“
...and thus he found his single source of joy in the society of other people: frightening the girls with his penis.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
Who else knows about this besides us?”
“Just Patti...”
“Okay. That should be okay. Is that it?”
“And Kaidan,” I added. My eyes darted everywhere but his face. I was in for it.
“Who?” There was an edge to his voice.
His eyes searched mine. I didn't want to tell him a single thing about Kaidan. I knew how it would sound. I took my hands from his, pulling the braid over my shoulder to mess with it.
“He's my friend. He's the one who drove me here to see you.”
“You told some human kid?”
I coughed, buying time. “He's Neph, too.”
Jonathan LaGray went rigid and his ruddy cheeks paled. I squirmed as his eyes bored into mine.
“Which one's his father?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“Richard Rowe. I guess you'd know him as Pharzuph.”
Oh, boy. He wasn't pale anymore.
“You came across the country—”
“Shhh!” I warned him as people looked over. He lowered his voice to a shouted whisper.
“-with the son of the Duke of Lust? Son of a—”
He pounded a fist down on the table and a guard stepped toward us. I waved and nodded at the man, trying to reassure him it was fine, and my father pulled his balled hands down into his lap. After a moment the guard walked back to the wall and looked away.
“Don't worry!” I whispered. “I told you; we're just friends.”
He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his fingers to calm his temper.
“You tell him that his father is never to know about you or whatever Sister Ruth tells you. Understand?”
“He would never tell his father anything. But, um...” I swallowed. “Unfortunately, Pharzuph already knows about me.”
His eyes flashed red again and it nearly stopped my heart. I pressed my back into the seat, causing it to wobble.
“Aren't you worried people will see your eyes when you do that?” I asked, sure that my own eyes were gigantic at that moment.
“Humans can't see it. And don't try to change the subject. I know Pharzuph,” he growled. “He's a real bastard on earth and in hell. He'd do anything to gain favour.”
“Kaidan thinks he'll forget about me if I lie low.”
“Maybe momentarily, while he's busy or distracted with his work, but you'll cross his mind again someday.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
“
He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face.
She said, If we don't let her have one like all the other girls she'll feel singled out. It'll become an issue. She'll long for one and she'll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that.
He said, It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on.
She said, Better to get it over with when she's young. He said, All right but don't let me see it.
She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she'd been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.
He said, I guess we're safe.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Female Body)
“
The land was so distant that no shining roof or glittering window could be any longer seen. The tremendous weight of the shadowed earth had engulfed such frail fetters, such snail-shell encumbrances. Now there was only the liquid shadow of the cloud, the buffeting of the rain, a single darting spear of sunshine, or the sudden bruise of the rainstorm. Solitary trees marked distant hills like obelisks.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (The Waves)
“
On Saturday Ben and I drove to Johns Island to see Skyfall.”
“You did?” Hi asked sharply. “Thanks for the invite, jerks.”
Shelton raised his palms. “You were at temple. We’re supposed to just wait around? Plus, you’ve seen that move like five times.”
“You still could’ve asked,” Hi grumbled.
“I don’t—”
“Guys!” I clapped my hands once. “The story, please.”
“An hour in, I go for a popcorn refill.” Shelton shuddered. “When I get back, Ben’s sitting in the dark, flaring away, and he’s not even wearing his sunglasses! I almost wet myself. He said he wanted to watch the movie in HD. Man, I don’t remember a single minute from the rest of the film.”
“In a theater!?” My temper exploded. “That stupid mother—”
“Hiram!”
Our heads whipped. Ruth Stolowitski was standing on her front stoop.
“Get back in here this instant! You’re not dressed.”
Ruth wore a fuzzy pink bathrobe, her free hand vising the garment closed. Her eyes darted, as if worried that cagey perverts were surveilling our remote island, waiting for just this opportunity to get an eyeful.
”
”
Kathy Reichs (Exposure (Virals, #4))
“
My fingers darted, then danced, then flew. I played hard as a hailstorm, like a hammer beating brass. I played soft as sun on autumn wheat, gentle as a single stirring leaf.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
...that somewhere from amidst the welter of sound there will dart up, like a bird, a single authentic note of immortal longing.
”
”
J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace)
“
Spleen
Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux,
Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux,
Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,
S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes.
Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,
Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon.
Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade
Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade;
Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau,
Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau,
Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette
Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette.
Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu
De son être extirper l'élément corrompu,
Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent,
Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent,
II n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété
Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé
//
I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich
but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch,
one who escapes his tutor's monologues,
and kills the day in boredom with his dogs;
nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry,
his people dying by the balcony;
the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite
no longer gets him through a single night;
his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb;
even the ladies of the court, for whom
all kings are beautiful, cannot put on
shameful enough dresses for this skeleton;
the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent
washes to cleanse the poisoned element;
even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy,
our tyrants' solace in senility,
he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food
is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.
— Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)
“
. . . you may think of a rock pool as an entity; though, of course, it is not. The waters of its consciousness—so to speak—are swarming with hunted anxieties, grim-jawed greeds, dartingly vivid intuitions, old crusty-shelled rock-gripping obstinacies, deep-down sparkling undiscovered secrets, ominous protean organisms motioning mysteriously, perhaps warningly, toward the surface light. How can such a variety of creatures coexist at all? Because they have to. The rocks of the pool hold their world together. And, throughout the day of the ebb tide, they know no other.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
Dear lady,' says a faerie, coming toward us from a shop that sells jewels. He has the eyes of a snake and forked tongue that darts out when he speaks. 'This hairpin looks as though it were made for you.'
It's beautiful, woven gold and silver in the shape of a bird, a single green bead in its mouth. Had it been in a display, my eyes would have passed over it as one of a dozen unobtainable things. But as he holds it out, I can't help imaging it as as mine.
'I have no money and little to trade,' I tell him regretfully, shaking my head.
The shopkeeper's gaze goes to Oak. I think he believes the prince is my lover.
Oak plays the part, reaching out his hand for the pin. 'How much is it? And will you take silver, or must it be the last wish of my heart?'
'Silver is excellent.' The shopkeeper smiles as Oak fishes through his bag for some coins.
Part of me wants to demur, but I let him buy it, and then I let him use it to pin back my hair. His fingers on my neck are warm. It's only when he lets go that I shiver.
He gives me a steady look. 'I hope you're not about to tell me that you hate it and you were just being polite.'
'I don't hate it,' I say softly. 'And I am not polite.'
He laughs at that. A delightful quality.
I admire the hairpin in every reflective surface we pass.
”
”
Holly Black (The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1))
“
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say.
”
”
Herman Melville
“
• He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness... Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and
bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
“
These are the figures of steel whose eagle eyes dart between whirling propellers to pierce the cloud; who dare the hellish crossing through fields of roaring craters, gripped in the chaos of tank engines ... men relentlessly saturated with the spirit of battle, men whose urgent wanting discharges itself in a single concentrated and determined release of energy.
As I watch them noiselessly slicing alleyways into barbed wire, digging steps to storm outward, synchronizing luminous watches, finding the North by the stars, the recognition flashes: this is the new man. The pioneers of storm, the elect of central Europe. A whole new race, intelligent, strong, men of will ... supple predators straining with energy. They will be architects building on the ruined foundations of the world.
”
”
Ernst Jünger (Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis)
“
This was the southern sea. The colors that fade when coral is drawn out of its element were garishly bright here, intricate and lovely labyrinths on the bottom. Among the coral, fish went darting; and overhead a sea-bat, a devil-fish, flapped slow wings past, its stingaree tail trailing. Morays coiled by, opening their incredible, wolfish mouths at him, and many-limbed crabs scuttled sidewise over the rocks and little sandy plateaus of the bottom. Groves of seaweed and great fans of colored sponges swung with hypnotic motion, and schools of tiny striped fish went flashing in and out among them, moving all together as if with a single mind.
Pete swam down. From a cavern among the brown and purple rocks an octopus looked at him out of huge, alien eyes. Its tentacles hung and quivered. Pete swam away, hovering over an expanse of pale sand where the light from above shimmered and ran in rippling waves, his own shadow hanging spread-eagled below him. In and out of it many little creatures went scuttling busily on their underwater errands. Life here was painted in three dimensions, and there was no gravity. There was only beauty and strangeness and a hint of terror that sent pleasurable excitement thrilling through Pete's blood.
("Before I Wake")
”
”
Henry Kuttner (Masters of Horror)
“
But every single day after work Tatiana brushed her hair and ran outside, thinking, please be there, and every single day after work Alexander was. Though he never asked her to go to the Summer Garden anymore or to sit on the bench under the trees with him, his hat was always in his hands. Exhausted and slow, they meandered from tram to canal to tram, reluctantly parting at Grechesky Prospekt, three blocks away from her apartment building. During their walks sometimes they talked about Alexander’s America or his life in Moscow, and sometimes they talked about Tatiana’s Lake Ilmen and her summers in Luga, and sometimes they chatted about the war, though less and less because of the anxiety over Pasha, and sometimes Alexander taught Tatiana a little English. Sometimes they told jokes, and sometimes they barely spoke at all. A few times Alexander let Tatiana carry his rifle as a balancing stick while she walked a high ledge on the side of Obvodnoy Canal. “Don’t fall into the water, Tania,” he once said, “because I can’t swim.” “Is that true?” she asked incredulously, nearly toppling over. Grabbing the end of his rifle to steady her, Alexander said with a grin, “Let’s not find out, shall we? I don’t want to lose my weapon.” “That’s all right,” Tatiana said, precariously teetering on the ledge and laughing. “I can swim perfectly well. I’ll save your weapon for you. Want to see?” “No, thank you.” And sometimes, when Alexander talked, Tatiana found her lower jaw drifting down and was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she had been staring at him so long that her mouth had dropped open. She didn’t know what to look at when he talked—his caramel eyes that blinked and smiled and shined and were grim or his vibrant mouth that moved and opened and breathed and spoke. Her eyes darted from his eyes to his lips and circled from his hair to his jaw as if they were afraid she would miss something if she didn’t stare at everything all at once. There were some pieces of his fascinating life that Alexander did not wish to talk about—and didn’t. Not about the last time he saw his father, not about how he became Alexander Belov, not about how he received his medal of valor. Tatiana didn’t care and never did more than gently press him. She would take from him what he needed to give her and wait impatiently for the rest.
”
”
Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1))
“
We have contrasted two ways of evaluating a judgment: by comparing it to an outcome and by assessing the quality of the process that led to it. Note that when the judgment is verifiable, the two ways of evaluating it may reach different conclusions in a single case. A skilled and careful forecaster using the best possible tools and techniques will often miss the correct number in making a quarterly inflation forecast. Meanwhile, in a single quarter, a dart-throwing chimpanzee will sometimes be right.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment)
“
Just when I thought I could conquer anything, to my surprise, life threw darts at me once again. Sadly, my mind was the bull’s eye I felt like my life was sucked and pulled out from under me as I struggled to make it through another minute. The darts pierced every nerve in my body, and it was so painful. Every single day the little hope I gained was stolen from me. That place hit me right in the bull's eye because it weakened my core and fucked up my mind to the point that there wasn’t such thing as surviving.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
“
The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.
I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.
O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer you desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me
”
”
Sara Teasdale (The Collected Poems)
“
Here’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned from working as a music journalist for nearly twenty years: if given the choice between interviewing a hip, up-and-coming musician and interviewing a past-his-prime has-been, take the has-been every single time. Some of my favorite interviews ever are with artists whose music I don’t even like. I’m talking about the time that Poison guitarist C. C. DeVille told me about how he used to drink paint thinner when he ran out of booze. Or when Kip Winger told me he still hates Lars Ulrich for throwing a dart at a Winger poster in Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” video. Has-beens have nothing to lose, whereas younger, hipper artists must think politically, as being candid can hurt you in the long run.
”
”
Steven Hyden (Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock)
“
Summer gazed around more closely, looking less at the wreck of the ship and more at all the living things on or around or within it. Tiny shells clustered on the hull, each a living creature; the octopus that scuttled along, a liquid flurry of graceful motion; the amazing snail that crept toward her foot. There were small forests of soft, willowy plants that made home for crabs and squid and rays. Fish, big and small, alone or in schools, darted in and out, up and down, crossing between her and the sun above like flights of birds.
In a single moment of awareness she realised that the dead ship was no longer dead. The machine that had failed to protect its human cargo now protected an entire universe of colourful, indescribably strange, stunningly creative, incredible life.
”
”
Katherine Applegate (Beach Blondes: June Dreams / July's Promise / August Magic (Summer, #1-3))
“
Don't call me kid.” I pushed off of the wall, rage slithering through me. “This Academy might make me wear a uniform like a high school student, but I'm eighteen and I've looked after myself most of my life anyway. You think it would have been any different back there if I'd had a friend with me? We're freshmen. We're not trained to fight Nymphs.”
Orion's jaw ticked as he absorbed my words. Eventually, he nodded, his eyes moving to look up at the tower. A baying howl sounded in the distance and he glanced over his shoulder. “The hunt's started, I should go and join them.”
“Be careful,” I whispered.
He looked back at me with a frown and something broken and desperate shone from his eyes for a moment. He blinked firmly and his expression morphed into a fierce scowl. “Stop looking at me like that,” he snarled and I fought the urge to recoil from his terrifying tone.
“Like what?”
“You know what,” he snapped. “I'm your teacher.”
“I know,” I balked, horrified at what he was suggesting. That he could somehow read how much I wanted him.
“Do you?” he stepped forward.
I nodded firmly, though I wasn't sure my body was getting the message because I had the urge to wrap myself around him and kiss him goodbye. It was absolutely crazy. But him running off after a Nymph made me dread the idea that he wouldn't come back.
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
Embarrassment poured through me like a tsunami, but I fought it away, elbowing aside my shame. Because how dare he accuse me of being inappropriate? He'd had this hands all over me the other day and he'd shouted at me for that too. I was so done with his bullshit. So I stepped forward, looking him square in the eye as my hands began to shake. “Then stop looking back, Lance.”
I left him with a gobsmacked expression on his face as I turned away, casting air at the symbol above the door. It unlocked with a loud clunk and I darted inside, slamming it behind me without a single glance back.(Darcy)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
“
Instead, I gave them the only salute I could think of.
Two middle fingers. Held high for emphasis.
The six fiery orbs winked out at once. Hopefully, they’d died from affront.
Ben eyed me sideways as he maneuvered from shore. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Those red-eyed jerks were on the cliff,” I spat, then immediately felt silly. “All I could think of.”
Ben made an odd huffing sound I couldn’t interpret. For a shocked second, I thought he was furious with me.
“Nice work, Victoria.” Ben couldn’t hold the laughter inside. “That oughta do it!”
I flinched, surprised by his reaction. Ben, cracking up at a time like this?
He had such a full, honest laugh—I wished I heard it more. Infectious, too. I couldn’t help joining in, though mine came out in a low Beavis and Butthead cackle. Which made Ben howl even more.
In an instant, we were both in stitches at the absurdity of my one-finger salutes. At the insanity of the evening. At everything. Tears wet my eyes as Sewee bobbed over the surf, circling the southeast corner of the island. It was a release I desperately needed.
Ben ran a hand through his hair, then sighed deeply. “I love it,” he snickered, steering Sewee through the breakers, keeping our speed to a crawl so the engine made less noise. “I love you, sometimes.”
Abruptly, his good humor cut off like a guillotine. Ben’s body went rigid. I felt a wave of panic roll from him, as if he’d accidently triggered a nuclear bomb.
I experienced a parallel stab of distress. My stomach lurched into my throat, and not because of the rolling ocean swells.
Did he just . . . what did he mean when . . .
Oh crap.
Ben’s eyes darted to me, then shot back to open water. Even in the semidarkness, I saw a flush of red steal up his neck and into his cheeks.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Shifted again. Debated going over the side.
Did he really mean to say he . . . loved me? Like, for real?
The awkward moment stretched longer than any event in human history.
He said “sometimes,” which is a definite qualifier. I love Chinese food “sometimes.”
Mouth opened as I searched for words that might defuse the tension. Came up with nothing. I felt trapped in a nightmare. Balanced on a beam a hundred feet off the ground. Sinking underwater in a sealed car with no idea how to get out.
Ben’s lips parted, then worked soundlessly, as if he, too, sought to break the horrible awkwardness. A verbal retreat, or some way to reverse time.
Is that what I want? For Ben to walk it back?
A part of me was astounded by the chaos a single four-word utterance could create.
Ben gulped a breath, seemed to reach a decision. As his mouth opened a second time, all the adrenaline in creation poured into my system.
“I . . . I was just saying that . . .” He trailed off, then smacked the steering wheel with his palm. Ben squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head sharply as if disgusted by the effort.
Ben turned. Blasted me with his full attention. “I mean it. I’m not going to act—
”
”
Kathy Reichs (Terminal (Virals, #5))
“
NOVA SLUNG THE BAG over her shoulder and reached for one of the weighted ropes she’d set up in the alley the night before. She wrapped her arm around the rope and untied the sailor’s knot from the weights holding it to the ground. The weights attached to the opposite end dropped, dragging it through the pulley on the rooftop above. Nova jerked upward, holding tight as the rope whistled past the building’s concrete wall. The second set of weights crashed into the ground below. She stopped with a shudder, her hand only a few inches shy of the pulley, her body swinging six stories in the air. Nova threw her bag onto the rooftop, then grabbed the ledge and hauled herself over. She dropped down into a crouch and riffled through the bag, pulling out the uniform she had designed with Queen Bee’s help. She slung the weaponry belt across her hips, where it hung comfortably, outfitted with specially crafted pockets and hooks for all of her favorite inventions. Next, the snug black hooded jacket: waterproof and flame-retardant, yet lightweight enough to keep from inhibiting her movements. She zipped it up to her neck and tugged the sleeves past her knuckles before pulling up the hood, where a couple of small weights stitched into the hem held it in place over her brow. The mask came last. A hard metallic shell perfectly molded to the bridge of her nose that disappeared into the high collar of the jacket, disguising the lower half of her face. Transformation complete, she stooped and pulled the rifle and a single poisoned dart from the bag.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Renegades (Renegades, #1))
“
I could have been someone from the book if you’d told me in advance.”
“Yes, well, today you’d make a really great Moaning Myrtle.”
Peter gives me a blank look, and disbelieving, I say, “Wait a minute…have you never read Harry Potter?”
“I’ve read the first two.”
“Then you should know who Moaning Myrtle is!”
“It was a really long time ago,” Peter says. “Was she one of those people in the paintings?”
“No! And how could you stop after Chamber of Secrets? The third one’s the best out of the whole series. I mean, that’s literally crazy to me.” I peer at his face. “Do you not have a soul?”
“Sorry if I haven’t read every single Harry Potter book! Sorry I have a life and I’m not in the Final Fantasy club or whatever that geek club is called--”
I snatch my wand back from him and wave it in his face. “Silencio!”
Peter crosses his arms. Smirking, he says, “Whatever spell you just tried to cast on me, it didn’t work, so I think you need to go back to Hogwarts.” He’s so proud of himself for the Hogwarts reference, it’s kind of endearing.
Quick like a cat I pull down his mask, and then I put one hand over his mouth. With my other hand I wave my wand again. “Silencio!” Peter tries to say something, but I press my hand harder. “What? What was that? I can’t hear you, Peter Parker.”
Peter reaches out and tickles me, and I laugh so hard I almost drop my wand. I dart away from him but he pounces after me, pretend shooting webs at my feet. Giggling, I run away from him, further down the hall, dodging groups of people. He gives chase all the way to chem class. A teacher screams at us to slow down, and we do, but as soon as we’re around the corner, I’m running again and so is he.
I’m breathless by the time I’m in my seat. He turns around and shoots a web in my direction, and I explode into giggles again and Mr. Meyers glares at me. “Settle down,” he says, and I nod obediently. As soon as his back is turned, I giggle into my robe. I want to still be mad at Peter, but it’s just no use.
Halfway through class he sends me a note. He’s drawn spiderwebs around the edges. It says, I’ll be on time tomorrow. I smile as I read it. Then I put it in my backpack, in my French textbook so the page won’t crease or crumble. I want to keep it so when this is over, I can have something to look at and remember what it was like to be Peter Kavinsky’s girlfriend. Even if it was all just pretend.
”
”
Jenny Han (To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1))
“
Cochise Jones always liked to play against your expectations of a song, to light the gloomy heart of a ballad with a Latin tempo and a sheen of vibrato, root out the hidden mournfulness, the ache of longing, in an up-tempo pop tune. Cochise’s six-minute outing on the opening track of Redbonin’ was a classic exercise in B-3 revisionism, turning a song inside out. It opened with big Gary King playing a fat, choogling bass line, sounding like the funky intro to some ghetto-themed sitcom of the seventies, and then Cochise Jones came in, the first four drawbars pulled all the way out, giving the Lloyd Webber melody a treatment that was not cheery so much as jittery, playing up the anxiety inherent in the song’s title, there being so many thousand possible ways to Love Him, so little time to choose among them. Cochise’s fingers skipped and darted as if the keys of the organ were the wicks of candles and he was trying to light all of them with a single match. Then, as Idris Muhammad settled into a rolling burlesque-hall bump and grind, and King fell into step beside him, Cochise began his vandalism in earnest, snapping off bright bunches of the melody and scattering it in handfuls, packing it with extra notes in giddy runs. He was ruining the song, rifling it, mocking it with an antic edge of joy. You might have thought, some critics felt, that the meaning or spirit of the original song meant no more to Cochise Jones than a poem means to a shark that is eating the poet. But somewhere around the three-minute mark, Cochise began to build, in ragged layers, out of a few repeated notes on top of a left-hand walking blues, a solo at once dense and rudimentary, hammering at it, the organ taking on a raw, vox humana hoarseness, the tune getting bluer and harder and nastier. Inside the perfectly miked Leslie amplifier, the treble horn whirled, and the drivers fired, and you heard the song as the admission of failure it truly was, a confession of ignorance and helplessness. And then in the last measures of the song, without warning, the patented Creed Taylor strings came in, mannered and restrained but not quite tasteful. A hint of syrup, a throb of the pathetic, in the face of which the drums and bass fell silent, so that in the end it was Cochise Jones and some rented violins, half a dozen mournful studio Jews, and then the strings fell silent, too, and it was just Mr. Jones, fading away, ending the track with the startling revelation that the song was an apology, an expression, such as only the blues could ever tender, of limitless regret.
”
”
Michael Chabon (Telegraph Avenue)
“
Right, that’s enough! Miss Vega, get your ass in your own seat.” “Rigel, Acrux and Altair, if you throw one more fucking ice ball in my classroom, I will blast you through the wall and you can forget about coming back here to learn a single thing.”
“What would happen if a Fae with a big Order form swallowed three people then shifted back into their Fae form? Do you think they’d die? I think they might die,” Seth mused aloud. “Actually, I know some annoying people we could send as bait to Lionel, then when he eats them, we could shoot an Order Suppressant dart up his ass and bang. Dead Dragon. Annoying people eaten. Win – win.”
“Capella, if you ask another pointless question this lesson, I will force feed you three people in your Werewolf form and we’ll put your theory to the test,” I snarled, stealing the air from his lungs as he opened his mouth to respond. “So hot,” Darcy said under her breath as she watched me, shifting in her seat as desire filled her eyes. “Miss Vega, if you keep looking at me like that, I will bring you up here, bend you over my desk and spank you in front of everyone. Is that what you want?” I demanded, trying to ignore the way my cock was twitching for her.
”
”
Caroline Peckham
“
There are girls who do not like real life. When they hear the harsh belches of its engines approaching along the straight road that leads from childhood, through adolescence to adultery, they dart into a side turning. When they take their hands away from their eyes, they find themselves in the gallery of the ballet. There they sit for many years feeding their imaginations on those fitful glimpses of a dancer's hand or foot which seats in the upper parts of theatres afford. When I was young I too 'adored' the ballet. For me its charm was that one of the dancers might break his neck, but what appeals to these girls is the moonlit atmosphere of love and death which the withering hand of truth can never compromise. During the intervals they hold hands, numbed by excessive applause, with the homosexual young man who is bound to be sitting on their right or left. Even the boys, who have no positive intention of deceiving them, are drawn into a relationship damaging to the girls. After a lot of squeaking at the bus stop when the ballet is over, the young men pursue on the way home other interests, which at least yield a morsel of satisfaction. The girls can do nothing but return to their joss-stick-perfumed nunneries. From this position there is no way back. They can only stay where they are until, in middle age, they awaken to the realization that they don't know a single person who isn't queer. Then they move on to the uncharted quicksands of nudism, Yoga, vegetarianism and other diseases of the soul too terrible to name.
”
”
Quentin Crisp (The Naked Civil Servant)
“
I headed straight for the half-bathroom I remembered seeing on my other visits over. I peed and started washing my hands, and it was when I reached for a towel that I happened to look down and saw something small and brown run across the floorboard. I froze.
Leaning over just a little, I peeked around the toilet and saw it again.
Two little eyes.
One bare tail.
About two inches long.
It darted off, disappearing around the trash can.
I wasn’t proud of myself… but I screamed. Not loud, but it was still a scream.
And then I got the hell out of there.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved so fast going down the hall, thankful I’d seen him after I’d pulled my pants on and zipped them up, going as far away from the bathroom as possible.
Which ended up being the kitchen.
Rhodes was standing by the island, tearing paper towels off when he noticed me coming. A frown came over his face. “What’s—”
“There’s a mouse in the bathroom!” I squeaked and went past him, pretty much leaping onto the stool beside the counter, then jumping from there to the back of the couch with a frantic look toward the floor to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos stood up so fast the chair he was in fell backward, and the next thing I knew, he’d leaped onto the couch and ended up beside me, his butt propped up on the back of it, legs dangling inches off the floor in the air. Johnny and Jackie either didn’t care or were so stunned by Amos and me, that they hadn’t moved a single inch from the table.
“A rat?” Rhodes asked from the exact same spot he’d been in.
I shook my head at him, exhaling hard to try and bring my heart rate down. “No, a mouse.”
His eyebrows crept up about a half-inch, but I noticed it. “You’re screaming because of a mouse?” Did he have to ask so slowly?
I swallowed. “Yes!”
He blinked. Beside me, Amos suddenly snorted deep in his throat like he hadn’t knocked his chair over. Then I noticed that Rhodes’s chest was shaking.
“What?” I asked, eyeing the floor again.
His chest was shaking even more, and he barely managed to wheeze out, both eyes squeezing closed, “I… I didn’t know you were into parkour.”
Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet.
“You backflipped onto the table…,” Rhodes choked out.
He was wheezing. The son of a bitch was wheezing.
“No, I did not!” I argued, starting to feel just a little bit… foolish. I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to backflip.
“You jumped from the island to the couch,” Rhodes kept going, raising a fist to hold it right in front of his nose.
He could barely talk.
“Your face… Ora, it was so white,” Am started, bottom lip starting to tremble.
I pressed my lips together and stared at my favorite traitor. “My soul left my body for a second, Am. And you didn’t exactly walk over here either, okay.”
Rhodes, who decided that this was what he was going to find hilarious, barely choked out, “You looked like you saw a ghost.”
Amos burst out laughing.
Then Rhodes burst out laughing.
One quick glance confirmed that Johnny was chuckling too, Jackie was the only one giving me a smile. I was glad someone had a heart.
They were cracking up, totally and completely cracking up.
“You know, I hope it crawls into one of your mouths for being so mean to me,” I muttered, joking. Mostly.
Rhodes grinned so wide, he came over and slapped his son on the back while they both kept laughing.
At me.
But together.
And maybe I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight now, worried there might be a mouse next door, but it would be worth it.
”
”
Mariana Zapata (All Rhodes Lead Here)
“
The senses were isolated in soundless dark; so, for that matter, was the mind; but one was stayed, while the other possessed the flight of a falcon; and the free choice and opportunity of the one everlastingly emphasized the poverty of the other. From the depth of my being would sometimes surge a fierce desire to be projected spectacularly
into the living warmths and movements the mind revisited. Usually the desire had no special focus. It sought no single thing. Rather it darted and wavered over a panorama of human aspects-my family at dinner time, the sound of voices in a downstairs room, the cool feeling of rain.
”
”
Richard Evelyn Byrd (Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure)
“
In the eastern Atlantic forest of Bahia, Brazil, on the sandy, mossy ground beside the off-grid house of a single amateur botanist, grows an inch-tall plant with reddish stems ending in tiny dart-shaped flowers. The flowers are white with bright pink tips, like a fountain pen dipped in ink. The whole plant emerges only during the rainy season, springing up within weeks of the persistent wetness that begins in March and dying back entirely by its end in November. Within a month the little dart-flowers open, get pollinated, and disappear, having done their part. Capsules of fruit appear in their place, holding the seeds of the next generation. The usual course of events. But then something unusual happens: the fruit-tipped stems begin to bend toward the earth, genuflecting, craning like slender necks bent in deference. The fruits and the earth connect. The stems keep bending. They push down until the capsule is buried in the soft moss. The plant, Spigelia genuflexa, has planted its own seeds.
”
”
Zoë Schlanger (The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth)
“
My heart swells as I look through it, and then I notice the strip of gold tucked at the last page. My eyes dart up, recognizing my ribbon that Slade always carries in his pocket. I flip to the page it’s holding and see the two fae embracing. That same illustration I’d been so mesmerized with before, and the single fae word beneath them. Päyur. “It’s Saira Turley, isn’t it?” I say.
“Yes. And the prince.
”
”
Raven Kennedy (Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6))
“
We’ll be back to my house soon. Shall I have the coachman drop you off at your own address?” “We still have much to discuss.” “And yet we’ve been in constant conversation.” Unfortunate word choice. “I can call on you tomorrow.” But God in heaven, where had that brilliant notion come from? He seldom called on women, and it would be remarked by all and sundry if he started with Maggie Windham. “I don’t generally have callers outside my family.” “None?” “Helene, a few other women, but not… not gentlemen, and certainly not handsome single gentlemen with polished address.” She thought he was handsome? “Make an exception for me. We were seen waltzing; a follow-up social call wouldn’t be that unusual. I could meet you riding in the park, if you’d rather, but there’s less privacy.” “I do not keep a riding horse.” “Then I will call upon you at two of the clock. I will expect you to be a little more forthcoming than you were this evening.” “I will try. You never answered my question: Shall I have John drop you at your home?” “God, no. You might think he’d keep such a thing to himself, but I’ve yet to meet the coachman who didn’t enjoy his pints at the local watering hole, and that’s a situation rife with opportunity for hanging a lady’s laundry in the street, so to speak. He’ll slow on the turn into the alley, and I’ll be off.” “Like a thief in the night.” “Like a gentleman in the night.” He tucked into his pocket the lock of hair he’d surreptitiously cut with her knife, and as soon as the coach slowed, darted out the door without another word. ***
”
”
Grace Burrowes (Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (The Duke's Daughters, #2; Windham, #5))
“
I appreciate that you’re all entertained by this…little surprise.” She swallowed hard and looked at Cooper as she added, “But there’s not going to be another McCrae wedding.”
There was a collective groan from the audience, and someone shouted, “Come on, don’t break the guy’s heart.” Someone else added, “That’s cold, Kerry. Even for you.”
She might have blanched a little at that. Cold. She wasn’t cold. She just wasn’t…overly friendly. At least not in the way some of the men in the place--and not only the single ones--hoped she’d be. “Come on now,” she said. “I’m not breaking anything here. You get what you see with me. No subterfuge, no leading anyone to believe anything that isn’t true. You all know that.” She didn’t bother looking at Hardy, though it couldn’t hurt to get him the message again, too. She did look at Cooper again, though, as she added, “Anyone who knows me, knows that.”
His laser-beam gaze didn’t falter for even a blink. She drew in a steadying breath and pasted a big smile on her face. “So then,” she said, clapping her hands together and keeping her fingers woven tightly in front of her, her damp palms belying her I’m-so-in-control-here attitude. “The entertainment portion of the evening is over. Nothing to see here. Let’s shoot some pool, throw some darts, and a round for everyone, on the house.”
That got the rousing cheer she knew it would and she quickly hopped down behind the bar and immediately began setting up glasses. She knew her grand--and not inexpensive--gesture would quiet them for a bit, but she also knew life in the Cove was going to be rife with all sorts of gossip for the next day or two, until something else came along to replace it on their juicy little grapevine. She had no idea where Fergus had suddenly gotten to and was surprised he hadn’t tried to orchestrate something, anything, between Kerry and Cooper. Hopefully with her little demonstration just now, he’d never have the chance.
”
”
Donna Kauffman (Starfish Moon (Brides of Blueberry Cove, #3))
“
The Lilly in a Christal
You have beheld a smiling Rose
When Virgins hands have drawn
O’r it a Cobweb-Lawne:
And here, you see, this Lilly shows,
Tomb’d in a Christal stone,
More faire in this transparent case,
Then when it grew alone;
And had but single grace.
You see how Creame but naked is;
Nor daunces in the eye
Without a Strawberrie:
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by that wantoning with it;
Then when the paler hieu
No mixture did admit.
You see how Amber through the streams
More gently stroaks the sight,
With some conceal’d delight;
Then when he darts his radiant beams
Into the boundless aire:
Where either too much light his worth
Doth all at once impaire,
Or set it little forth.
Put Purple Grapes, or Cherries in-
To Glasse, and they will send
More beauty to commend
Them, from that cleane and sbutile skin,
Then if they naked stood,
And had no other pride at all,
But their own flesh and blood,
And tinctures natural.
Thus Lillie, Rose, Grape, Cherry, Creame
And Straw-berry do stir
More love, when they transfer
A weak, a soft, a broken beame;
Then if they sho’d discover
At fulltheir proper excellence;
Without some Scean cast over,
To juggle with the sense.
Thus let this Christal’d Lillie be
A Rule, how far to teach,
Your nakednesse must reach:
And that, no further, then we see
Those glaring colours laid
By Arts wise hand, but to this end
They sho’d obey a shade;
Lest they too far extend.
So though y’are white as Swan, or Snow,
And have the power to move
A world of men to love:
Yet, when your Lawns & Silks shal flow;
And that white cloud divide
Into a doubtful Twi-light; then,
Then will your hidden Pride
Raise greater fires in men.
”
”
Robert Welch Herrick (Selected Poems (Shearsman Classics))
“
Cat worked tirelessly, absorbed in the subtle changes of light and texture and composition. She darted around Travis like a fire, taking photos of the captain and his ship from various angles.
Travis didn’t interfere or require her conversation. He could sense the excitement of creation flooding through her as clearly as he felt it in himself when elusive details of hull design would condense in his mind.
Smiling, he watched his lover, enjoying her intense concentration on her work. She handled cameras and lenses with the same total familiarity he handled wind and sail. When her determination to catch the sunlight on the rigging made her forget he was alive, he sat cross-legged on the deck and began splicing rope, not at all upset at being ignored.
When Cat realized that Travis wasn’t nearby anymore, she lowered her camera and looked around for him. She found him halfway back on the deck, sitting in a pool of sunlight. His head was bent over some task. Sun glinted over his tawny hair like a miser running fingers through gold.
Her heart hesitated, then beat with redoubled strength. She set aside her camera and went to Travis. Without a word she took the rope out of his hands and started pulling off his T-shirt.
“What are you doing?” he asked, surprised.
“Taking off your shirt.”
He blinked, then relaxed beneath Cat’s hands with a pirate’s smile of anticipation. She smiled in return, the serene smile of a sorceress, and threw his T-shirt aside. Then she put rope back into the hands that were reaching for her and picked up her camera once more.
“Come back here and finish what you started,” Travis said.
“I’m finished.
“What about my pants?”
“They make a nice contrast with the deck.”
“Well, damn.”
Disappointed, Travis made a face at the camera, then resumed splicing rope. Cat photographed him as he worked, seated like a god in the center of a golden cataract of light. He watched her with intense, blue-green eyes, measuring her progress around him while she climbed the rigging and the sailing in search of a perfect angle.
At one point she miscalculated. He came to his feet in a single motion and snatched her off her perch before she could fall. She laughed and let herself slide down his body, her hands savoring his supple, sun-warmed skin.
”
”
Elizabeth Lowell (To the Ends of the Earth)
“
Perhaps it is the plight of the mentally ill who best illustrate this pincer movement. By the end of the1990s, both Democratic and Republican dismantling of social services and the rise of the carceral state effected a major shift in how the U.S. cares for the mentally ill. Consider the words of Tom Dart, the Sheriff responsible for supervising Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the country, housing 10-12,000 prisoners, a population larger than many Illinois town populations. “Cook County Jail has become the state of Illinois’ largest “mental health hospital,” reports Dart. One third of the jail’s confines suffer from serious mental illness, and the facility is not equipped, he emphasizes, to be such a hospital.
”
”
Mark Lewis Taylor (The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, 2nd Edition)
“
I walk over to see what it is: it’s a paperweight with a dandelion clock perfectly preserved inside. I hold it in my hand. It’s smooth and heavy. It would be just right for my husband. I can imagine it sitting on his desk: a single, solitary objet d’art in the midst of that smooth expanse of wood. As I pay for it, I start to blush, a blush that grows stronger and deeper, flaring over my chest and making my ears burn.
I’m buying a present for my husband while I’m with my lover.
”
”
Sanjida Kay (My Mother's Secret)
“
stopped after the sirens blared past him. Milo raised his head. Seeing no one, he darted from the garbage heap and raced down the road to his car. As he drove away from the abandoned building, he held tight to the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking. Lyra had barely escaped being shot by her attackers, and he felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. He had put his love in terrible danger. This was all his fault. He never should have told Mr. Merriam about her. Tears flooded his eyes. Letting her go was the only way Milo could save her. TWENTY-THREE The good news was that the two men trying to kill Sam and Lyra were now in handcuffs. The bad news was that they weren’t the two men who had broken into her apartment. Sam drove her to the police station where the men were being processed. She stood in a tiny room behind a one-way mirror and waited while Sam stepped out into the hall to talk to two other agents. Ed, the man who had delivered the car, saw her and came in. “I looked at the car, and not a single bullet touched it. The perps were either lousy shots or Agent Kincaid was too fast for them.” Shaking his head, he repeated, “Not a single bullet.” Sam walked up behind Lyra and put his hands on her shoulders. “They’re bringing them up. Ready?” “Yes,” she answered. “Have they said anything?” “Yes. They want lawyers.” Two men were led into the interrogation room. They hadn’t even taken their seats when Lyra said, “They aren’t
”
”
Julie Garwood (Sizzle (Buchanan-Renard, #8))
“
Then, in a single movement, he pulled himself cleanly up and through the window, and drawing his cutlass, leapt into the room with a savage, bloodcurdling yell. “Aaaarrrrrrghhhhhh!” “Eeeeeaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!” An elderly woman, in slippers and nightgown. “SHIT!” Gray cried, and bolted for the door. “Thief! Intruder! Somebody, help!” Cutlass in hand, he tore frantically down the hall, the old woman’s screams echoing in the corridor behind him. How could he have chosen the wrong room?! He tripped, nearly fell, cut himself on the blade of the sword, and finding speed, darted away from an opening door, when he heard more calls and shouts ringing out behind him.
”
”
Danelle Harmon (My Lady Pirate (Heroes of the Sea #3))
“
One cannot master set research tasks if one makes a single part the focus of interest. One must, rather, continuously dart from one part to another—in a way that appears extremely flighty and unscientific to some thinkers who place value on strictly logical sequences—and one’s knowledge of each of the parts must advance at the same pace.15 The
”
”
Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)
“
Hey, Rita.” She watched Jake return to his hardware goodies. “Hey, Meridith. Sorry to call at dinnertime, but this is important.” “What is it?” Jake looked up at her tone. “I ran into Dee Whittier in town awhile ago.” “Who?” “She owns a sporting shop and is on the chamber of commerce with me. She’s also Max and Ben’s soccer coach.” “Okay . . .” “Well, she called and told me she saw the kids’ uncle in town this afternoon.” “What?” Meridith caught Jake’s eye, then flickered a look toward Noelle. “She recognized him because he goes to the boys’ games sometimes and, well, according to her he’s a total stud, and she’s single, so . . . you haven’t heard from him yet?” “No.” “I thought you’d want to know.” “Yes, I—thanks, Rita. Forewarned is forearmed, right?” A scream pierced the line. “Brandon, leave your sister alone!” Rita yelled. “Listen, I gotta run.” “Thanks for calling,” Meridith said absently. “What’s wrong?” Jake asked. He would be coming soon. Surely it wouldn’t take long for him to discover his sister had passed away. She felt a moment’s pity at the thought, then remembered he’d gone over three months without checking in. “You okay?” Jake asked again. Noelle entered the room and grabbed a stack of napkins from the island drawer. “Noelle, your uncle hasn’t called or e-mailed, has he?” Noelle’s hand froze, a stack of napkins clutched in her fist. Her lips parted. Her eyes darted to Jake, then back to Meridith. “Why?” “Rita said someone named Dee saw him in town today.” Noelle closed the drawer slowly. “Oh. Uh . . . no.” Meridith turned to the soup. Thick broth bubbles popped and spewed. She turned down the heat again and stirred. “Well, I guess he’s back. You’ll be seeing him soon.” She tried to inject enthusiasm in her voice, tried to be happy for the children. A piece of familiarity, a renewed bond, a living reminder of their mother. It would be good for them. And yet. What if he wanted them once he found out what had happened to Eva and T. J.? What if he fought her for them and won? Her stomach bottomed out. She loved the children now. They were her siblings. Her family. She remembered coming to the island with every intention of handing them over like unwanted baggage. What she’d once wanted most was now a potential reality. Only now she didn’t want it at all. Dinner
”
”
Denise Hunter (Driftwood Lane (Nantucket, #4))
“
My grandparents got creative to make space for three kids in their two-bedroom home. They took one of the bedrooms, my mom and aunt shared the other, and my uncle Bobby slept on the screened-in porch. Every single one of your neighbors would call Child Protective Services if you put a child on the porch these days, but this was the seventies, which was basically a lawless decade where children were concerned. Lawn Darts -- a game where one child would stand in a Hula-Hoop placed on the ground and another child would aim for the hoop by launching oversize, spiky metal darts at them -- hit its peak in this year for a reason: if your child was fed and moderately clothed, people turned a blind eye to your second-degree murder-adjacent shenanigans.
”
”
Danielle Henderson (The Ugly Cry)
“
Coal-black eyes darted beneath a single, wiry outcrop of eyebrow,
”
”
Phil Lecomber (Mask of the Verdoy: A George Harley Mystery (Book #1))
“
Natural selection may be unconscious but, as Darwin and his successors made clear, it is the opposite of a random force. It can drive changes in an organism in a very linear, per sis tent fashion—as had been observed in the laboratory, in nature, and in simulations such as the one that modeled eye evolution. Denton was wrong about evolution’s being one big lottery. The correct analogy would be a game of darts in which the players cannot see the target. Some darts will find their mark while the majority will miss—a random process. But the rules of the game eliminate all but the best-thrown darts. Because nature tosses an im mense number of darts—the mutation rate in any single gene in an organism will run in the millions—natural selection has plenty of well-targeted darts to choose from, and the march toward new and complex forms is not so difficult to understand, after all. But presenting an accurate meta phor would not have supported an attack on evolution.
”
”
Edward Humes (Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul)
“
I take it these insects are poisonous,” Akos said. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a particularly hard swallow.
“Very,” Yssa said. “We keep them here because they are very bright when they fly.”
“And they avoid anything that is a particularly strong conduit for the current,” Pary added. “Like…people. Most people.”
Akos’s eyes closed.
Frowning a little, I stepped forward. Pary grabbed my arm to stop me, but he couldn’t stand to touch me; his grip slipped, and I kept walking. Inching closer, and closer, until I was right in front of Akos, his warm breath against my temple. I lifted a hand to hover over the beetle on his face, and, for the first time, thought of my currentgift as something that might protect instead of injure.
A single black tendril unfurled from my fingers--obeying me, obeying me--and jabbed the beetle in the back. The light inside it flaring to life, it darted away from him, and the others went with it. Akos’s eyes opened. We stared at each other, not touching, but close enough that I could see the freckles on his eyelids.
“Okay?” I said.
He nodded.
“Stay close to me, then,” I said. “But don’t touch my skin, or you’ll turn us both into poisonous insect magnets.”
As I turned around, I made eye contact with Sifa. She was giving me an odd look, almost like I had just struck her. I felt Akos behind me, staying close. He pinched my shirt between two fingers, right over the middle of my back.
“Well,” Eijeh said. “That was exciting.”
It was the sort of thing Ryzek might have said.
“Shut up,” I replied, automatically
”
”
Veronica Roth (The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2))
“
Inching closer, and closer, until I was right in front of Akos, his warm breath against my temple. I lifted a hand to hover over the beetle on his face, and, for the first time, thought of my currentgift as something that might protect instead of injure.
A single black tendril unfurled from my fingers--obeying me, obeying me--and jabbed the beetle in the back. The light inside it flaring to life, it darted away from him, and the others went with it. Akos’s eyes opened. We stared at each other, not touching, but close enough that I could see the freckles on his eyelids.
“Okay?” I said.
He nodded.
“Stay close to me, then,” I said. “But don’t touch my skin, or you’ll turn us both into poisonous insect magnets.
”
”
Veronica Roth (The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2))
“
It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance. The viruses, instead of being single-minded agents of disease and death, now begin to look more like mobile genes. Evolution is still an infinitely long and tedious biologic game, with only the winners staying at the table, but the rules are beginning to look more flexible. We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party. They may be a mechanism for keeping new, mutant kinds of DNA in the widest circulation among us.
”
”
Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher)
“
Viewed from a suitable height, the aggregating clusters of medical scientists in the bright sunlight of the boardwalk at Atlantic City, swarmed there from everywhere for the annual meetings, have the look of assemblages of social insects. There is the same vibrating, ionic movement, interrupted by the darting back and forth of jerky individuals to touch antennae and exchange small bits of information; periodically, the mass casts out, like a trout-line, a long single file unerringly toward Childs’s. If the boards were not fastened down, it would not be a surprise to see them put together a nest of sorts. It is permissible to say this sort of thing about humans. They do resemble, in their most compulsively social behavior, ants at a distance. It is, however, quite bad form in biological circles to put it the other way round, to imply that the operation of insect societies has any relation at all to human affairs.
”
”
Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher)
“
Vihaela is like a dancer, darting and graceful. Landis is the only Light mage I’ve seen who can match her; he’s not as fast, but his technique is so perfect he doesn’t need to be. Morden almost doesn’t fight at all; he just overwhelms opponents with single crushing attacks which end the battle before it ever really starts.
”
”
Benedict Jacka (Bound (Alex Verus, #8))
“
eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
【V信83113305】:The Villa Arson in Nice is a unique institution in the French artistic landscape, merging a contemporary art center, an art school, and an artist residency within a single monumental site. Perched on the heights of the city, its architecture is a striking dialogue between a historic 18th-century villa and brutalist concrete extensions. As the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice, it provides a rigorous education for emerging artists, curators, and critics, emphasizing experimentation and critical theory. The integrated art center actively exhibits groundbreaking work from both established and emerging international artists, making it a vital hub for production and discourse. This singular combination of school, exhibition space, and residency creates a dynamic and immersive environment dedicated to the forefront of artistic practice.,快速办理ENSA Nice毕业证如何放心, 最佳办理ENSA Nice毕业证方式, 一比一原版阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证ENSA Nice毕业证书如何办理, 原版阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证办理流程, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice-Villa Arson毕业证成绩单专业服务学历认证, 学历证书!ENSA Nice学历证书阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院学历证书ENSA Nice假文凭, ENSA NicediplomaENSA Nice阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院挂科处理解决方案, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice-Villa Arson阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院学位证书快速办理, 100%办理ENSA Nice毕业证书
”
”
阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院学历办理哪家强-ENSA Nice毕业证学位证购买
“
【V信83113305】:The Villa Arson in Nice is a singular institution in the French art world, blending a national fine arts school, an artist residency, a contemporary art center, and an extensive art library within a single, monumental site. Perched on the heights of the city, the architecture itself is a dialogue between a historic villa and stark, raw concrete structures from the 1970s. This unique environment fosters a rigorous, experimental, and research-based approach to contemporary art creation. As the École nationale supérieure d'art de Nice, it provides a demanding curriculum where emerging artists develop their practice in direct contact with a professional exhibition program. The Villa Arson is not just a school but a vital hub, dedicated to the production, exhibition, and critical examination of today's most compelling artistic works.,办理法国Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice-Villa Arson本科学历, 网上办理ENSA Nice阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证书流程, 硕士文凭定制阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证书, 1:1原版阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证+Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice-Villa Arson成绩单, 优质渠道办理ENSA Nice阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证成绩单学历认证, 法国留学成绩单毕业证, 定做阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证ENSA Nice毕业证书毕业证, 原版ENSA Nice毕业证办理流程和价钱, 一比一制作-ENSA Nice文凭证书阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证
”
”
法国学历认证本科硕士ENSA Nice学位【阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证成绩单办理】
“
【V信83113305】:The Villa Arson in Nice is a unique institution in the French artistic landscape, merging a national school of fine arts, an artist residency, a contemporary art center, and a specialized library within a single visionary site. Perched on the heights of Nice, its architecture is a remarkable dialogue between a historic 18th-century villa and brutalist concrete structures, creating a stimulating environment for creation and research. As a prestigious *École Nationale Supérieure d'Art*, it offers a demanding curriculum that encourages critical thinking and experimental practice across various media. The integrated art center actively exhibits emerging and established artists, making it a vital hub for the international contemporary art scene. This singular model fosters a continuous exchange between pedagogical experimentation, artistic production, and public engagement.,原装正版阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证真实水印成绩单制作, 网上办理ENSA Nice毕业证书流程, 阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院成绩单购买, 办理ENSA Nice毕业证, 阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证成绩单-高端定制ENSA Nice毕业证, 高端原版ENSA Nice毕业证办理流程, ENSA Nice阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院毕业证本科学历办理方法, 网络快速办理ENSA Nice毕业证成绩单, 一流阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院学历精仿高质
”
”
2025年ENSA Nice毕业证学位证办理阿尔松别墅尼斯国立高等艺术学院文凭学历法国