“
Four flips the gun in this hand, presses the barrel to Peter's forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips parted, the yawn dead in his mouth. "Wake. Up," Four snaps. "You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
“
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
”
”
William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)
“
To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
“
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
”
”
Andrea Gibson
“
Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.
”
”
Ansel Adams
“
Can’t hear… call back… good luck…”
“Nïx, I know you’re faking the static.” She could picture her sister blowing into her fist directly at the receiver. The static abruptly stopped.
“Why?”
“It seemed less rude than the alternative.”
“What’s that?”
Click.
”
”
Kresley Cole
“
They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.
"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
I don't think you realize who you're dealing with."
The man clicked his tongue, "If you were that good, you would be more than just Captain of the Guard."
Chaol let out a low, breathy laugh. "I wasn't talking about me."
"She's just one girl."
Though his guts were twisting at the thought of her in this place, with these people, though he was considering every possible way to get himself and Celaena out of here alive, he gave the man a grin.
"Then you're really in for a big surprise.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
“
When you find somebody you love, all the way through, and she loves you—even with your weaknesses, your flaws, everything starts to click into place. And if you can talk to her, and she listens, if she makes you laugh, and makes you think, makes you want, makes you see who you really are, and who you are is better, just better with her, you’d be crazy not to want to spend the rest of your life with her. (Carter Maguire)
”
”
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
“
And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
“
The phone rang. I picked it up.
“Are you sitting down?” Curran's voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Click.
I listened to the disconnect signal. If he wanted me to sit, then I'd stand. I got up. The chair got up with me and I ended up bent over my desk, with the chair stuck to my butt. I grabbed the edge of the chair and tried to pull it off.
It remained stuck.
I would murder him. Slowly. And I'd enjoy every second of it.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, #4))
“
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Inventing the Future)
“
Some girls need men to take them places. Others just click their heels, spread their own wings, and fly.
”
”
Coco J. Ginger
“
It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Keeping the Moon)
“
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women)
“
My breathing begins to slow. The tension in my muscles starts to relax.
Then, a click in the headphones. A slow breath of air.
I open my eyes to bright moonlight.
And Hannah, with warmth.
Thank you.
”
”
Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
“
Something inside me clicks. It's like I've spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock.
”
”
Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes)
“
Let me make two remarks. First I concentrate on the task ahead for 2016. I’m quite busy with that—thank you very much. And I’m looking with great interest in the American election campaign.’ For the second time during their press conference, the clicking sounds of the cameras was deafening.
”
”
Claudia Clark (Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel)
“
Sometimes when you meet someone, there’s a click. I don’t believe in love at first sight but I believe in that click. Recognition.
”
”
Ann Aguirre (Blue Diablo (Corine Solomon, #1))
“
He pushed me back up against the door, slamming me against the doorbell. I heard it ring out.
"Coming!" I heard Holly say as she clicked across the floor to the front door.
"Not quite, but she’s close." He chuckled, removing his hand and leaving me breathless and rosy cheeked.
”
”
Alice Clayton (The Unidentified Redhead (Redhead, #1))
“
At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn't capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.
”
”
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
“
How did you do that?”
I shrug. “I click my heels three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home.’”
“Uh-huh. So … you think this is your home? My barn? His tone is playful, but the look he’s giving me is dead serious. A question.
“Haven’t you guessed by now?” I say, my heart hammering. “My home is you.
”
”
Cynthia Hand (Boundless (Unearthly, #3))
“
By the way, I know about the kiss." Then the door clicks shut behind him.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
“
Ty was near Kit, as he almost always was, like a magnet clicking into place.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices, #3))
“
In her usual manner, Merkel spoke in German. It is worth pointing out, however, that before the translator had an opportunity to convert her statements to English, Obama gave the chancellor and the press a big smile, saying, ‘I think what she said was good. I’m teasing.’ The laughter in the room drowned out the sounds of the cameras clicking and flashing, with Merkel’s giggle and smile among the loudest.
”
”
Claudia Clark (Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel)
“
He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.
Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.
'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut.
”
”
R.D. Ronald (The Zombie Room)
“
Everyone I have lost
in the closing of a door
the click of the lock
is not forgotten, they
do not die but remain
within the soft edges
of the earth, the ash
of house fires and cancer
in sin and forgiveness
huddled under old blankets
dreaming their way into
my hands, my heart
closing tight like fists.
- "Indian Boy Love Song #1
”
”
Sherman Alexie (The Business of Fancydancing)
“
As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Raziel’s sixty feet tall?”
“Actually, he’s only fifty-nine feet tall, but he likes to exaggerate,” said Magnus.
Isabelle clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Valentine raised an angel in his cellar. I
don’t see why you need all this space—”
“Because Valentine is just WAY MORE AWESOME than me,
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
It was in nightmares, and crashing pans, and heavy breaths, and dropped pencils, and thunderstorms, and closing doors, and too loud, and too quiet, and alone and not, and the ruffle of pages, and the tapping of keys and every click and every creak. The gun was always there. It lived inside her now.
”
”
Holly Jackson (Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2))
“
I'm stupid," Leo mumbled. "Pi would expand outward, because it's infinite."
He reversed the order of the numbers, starting in the center and working toward the edge. When he aligned the last ring, something inside the sphere clicked. The door swung open.
Leo beamed at his friends. "That, good people, is how we do things in Leo World. Come on in!"
"I hate Leo World," Frank muttered.
Hazel laughed.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
His breath caught, harsh enough that she looked over her shoulder.
But his eyes weren't on her face. Or the water. They were on her bare back.
Curled as she was against her knees, he could see the whole expanse of ruined flesh, each scar from the lashing. "Who did that to you?"
It would have been easy to lie, but she was so tired, and he had saved her useless hide. So she said, "A lot of people. I spent some time in the Salt Mines of Endovier."
He was so still that she wondered if he'd stopped breathing. "How long?" he asked after a moment. She braced herself for the pity, but his face was so carefully blank-no, not blank. Calm with lethal rage.
"A year. I was there a year before... it's a long story." She was too exhausted, her throat too raw, to say the rest of it. She noticed then his arms were bandaged, and more bandages across his broad chest peeked up from beneath his shirt. She'd burned him again. And yet he had held her- had run all the way here and not let go once.
"You were a slave."
She gave him a slow nod. He opened his mouth, but shut it and swallowed, that lethal rage winking out. As if he remembered who he was talking to and that it was the least punishment she deserved.
He turned on his heel and shut the door behind him. She wished he'd slammed it-wished he'd shattered it. But he closed it with barely more than a click and did not return.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
“
I wait for the fist of devestation, the collapse of a year's worth of hopes, the roar of sadness. And I do feel it. The pain of losing him. Or the idea of him. But along with that pain is something else, something quiet at first, so I have to strain for it. but when I do, I hear the sound of a door quietly clicking shut. And then the most amazing thing happens: The night is calm, but I feel a rush of wind, as if a thousand other doors have just simultaneously flung open.
I give one last glance towards Willem. Then I turn to Wolfgang. "Finished," I say.
But I suspect the opposite is true. That really, I'm just beginning.
”
”
Gayle Forman (Just One Day (Just One Day, #1))
“
Why do you keep coming?" she asked.
"Because," he said. Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because, once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children's psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed. "Because," he repeated.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
“
Then I realize from the hollow sound of her gun's click that her gun isn't loaded. Apparently she just wants to slap me around with it.
The Girl doesn't move her gun away. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
"That's better." The Girl lowers her gun a little. "Time for a few confessions.Were you responsible for the break-in at the Arcadia bank?"
The ten-second place. "Yes."
"Then you must be responsible for stealing sixteen thousand five hundred Notes from there as well."
"You got that right."
"Were you responsible for vandalizing the Department of Intra-Defense two years ago, and destroying the engines of two warfront airships?"
"Yes."
"Did you set fire to a series of ten F-472 fighter jets parked at the Burbank air force base right before they were to head out to the warfront?"
"I'm kinda proud of that one."
"Did assault a cadet standing guard at the edge of the Alta sector's quarantine zone?"
"I tied him up and delivered food to some quarantined families.Bite me.
”
”
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
“
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women)
“
After tail spinning into chaos, one needs a bolt-hole, to resource and ‘challenge’ oneself, break free from the haunting constrictions, squirrel back into bouncy and buoyant surroundings and enjoy the many laugh-out-loud-moments of the day. As soon as one manages to wobble out of one’s shell, everything may click into place again and the radiance and glare of the bright side of life might show again. ("Imbroglio")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
He put on his hat and wrapped his scarf around his jaw, but did without the wig and the sunglasses. He clicked his key chain and the car beeped and the doors locked.
"That's it?"
He looked up. "Sorry?"
"Aren't you afraid it might get stolen? We're not exactly in a good part of town."
"It's got a car alarm."
"Don't you, like, cast a spell or something? To keep it safe?"
"No. It's a pretty good car alarm.
”
”
Derek Landy (Skulduggery Pleasant (Skulduggery Pleasant, #1))
“
A bouquet of clumsy words: you know that place between sleep and awake where you’re still dreaming but it’s slowly slipping? I wish we could feel like that more often. I also wish I could click my fingers three times and be transported to anywhere I like. I wish that people didn’t always say ‘just wondering’ when you both know there was a real reason behind them asking. And I wish I could get lost in the stars.
Listen, there’s a hell of a good universe next door, let’s go.
”
”
E.E. Cummings
“
So, come on,” he said softly, taunting me. “What’s the plan here, Ev? How were you going to convince me?”
“Oh. Well, I was um … I was going to seduce you, I guess. And see what happened. Yeah…”
“How? By complaining about me buying you stuff?”
“No. That was just an added bonus. You’re welcome.”
He licked his lips, but I saw the smile. “Right. Come on then, show me your moves.”
“My moves?”
“Your seduction techniques. Come on, time’s a-wasting.” I hesitated and he clicked his tongue, impatient. “I’m only wearing a towel, baby. How hard can this be?
”
”
Kylie Scott (Lick (Stage Dive, #1))
“
No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.
”
”
Joe McNally (The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World's Top Shooters)
“
but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong
they have to be wrong
”
”
Shane L. Koyczan
“
Vadim swallowed, felt his throat too tight to move, then, still staring at the bottle, smelling the desert and Dan, and himself, his hand reached to his side, opened the holster of the pistol. Took out the mag, took the bullet from the chamber, clicked the mag in place again, rolled the bullet between his fingers.
He looked at Dan, sideways, saw the man stare at him, all eyes, dark eyes, and the way the pale desert moon made his face a place of shadows.
He reached for Dan’s hand, opened the fingers and placed the bullet into the palm.
“This is the bullet you’ll use to kill me if I walk away again.” Because if I walk away again, I’ll be in so much pain I’m better off dead anyway.
”
”
Aleksandr Voinov (Special Forces - Mercenaries Part I (Special Forces, #2 part 1))
“
Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs:
I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”
Then he paused for a second and said, “Yea, but sometimes, I think it’s just like an On-Off switch. Click. And you’re gone.” And then he paused again and said, “ And that’s why I don’t like putting On-Off switches on Apple devices.”
Joy to the WORLD! There IS an after-life!
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V.
I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy.
Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him.
I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time?
I texted back: How'd you get my number?
Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers!
”
”
Amy Plum (Die for Me (Revenants, #1))
“
The War Has Been Declared.
Your Ally Been Ensnared.
It Is Now Or It Is Never.
Break The Code Or Die Forever.
Time Is Running Out
Running Out
Running Out
To the Warrior Give My Blade
By His Hand Your Fate Is Made
But Do Not Forget the Ticking
Or the Clicking, Clicking, Clicking
While a Rat's Tongue May Be Flicking
With Its Feet It Does the Tricking
For the Paw and Not the Jaw
Makes the Code of Claw
Time Is Standing Still
Standing Still
Standing Still
Since the Princess Is the Key
To Unlock the Treachery
She Cannot Avoid the Matching or the Scratching, Scratching, Scratching
When a Secret Plot is Hatching
In the Naming Is the Catching
What She Saw, It Is the Flaw
Of the Code of Claw
Time is Turning Back
Turning Back
Turning Back
When the Monster's Blood Is Spilled
When the Warrior Has Been Killed
You Must Not Ingore the Rapping
Or the Tapping, Tapping, Tapping
If the Gnawers Find you Napping
You Will Rot While They Are Mapping
Out the Law of Those Who Gnaw
In the Code of Claw
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Gregor and the Code of Claw (Underland Chronicles, #5))
“
For Jenn
At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
and left bruises the shape of Salem.
There are things we know by heart,
and things we don't.
At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
but I could never make dying beautiful.
The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself
veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
I suppose I love this life,
in spite of my clenched fist.
I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
But my lungs remember
the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.
And I knew life would tremble
like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,
like a prayer on a dying man's lips,
like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
just take me just take me
Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
but you still have to call it a birthday.
You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
further than any boy in the whole third grade
and I've been running for home
through the windpipe of a man who sings
while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
on a street corner in New Orleans
where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
We're Coming Back
like a promise to the ocean
that we will always keep moving towards the music,
the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.
Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
Thunder, clap us open.
The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,
then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.
Don't cover your ears, Love.
Don't cover your ears, Life.
There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
and as he writes he moves
and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,
and there are men playing chess in the December cold
who can't tell if the breath rising from the board
is their opponents or their own,
and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway
swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
with strip malls and traffic and vendors
and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.
Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.
”
”
Andrea Gibson
“
What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?
That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…
Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.
I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.
I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.
I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.
History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.
'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.
It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.
I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'
He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.'
'What?'
He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.
'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'
Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.
'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'
1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.
'Is it open to the public?' I said.
'Not generally, no.'
I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.
'Are you happy here?' I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.
'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'
St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.
'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'
He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
Say the planet is born at midnight and it runs for one day. First there is nothing. Two hours are lost to lava and meteors. Life doesn’t show up until three or four a.m. Even then, it’s just the barest self-copying bits and pieces. From dawn to late morning—a million million years of branching—nothing more exists than lean and simple cells. Then there is everything. Something wild happens, not long after noon. One kind of simple cell enslaves a couple of others. Nuclei get membranes. Cells evolve organelles. What was once a solo campsite grows into a town. The day is two-thirds done when animals and plants part ways. And still life is only single cells. Dusk falls before compound life takes hold. Every large living thing is a latecomer, showing up after dark. Nine p.m. brings jellyfish and worms. Later that hour comes the breakout—backbones, cartilage, an explosion of body forms. From one instant to the next, countless new stems and twigs in the spreading crown burst open and run. Plants make it up on land just before ten. Then insects, who instantly take to the air. Moments later, tetrapods crawl up from the tidal muck, carrying around on their skin and in their guts whole worlds of earlier creatures. By eleven, dinosaurs have shot their bolt, leaving the mammals and birds in charge for an hour. Somewhere in that last sixty minutes, high up in the phylogenetic canopy, life grows aware. Creatures start to speculate. Animals start teaching their children about the past and the future. Animals learn to hold rituals. Anatomically modern man shows up four seconds before midnight. The first cave paintings appear three seconds later. And in a thousandth of a click of the second hand, life solves the mystery of DNA and starts to map the tree of life itself. By midnight, most of the globe is converted to row crops for the care and feeding of one species. And that’s when the tree of life becomes something else again. That’s when the giant trunk starts to teeter.
”
”
Richard Powers (The Overstory)