweetie, she’d told him on the way out the door. Anything goes wrong, I got the gun!

What about not killing? he’d retorted— because she was trying to become more Zen, right? Kinder and gentler and all that other crap?

I’ll just shoot them in the kneecap! she said before the door slammed behind her.

His wife had a funny concept of Zen.

The assassin raised a hand. “Sorry, I have this medical condition, it makes me draw the nearest firearm whenever I hear the word ‘Bitcoin.’”

“When did you become an explosives expert?” the assassin asked.

“I saw ‘The Hurt Locker’ at least twice,” Bill said, snipping a wider gap.

Summerland by Michael Chabon

The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker

I was in the waiting area, drinking from a bottle of mineral water when Art first walked in. He wore a forest green velvet jacket and bright mustard trousers, and darted through the clinic’s duck-egg like a greenfinch. The world didn’t dim around him, my heart didn’t skip a beat, but I felt as if I could know him, and could anticipate his nature if only I knew his voice. He sat directly opposite me on a plush red chair, and after a single scan around the waiting room, picked up a copy of National Geographic and started to read. I knew who he was, even if he didn’t immediately know me. Art was at once a mystery and a map.

I purged the kitchen of potted carcasses. Despite them all sitting in a row and sharing the same light, each plant had died in its own discrete way. Most had shrivelled back into a gnarled stump, and others had become mushy, sinking down like a creamy concertina. Aubrey’s succulent had finally given up its last leaf, and the stalk stood obscenely naked, coiling towards the sun like an earthworm. I tossed them all into the composter and left the empty pots by the back door. I’d replace them with artificial plants later…

Plugged by Eoin Colfer

Everyone wants to kill me lately. It’s enough to make a fellow paranoid.

I am not qualified to deal with this. Why does everyone I meet seem to have mental problems?

Ah…but did they have mental problems before meeting you? Who’s the common denominator here, Dan?

I do not have mental problems! I say to the voice in my head, perfectly aware how damning it would sound were I to say it aloud.

The great Stephen King once wrote don’t sweat the small stuff, which I mulled over for long enough to realise that I don’t entirely agree with it. I get what he means: we all have enough major sorrow in our lives without freaking out over the day-today hangnails and such, but sometimes sweating the small stuff helps you make it through the big stuff.

When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire

Faerie’s relationship to physics is often casual at best, and sometimes it consists of Faerie promising to call when physics knows it never will.

Congratulations on the occasion of your marriage, and may the blessings piled upon your house be so vast the roof is in danger of collapse before you can get the wedding party to safety.

Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

If they couldn’t agree on which Sci Fi memes to deploy in conversation, how could they work together long enough to fix anything, solve anything, save anybody?

Out of Spite, Out of Mind by Scott Meyer

Shooting yourself in the foot has the same effect whether you do it to get out of the army or to kill a mosquito on your shoe.”

Case of the Missing Firefly by Chris McDonald

If this were a novel, Adam perhaps might’ve realised that he’d been holding his breath the whole time. As it was, his respiratory system had carried on as normal, collecting oxygen without his explicit command.

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

She had wanted to refuse the assignment but the terms he offered were too good to pass up: tax exemption for life and not going to jail for refusing her duke. Taishi was not a big fan of taxes or imprisonment.

Taishi had been so busy she kept forgetting to tell Faaru to put out a call for educators. The boy needed to know more than eight ways to throw a punch. She needed to hire teachers: philosophers, mathematicians, politicians … and probably someone to teach him how to dress himself. He would need to be versed in diplomacy, cultures, logistics, art, and etiquette. Half of a leader’s job was to not be an idiot.

The seconds ticked by. Taishi bided her time. In battle, only fools hurried, and they either learned or died learning.

Jian remembered [redacted] death-punching him in the chest, his veins feeling like they were scalding in hot oil. Everything was hazy after that. To be honest, part of him felt he owed his former master an apology: No one ever believed any war artist who claimed to know some form of death punch. Out ofall his masters, only Luda had boasted that knowledge, and the rest had teased him relentlessly about it. Being on the receiving end of a death touch was a pretty awful way to confirm its existence.

Unlike many war artists who had put forth tremendous effort to maintain a stoic expression at all times, Taishi suffered no qualms about vocalizing her feelings, and she preferred those under her to do the same. It was better to show fear than false courage. A soldier who showed fear—in moderation—was an alert and sharp soldier, and more likely to follow orders. Someone who was busy acting brave was preoccupied with the wrong thing.

Haaren leaned over the side and studied the row of vendor stalk “Everything is so cheap.”

“That’s because everyone’s so broke,” said Koteuni, “I’ve never seen so many unemployed soldiers and war artists waiting around in one place.”

“That’s what those dummies get for winning the war,” replied Qisami.

Burandin pointed at a recruiter off to the side enlisting soldiers. The crowd surrounding him looked like piranhas during a feed. “The army’s mustering again.”

Koteuni snorted. “To fight whom? There’s no one left.”

He shrugged. “There’s always someone to fight.”

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

When Aja was a baby I’d watch her sleep, sometimes for an hour or more. Her face changed expressions with whatever dream she was having or with anything shifting in the room or inside her. She made errant noises and reached out now and again.

Sleeping, it seemed to me, was an act of innocence. That’s why I stayed awake after almost murdering [redacted ]. I knew that peaceful slumber was for babies, whereas only nightmares awaited a man like me.

One thing I had learned in high school was that in sports you always had to move in a direction that your opponent did not expect. From Ping-Pong to prizefighting, the man with the unexpected moves was the player most likely to win.

Police work is a kind of intellectual sport, like Go or chess. And sometimes you have to make a move to fool yourself, a move that will keep you from putting yourself in the enemy’s line of fire.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation, etc. is just a guess).

Songbird by Peter Grainger

“How old is Michelle?” It doesn’t matter how you ask the question, whichever tense you go with sounds wrong. Reeve had concluded that to say “was” now, would be too soon, that’s all

The [remark about] fast cars were true without a doubt. He’d been in one or two of those with Catherine, and surviving the experience was enough to make you reconsider your rejection of the Christian faith.

There had been times, and not a few of them, when Waters had thought, “Why doesn’t he let that go? Why go out on a limb for something trivial? For some small point of principle?” But there’s no such thing as a small point of principle, principles are big things. If principles aren’t worth fighting for, what else is? What else matters?

A World Without “Whom”: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age by Emmy J. Favilla

Warning: Here’s where I might start to get a little emotional. Because what’s more beautiful than a strategically placed em dash? Answer: interspecies friendships, random acts of kindness, Oscar Isaac, an empty subway car during rush hour that isn’t the result of a putrid mystery substance permeating the air. But the em dash is not too far behind!

Face it: You hate whom. If you don’t, you’re likely a liar or someone with an English degree who actually still really hates whom but can’t bear to come to terms with your traitorous hatred for fear of your overpriced degree being snatched from your cold, dead hands, never to be seen again. In casual conversation we end sentences with prepositions and we never use whom. It’s a fact. And if you do use whom in conversational speech, you will never see yourself on an invite to a dinner party at my place. Mostly because I’m not the type of person who has dinner parties or uses whom.

The Botanist by M.W. Craven

‘I didn’t want you thinking I’d panicked. I didn’t want you thinking less of me.’

Poe was lost for words. ‘Why would I think less of you?’ he said eventually. ‘You’d just found your father’s corpse. There was a bullet hole in his head. If you can’t panic then, when can you?’

The Law by Jim Butcher

I’d been feeling sorry for myself, which is about the most useless thing you can feel: it doesn’t do a damned thing for you. You don’t feel any better, you don’t get any better, and you’re too busy moping to do anything to actually make your life any better.

The Self-Made Widow by Fabian Nicieza

He wore a faded Creed T-shirt from their 1999 Human Clay tour, which Michelle assumed he would never have worn had he known he’d be dying in it.

Brianne was smart, but she was intellectually lazy, mostly as a result of all the years spent being intellectually lazy.

She started to walk away when he said, “Andrea, since we’re still getting to know each other, for the record, I’ve watched IEDs blow up my friends and I’ve been shot five times, with my vest stopping only three of those.”

He let that sink in for a second.

“You have to come at me with something much better than veiled threats to my job.”

“Filed for future reference, Chief,” she said. “Threats to your wife and kids it is, then. . . .”

Derek and Molly didn’t have a fantasy marriage with wind chimes resonating as they pranced about a grassy field like a pharmaceutical commercial distracting you while the rapid-fire voiceover warned you about side effects like rectal bleeding.

Andrea and Jeff had gone to the preserve only once. He didn’t like nature unless it came with a nineteenth hole, and she didn’t like it without concrete sidewalks and blaring taxi horns.

[redacted]’s eyes looked panicked while the other looked homicidal. It gave him a Bill the Cat quality from the old Bloom County strip.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior

So this is what dying is like. Who’d have thought it’d be so frustrating and boring? I’d like it to be over, but no doubt it will drag itself out as long as possible, just like life. How extremely tedious.

With Grimm Resolve by Jeffrey H. Haskell

“Good job, sir,” she said. She knew how fragile officers’ egos were, and it was helpful to reassure them they could find their butt with both hands and a map.

“I don’t really know how to explain it sir.”

“Take your time,” Jacob said with a grin. “It’s only a hitherto unknown stellar phenomenon. You can have a few seconds to figure out how to describe it.”

Jacob took his seat, glancing at the readiness board on his MFD. The ship was at a hundred percent and they were either going to enter the starlane in less than half an hour, or they would die.

Personally, he hoped for the former.

Whispers in the Dark by Chris McDonald

I’d even been interviewed about the case by a petty criminal, from the back seat of the police car on our way back to the station. He told me his mates won’t believe him that he was arrested by THE Erika Piper, and asked could he have a picture to prove it. I’d impolitely declined.

He has me where he wants me. He knows that I am hanging on his every word and he is revelling in it. Though, I swear if he says ‘you see’ again, I will not be responsible for my actions. Liam can sense my mood and intervenes.

As the lift doors close, I can’t help but think I’d been quick to condemn the reception area. Compared to the interior of the lift, it could be confused for a fancy Mayfair hotel. The buttons on the console are coated in a sticky film and Liam does the chivalrous thing, stretching his coat over his hand and prodding the button with supersonic speed.

Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis

“Is that serious?”

“Very,” Kellin said.

“Untreated it can cause brain injury and even death.”

“What do I do for that?”

“Death?” Dr. Kellin smirked. “Nothing.”

“You just reminded me that there’s a corollary to that formula.”

Alex sat up, interested.

“If you eliminate the impossible and nothing remains,” he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth and considering it.

“Yes?” Alex prompted.

“Then some part of the impossible, must be possible.”

The Deepest Grave by Harry Bingham

How does anyone think that ‘attempted murder’ counts the same as actual murder? They shouldn’t even call it ‘attempted’: that’s just a way to flatter failure. The crime is as close as you can get to the opposite of murder.

The thing is, if you kill someone in these extravagant ways, you’re usually trying to send a message. So when the Ku Klux Klan strung people up from trees, they were carefully sending a message. To black people: stay in your place. To white people: this is the way we run things here. None of that civil rights nonsense, or else… A loathsome message, brutally delivered. But clear. Horribly clear.

Owen is probably a good human being and one more likely to be summoned before the Holy Throne than I am, but, Lord help me, the man is boring. Just talking to him makes me want to push plastic forks into my eyes.

The man swears, disappears, then the snout of a shotgun emerges, and Bowen comes back towards me a lot faster than he left. We shelter behind the slab of a tombstone.

‘What now?’

I shake my head.

Nothing.

Shotgun versus shouting: shotgun wins. They teach you that in the police.

Two walls lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves. Katie starts looking at book titles. No reason, except that’s what people like me and Katie do when we walk into a room with books.

We talk to someone at Google about it. He sounds like a real human being–albeit a Californian one whose hair is probably full of sunshine and organic hair product.

Time.

The fourth dimension.

One of my favourite dimensions. One that brings all the good stuff, even if she brings more than her share of the crappy stuff too. But there are times she’s out of her depth. Times when she shunts one second into the void, over the edge of the present and away– then, blow it, the next second to come along looks exactly the same. And the next and the next.

Thousands of seconds, all alike.

He has that Metropolitan Police we- never- screw- up tone about him which is deeply comforting, until you remember that the Met screws up just as much as anyone else and maybe more.

Biting.

That sounds a bit girly, of course. Scratching, biting, pulling hair. Playground stunts that only girls ever pull. Girls with tears and bunches and grubby knees.

But there’s playground biting and real biting.

My fighting instructor, Lev, once told me that the human jaw can exert as much as a hundred kilos of force. I slightly doubt that my own pearly whites can inflict that much pressure, but they’re still handy. The trick– another of Lev’s much- reiterated nuggets– is to bite with the molars not the incisors. You get double or quadruple the amount of force, and the victim’s area of muscle damage is that much greater.

‘Take the biggest bite you can. Bite hard. And don’t stop. The more your man struggles, the more hurt you do.’

Wise advice.

A dog handler once told me that sniffer dogs aren’t recruited for their powers of smell. ‘They can all smell well enough. Asking them to follow a trail is like asking you to pick a red ball from a basket full of green ones. The only issue is whether the dog understands what you’re asking and feels like helping.’

On Eden Street by Peter Grainger

There are lines, and you cross them at your peril. But the closer one gets to them, the more wavy and broken those lines become. And the longer one does this job, the more the realization dawns that every investigation is unique–barely any of them fit the theories you’re taught in the lecture room.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Whoops! Knew I forgot something last week.

I’m citing more audiobooks here than I usually do. So, let me again stress that punctuation, sentence/paragraph breaks, and so on are guesswork on my part.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Lincoln checked out the kitchen. The fridge was new, but the rest of the room did indeed know the differene between Red Skelton and Red Buttons.

“I don’t know if I even believe in that anymore. The fith guy. The perfect guy. The one. I’ve lost faith in ‘the’.”

“How do you feel about ‘a’ and ‘an’?”

“Indifferent.”

“So you’re considering a life without articles?”

“I’m sort of…coming off a bad relationship.”

“When did it end?”

“Slightly before it started.”

Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman

“I know it’s hard to imagine right now, but Los Angeles does have different seasons. There are three days of spring every May, an unpredictable and unpleasantly hot summer from then until three days of crisp and lovely fall sometime in November, then an unpredictable and unpleasantly chilly winter until the three-day spring rolls around again.”

Laura laughed. “Well, New York isn’t much better: Spring and fall last a month each and make you certain there’s no better city on earth, then summer and winter are brutal and exhausting. Precisely when you decide it’s time to leave once and for all, spring or fall shows up and you forget the pain all over again.”

When the body experiences a sudden shock, it actually freezes for one twenty-fifth of a second and then deploys intense psychological curiosity, mobilizing every neuron and nerve, every sense, every possible input to work out exactly what just happened. In a microsecond or two the brain gathers the intel, sorts it, analyzes it, cross-references it, and is ready to issue directions for what to do next. It’s a miracle, really, and while it might not definitively prove the existence of God, it certainly deserves an enthusiastic round of applause.

How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain by Author

Are Shakespeare’s plays truly the greatest in the English language? Shakespeare scholars certainly think so. But I’ve actually read some of them, so I speak with authority when I say that his plays are okay, I guess? But it’s hard to argue they couldn’t be improved upon. For example, did you know that not once in Shakespeare’s works does even a single character gain access to a giant robot suit, much less employ it to lay waste to their enemies? Academics will argue that their beloved Bard captures the very heart of the human condition with sublime nuance and rapturous magnificence, but any conception of humanity that excludes the ever-present desire to possess a robot large enough to climb inside and which also fires lasers out of its eyes and missiles out of its hands is one that feels somewhat blinkered.

Crazy in Poughkeepsie by Daniel Pinkwater

“Tell me if I get this right. The way to get there is just to drive along without any kind of plan, taking various turns on the spur of the moment.”

“With the right attitude.”

“And the right attitude is…”

“Assuming we’ll arrive.”

“Shouldn’t we consult the global positioning thingie?” Vern Chuckoff asked.

“We don’t have one,” Maurice said. “This car is pre-digital, but there’s a blue light that comes on when we are on the Interstate.”

“The Interstate Highway System, which was just being completed when this car was built?” Vern asked.

“I think it’s more likely to be the system of virtual or quasi-imaginary roads or routes that exists in between the state of so-called reality in which we operate and some other states of existence of which we are ordinarily unaware,” Molly said.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

We took a minute to enjoy the joke. Belly laughs are one of the best things about sentience and you should never miss the chance for one.

Against All Odds by Jeffrey H. Haskell

Being blown out into space was on the top of every spacer’s list of “how not to die.”

Back on the O-Deck, he stopped next to Jennings before entering the bridge. He gave her a nod and she snapped to attention.
“Captain on deck,” she bellowed. In his experience, Marines loved yelling at anyone, especially the Navy. It didn’t surprise him at all to see her grin as he stepped through.

She hadn’t really known Commander Stanislaw that well but having him react so was surprising, even though doctors had a long history of acting like they knew better than everyone else.

Movieland by Author

“The ME called with her autopsy report on [name withheld],” he said. “I learned that getting a shotgun blast in the face and driving off a cliff can kill you.”

“Did you reach them?”

“Yeah, an ADA named Joel Goldman, I got his take on the possibility that Honig hired a gunsel to take out Kim Spivey.”
“A gunsel?”

“It’s the same as a gunman, but more fun to say.”

The Border by Don Winslow

It’s funny, he thinks, how the big decisions in your life don’t always follow a big moment or a big change, but just seem to settle on you like an inevitability, something you didn’t decide at all but has always been decided for you.

Barrera made billions of dollars, created and ruled a freaking empire, and what does he have to show for it?

A dead child, an ex-wife who doesn’t come to his wake, a young trophy widow, twin sons who will grow up without their father, a baseball, some smelly old boxing gloves and a suit he never wore. And no one, not one of the hundreds of people [at his funeral], can think of one nice story to tell about him. And that’s the guy who won.

EI Señor. El Patroón. The Godfather.

In a better world, the movies that play on the inside of his eyelids would be features, the product of a screenwriter’s imagination and a director’s style, but in Chuy’s world they are documentaries; memories, you could call them, except they don’t flow like remembrance but are choppy cuts, flashes of surrealism that are all too real.

They are of flayed bodies and severed heads.

Dead children.

Corpses mutilated, others burned in fifty-five-gallon drums, and the memories reside in his nose as well as his eyes. And in his ears, as he can still hear—can’t stop hearing, really—the screams, the pleas for mercy, the shrill taunting laughter that was sometimes his own.

“You got kids?”

“No,” Cirello says. “You missin’ out.”

“I figure I got time.”

“We all figure we got time,” Darnell says. “Ain’t true. Time got us. Time undefeated, man. You never beat it. You wanna know about time, ask a convict. We experts on the subject of time.”

Eddie Ruiz stayed in the witness protection program for about thirty-seven minutes.

Which is about the time it took him to scope out St. George, Utah, and say, “I don’t think so.”

Yeah, a lot of the homeless are addicts, but most addicts aren’t homeless.

Jacqui has learned this on the blocks and in the parks and housing projects where she scores and shoots up. Most of the junkies out there with her have jobs—they’re roofers and carpet layers, or auto mechanics, or they work at one of the few factories that survived after IBM pulled out. There are housewives shooting up because it’s cheaper than the Oxy pills they got hooked on, there are high school kids, their teachers, people who drive down from even smaller towns upstate to score.

You have homeless like her who stink of body odor and you have suburban queens who smell of Mary Kay products and pay for their habits from their Amway earnings, and you have everything in between.

Welcome to Heroin Nation, 2016.

One nation, under the influence.

With liberty and justice for all.

Amen.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation is just a guess).

Rosebud by Paul Cornell

Haunt has never heard an insect scream before. He doesn’t feel he’s missed out. It’s the sound of whatever Quin has got in that made-up body instead of a mammalian voicebox having a terrible malfunction.

…humans have had many ideas for how to travel beyond the solar system, and some of them might work, even, given enormous time and energy and money. But that’s just it. Humans are, in the end, stupid chimps without the attention span to achieve anything like that. And they’re only just starting to understand that.

The Cartographer by Peng Shepherd

“I really think you should tell the police sooner rather than later.”

“I will, I will,” Nell replied.

“When?” he urged, a familiar tone slipping into his voice. With a Young, unless you agreed on a firm date to stop working on something, “soon” meant “when I’m satisfied.”

A burst of cool, stale air hit her as soon as she was inside, and Nell sank wistfully into it. It was the smell of ancient pages, of time, of her very soul, if souls could have smells, she thought.

Wally had spent so long repressing his real feelings for Tam, I think he didn’t even know they were there. They were like a phantom limb to him—a thing he’d convinced himself wasn’t real, even though he could still sense its ghost.

I don’t know how it happened—isn’t that what everyone who betrays someone says? But I don’t know how it happened. I just know why.

Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour by Mike Lupica

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I’d rather not,” she said.

“Force yourself,” I said.

“We can talk about it after dinner.”

“I can manage both,” I said. “I’m the kind of multitasker that makes young multitaskers aspirational.”

I wasn’t sure what I had expected the great and powerful Richard Gross to look like. But the rather legendary Hollywood power broker, one who had begun his career Out There as a lawyer, looked more like an actor, reminding me somewhat of Michael Douglas. Not the Romancing the Stone Michael Douglas. The older one from Netflix.

I stopped about a half-hour into New York. These turnpike rest areas all looked the same to me, the way shopping malls did. I used the ladies’ room and bought a Coke Zero and a guilty-pleasure Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, knowing that some might say that the combination of candy and a diet soft drink was counterintuitive. I thought of it as establishing a crucial and delicate balance to my personal nutrition.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

Her extremely posh eight-year-old asks her a question about the economy (!), and before she answers it, she asks her extremely posh five-year-old “Do you know what the economy is, darling?”

“Yes mummy, it’s the part of the plane that’s terrible”.

This is how revolutions start.

But it’s a Saturday night and the NHS runs a skeleton service. Actually, that’s unfair on skeletons – it’s more like when they dig up remains of Neolithic Man and reconstruct what he might have looked like from a piece of clavicle and a thumb joint.

Heroic Hearts edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes

Hero, noun
1. a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities
2. a sandwich

Comfort Zone by Kelley Armstrong

We’ll be fine. Remember, the couple that breaks and enters together goes to prison together.

Fire Hazard by Kevin Hearne

The most important question in this life, I’ve heard it said, is whether you have the sausage to achieve your goals. Sausage being a metaphor for courage, in this case, instead of the many other things it could be, including actual sausage.

It burned with the rage of five grizzly bears on energy drinks fighting to drink the last one of a six-pack.

Silverspell by Chloe Neill

“Are you going to get coffee right now?”

Only if the universe was just.

Little Things by Jim Butcher

My name is Major General Toot-Toot Minimus, sprite in service to Sir Harry Dresden, Knight of the Winter Court and Wizard of Chicago, and captain of his personal guard. When the skies darken with smoke and ash, when wails of wrong and woe rend the night, when my lord goes to war with titans and unspeakable horrors from Outside of reality, someone must protect him from threats too small to readily discern. That is my place: not at my lord’s side, but at his ankles.

Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor

I feel drunk, but not the good kind. The kind where you just keep drinking and drinking, and it don’t matter none, just don’t never feel good.

“Trent thinks Billy might be able to get a football scholarship.”

Tina laughs as a semitruck downshifts somewhere out on a highway in the dark, a low, grating sound. “Ain’t nobody talking about no scholarship, Mrs. Powers. We just trying to survive.”

“Survive?”

“Yeah, me and my boys. Sometime it ain’t even death you got to worry about.”

“What could be worse than death?”

“If you don’t know already,” Tina’s lips barely move, “then don’t go asking.”

In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin

‘I seem to have picked up a wee dose of COPD.’

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – known as emphysema in the old days.’

‘Trust you to get something that has the word COP in it.’

‘Aye, I feel like I drew a winning ticket there.’

[Name Withheld] sat with arms folded, alongside his solicitor. The room was stuffy and Dean had removed his jacket but kept his waistcoat on. It boasted a fob watch on a gold chain, just when Rebus thought he couldn’t dislike lawyers more than he already did.

There was so much energy emanating from the various groupings, Rebus could feel it as a physical force, pushing against him. He knew he was looking at the future, but also that the futures these various young people imagined for themselves might not work out the way they hoped. There’d be tears and traumas along the way, mistakes made, promises broken. Sime would marry their sweethearts and live to regret it, Others would break apart. A few would trouble the police in later years. There’d be early deaths from disease and maybe even a suicide or two, Right now, none of that would seem feasible to them, They were alive in and of the moment ~ and that was all that mattered.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation is just a guess).

Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

“I like land,” I said. “I don’t drown there.”

“You know we’re an animal rights organization.”

“Right.”

“It’s a little like saying the CIA is a data services company.”

“Any dietary restrictions?”

“I tried being a vegan for a while, but I couldn’t live without cheese.”

“They have vegan cheese.”

“No, they don’t. They have shredded orange and white sadness that mocks cheese and everything it stands for.”

“That thing looks like H. P. Lovecraft’s panic attack.”

Citizen K-9 by David Rosenfelt

Pete and Andy, along with their other friend Vince Sanders, basically limit their conversations to throwing insults at each other. They never get offended; I think it’s more of a competition. They’re like high school kids without the potential for future growth and maturity.

We make our plans, which are not particularly complicated, Basically Marcus and Laurie will shoot anyone who tries to shoot me first. We are quite the strategists.

I tell Dani that I’m taking Simon for a quick walk. I don’t tell her that we’ll be back in a couple of minutes or not at all. It seems like I spend half my time not telling Dani about life-threatening things that I’m doing; maybe that’s a sign that I should adjust my lifestyle.

Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian

Fiction gets at the truth of life precisely because it can get at the most meaningful elements of true human experience.

Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez

She projected a 4D holographic equation. Just looking at it gave Tia a headache.

Reynolds said, “Hey, I think you missed a zero there.”

Bonita smirked. “I won’t be taking math advice from a species that still believes in the existence of the graviton.” She zoomed in on the equation and frowned. “Well, damn it.”

She started making corrections.

Amongst These Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch

By now my Latin was getting quite good, proof positive that if you bang your head on a copy of Pliny the Elder eventually the Romans will seep in.

According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

I was a Boy Scout. Not a good one. I liked the general idea of being trustworthy and loyal and thrifty and brave and clean and reverent but the effort it took to hang in there with all those weighty virtues was usually more than I cared to muster. I learned some pretty good stuff though. Like how to sew onto my uniform the patches that went along with being a scout. I wielded a mean needle.

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by Author

One of those here-today-gone-tomorrow freak cults you get in the City says that the way to virtue is loving your enemies. I have no problem with that. My enemies have always come through for me, and I owe them everything. My friends, on the other hand, have caused me nothing but aggravation and pain. Just as well I’ve had so very few of them.

I rarely ask for suggestions, because, when I do, people tend to make them.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure. The people; God help us.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation is just a guess).

Madam Tulip and the Rainbow’s End by David Ahern

Derry heard herself laugh lightly, in the way you do when a delightful compliment is paid you by a handsome Frenchman with eyes to die for. Any moment now, she would simper; she could feel one coming on. Thankfully years of actorly training allowed her to clamber back from the brink of inanity.

Jacko grinned happily as he pulled a pint of Guinness. He surveyed the place magisterially and winked at Derry. ‘I have found my true vocation,’ he announced loudly. ‘Art you may take or leave, and literature has outlived its usefulness. But here, assisting these good people in imagining themselves witty and wise, I am making the world a better place.’

‘But now, as you say, I am gainfully employed,’ continued Jacko. ‘Not in a mere job, but as a vocation. As a barman, I am playing my small part in saving the planet from seeing itself clearly.’

…Tulip felt the peace of knowing that the future could be befriended but never tamed.

Lives Laid Away by Stephen Mack Jones

Tomás parked and we walked into the urinal cake and vomitorium that is Taffy’s (Nowhere Near to Being) on the Lake.

Summer freeway traffic in Detroit is enough to turn the Pope into a road-rage maniac.

As a former Marine and ex-cop, I was trained to effectively multitask even if there was a single mission with a single expected outcome. Because honestly: When has Plan A ever actually worked?

The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True by Sean Gibson

I always have a hard time telling the difference between a pitchfork being raised in anger and one being raised in joy.

“I’m not entirely sure they have running water in this… this… well, I was going to say backwater, but that would sort of undermine my point.”

“It’s funny,” I interjected, “and I don’t mean like ha- ha funny, but, like, interesting funny how you never hear about adventurers standing at the edge of a swamp trying to figure out exactly what disgusting smell it most resembles when bards are singing legendary tales.”

Spelunking through Hell by Seanan McGuire

… when you’re already talking about people who have twenty-eight words for “wound” but only two for “friend,” you don’t want to deal with them when they get cranky.

The universe is full of giant snakes. Earth got off easy, since most of our snakes are too small to swallow people, but not everywhere has been that lucky. And some snakes are very nice people, not interested in eating anyone they can carry on a conversation with.

False Value by Ben Aaronovitch

It’s so much easier to lie when you’re telling the truth.

He’d obviously wanted to tell someone about it for a long time and I was a convenient here.

I get that a lot. Stephanopoulos calls it my secret weapon.

“It’s that vacant expression,” she’d said. “People just want to fill the empty void. “

Nightengale gave me a narrow-eyed look. “If needs must,” he said, “but I want you to be cautious.”

“Hey,” I said, “‘Cautious’ is my middle name.”

“But your first name is ‘Never-Knowingly’,” said Stephanopoulos.

Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund

The only reason they hadn’t drummed him out of the service was that the UNSC needed every man and woman they could get their hands on.

While on the Gorgon, he and the rest of Admiral Cole’s fleet had sped among the Outer Colonies chasing, and being chased by, the Covenant. After four years’ space duty, Lovell had seen a dozen worlds glassed . . . and billions murdered.

He had simply broken under the strain. He closed his eyes and remembered. No, he hadn’t broken; he was just scared of dying like everyone else.

Payback is Murder by Nick Kolakowski

Who knew what terrible things someone with a ventriloquist’s doll was capable of?

Miller sighed. Yet another band of hipsters refusing to die with the song still inside them. He applauded the effort, but why did they always choose his street corner for these late- night jam sessions?

Scott buried his head in his hands. “We’re so doomed.”

“Cheer up. There’s a lot of opportunity in doom.”

Beside him, the gray- haired woman boasted cheekbones sharp enough to slice glass. Her expression suggested malice, boredom, or a special mix of both.

A traitorous part of his brain tried bringing up all the ways he had failed over the past few days, until he forced it into silence. If you wanted to live through a job, you needed proceed without doubt. Especially if the plan was flawed.

…maybe he had this thievery thing all wrong. Give someone a gun, and they can rob a bank—but give someone a job in banking or government, and they can rob the whole world.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be).

Ban This Book by Alan Gratz

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can’t make you into a bad person

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

If there’s a killer coming after you with a knife, embarrassment doesn’t even register.

If you have ever tried to stay afloat on a pair of magic bread slices, then you’ll know what it was like.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cookie look smug.

The Blood Tide by Neil Lancaster

The other two much younger investigators were self-importantly wandering around the bridge, trying to give the impression that they knew what they were doing.

You’re job pissed, you are.’

‘I prefer the term dedicated.’

The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide

If the price of keeping your job was shooting someone, maybe think about going to college.

Ren noted the shotgun. It was in its usual place, leaning against the wall between a rake and the long pruning shears.

“Quite a selection of gardening tools,” she observed.

“I grow ammo,” Marlowe replied. “The .357s are doing nicely. The 45s wont bloom until next year.” Ren didn’t laugh and she didn’t smile. He covered with a question…

“DeSallis is a tax accountant. He was mine for years but I let him go. He walks a little tog close to the line, but he could recite the IRS regulations and ski a the same time. DeSallis could find a deduction if it was hidden in my neighbor’s duck pond.”

The Sunshine was the worst motel in Hollywood and Hollywood had a lot of terrible motels. It was like a dying sewer rat amid a crowd of healthy sewer rats.

All at Sea by Chris McDonald

…no argument with a woman of a certain age about money gets won, especially if that woman is Northern Irish—the sweetest old lady in the land can turn into Deborah Meaden at the mention of cash.

It made Adam think of the Titanic, which was not a comforting notion at all.

When they’d been growing up, they’d both been unlucky in love: unlucky in the sense that the opposite sex had generally considered them invisible.

A short, round man with weathered skin and a beautiful combover appeared from the back and greeted them warmly in English.

‘Is it that obvious?’ Adam laughed.

‘Yes, my friend. You look like human milk bottle. Now, how may I help today?’

Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold

(I really wanted to take the time to transcribe a bunch of the lines from this, but if I stopped to note every good line here I wouldn’t have finished listening to it)

Good gamblers can separate math and emotion. Bad gamblers look for ways to make them align.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

“And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don’t want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!”

“Good Heavens!” said Pippin. “At breakfast?”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)