Fireball Quotes

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

Why couldn't you turn into a fireball when we were on the same team!

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Maybe you're graduating from fireballs to lightning bolts," Adrian suggested. "I bet it'd be a lot like throwing ninja stars. Except, well, you could incinerate people.

Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee." He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we." She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra." Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

It's a philosophical minefield!" Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.

Amazing. You were so attached to it, and it still disappeared for you." “Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high...” “Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.

Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?" Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames - a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room. "I am a scribe in the House of Life, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods.

Let us each take up our flaming torches and mount as the blazing fireballs of light that we are and let's burn the skies and leave it with deep scars and let them be our signatures upon eternity as we go forth!

It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,” Vic says, looking through his magic sight. “Five guys on it. Headed our way.” He fires another round. “Correction. Four guys on it.” Boom. “Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.” Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. “Correction. No boat.

Beckendorf closed eyes tight and brought his hand up to his watch. from that distance, the explosion shook the world. Heat seared the back of my head. The Princess Andromeda blew up from both sides, a massive fireball of green flame roiling into the dark sky, consuming everything....I stared out the window into deep blue water. Beckendorf was supposed to go to college in the fall. He had a girlfriend, lots of friends, his whole life ahead of him. He couldn't be gone.

I'm just a repair guy who can throw the occasional fireball.

Life is good, and there's no reason to think it won't be--right up until the moment when everything explodes into a fireball of tiny, unrecognizable fragments, or it all goes skidding sideways, through the guardrail, over the embankment, and down the mountain. This will happen (and probably more than once).

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour. That would do it every time.

What's the biggest thing you've zapped with a fireball?' I asked. 'That would be a tiger,'said Nightingale. 'Well don't tell Greenpeace,' I said. 'They're an endagered species.' 'Not that sort of tiger,' said Nightingale. 'A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.' I stared at him. 'You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?' 'Actually I knocked out two,' said Nightingale. 'I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver's eye slot and one down the commander's hatch - brewed up rather nicely.

You wrote this right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.” Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?” Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball? I couldn’t say I was tempted, but I kept her under control. “Since when does drool make you powerful?

Who needs sports stardom when you can shoot fireballs from your fingertips?

He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.

A small fireball hit him in the face. He again looked at his sister, smoke still curling out from her human nostrils. "What brat?" "I said she'll want to return to her men as soon as she can." "I know." His sister smiled up at him. "And will you be ready for that, idiot?" "It's Lord Idiot to you." Fearghus rested his head on his crossed forearms. "And yes, brat. I will be.

Most of my friends are into strange things I don't really understand - and with a few shameful exceptions I wish them all well. Who am I, after all, to tell some friend he shouldn't change his name to Oliver High, get rid of his family, and join a Satanism cult in Seattle? Or to argue with another friend who wants to buy a single-shot Remington Fireball so he can go out and shoot cops from a safe distance?

You can turn this little tiny light into a huge fireball with only one thing–your mind.

It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and the wind at eighty miles per hour. That would do it every time.

It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant).

Two thousand Sufi poets assembled in Baghdad last night Bullets, rockets and granades flying Allah heard only their wine voices Bursting in a fireball straight to Paradise Bombs and explosives Illuminated the shame for an instant Before sinking suddenly to earth Echoes of their words seep through wounds

I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds. It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.

Then he heard a familiar voice. "That's got 'em! Wonderfull spell, Fireball--" "Fizban!" Tanis groaned.

have Meg now. I don’t intend to lose her again.” Leo nodded. “Yeah, Meg’s a fireball. Takes one to know one.

Without warning, the room is immersed in the images of battle, burning buildings, all around them people running and screaming. Trad ducks instinctively as a fireball hurls in his direction and Veebee retreats to her home.

It wouldn’t be long until I made my declaration. I didn’t just need my position to be clear, I needed to blind Whitney with blazing fireballs of glory. Real hardcore knock-em-down shit.

Maia, the beauty; Ally, the leader; Star, the peacemaker; CeCe, the pragmatist; Tiggy, the nurturer; and Electra, the fireball.

I'd make oatmeal cookies." "Cookies?" "I would. That's just what I would do." "Why?" He lifts one hand from the steering wheel and pinches his chin. "Because the world is changing so fast all the time. There's nothing you can do but just say, 'cool,' and roll with it. But some things can stay the same. Flour is still flour. Vanilla still smells like vanilla. Say a giant fireball is motoring toward us right now from Alha Centauri. Okay, universe. You expect us to run and scream and kill one another? Sorry, we're making oatmeal freaking cookies.

Even when mundanes didn't have science to helpfully explain the world and happily burned witches at the stake, they didn't really believe in magic. If you believed in magic, you wouldn't drag a witch to the stake; you'd have her lob fireballs at your enemies instead.

Now I see what the audience saw, how he misled the Careers about me, stayed awake the entire night under the traker jacker tree, fought Cato to let me escape and even while he lay in that mud bank, whispered my name in his sleep. I seem heartless in comparison- dodging fireballs, dropping nests, and blowing up supplies- until I go hunting for Rue. They play her death in full, the spearing, my failed rescue attempt, my arrow through the boy from District 1's throat, Rue drawing her last breath in my arms. And the song. I get to sing every note of the song. Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.

A couple of your guests saw a fireball come out the sky, and the place went up. Heat lightning is what will go in the report. A freak of nature.” I’d be sure to tell Drake he was being listed as a freak of nature. I wanted to watch his face when I said it. - Emilio Salas, Janet Begay

Never in all of my engagements has a man asked me if my cat needs pajamas. But this man thinks of everything.

I am a fireball of emotions and impulses; my zest for life is unquenchable. And I am either of only two things: Fire or Ice.

That is one fireball of a girlfriend you got there. The OR team was drawing straws to see who would go out and update her and your family. I think she actually had them scared.

In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin’s roofline a bursting fireball.

Praise the Lord and get the fireballs ready.

If I was really, really lucky, Felix might throw a fireball at me, and I'd get out of the rest of this freakshow.

For three decades, Einstein sought a unified theory of physics, one that would interweave all of nature's forces and material constituents within a single theoretical tapestry. He failed. Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, proponents of string theory claim that the threads of this elusive unified tapestry finally have been revealed. String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe—from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars, from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies—are reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.

A man who has been shaken by a two-ton blockbuster has a frame of reference. He can equate the impact of an H-bomb with his own experience, even though the H-bomb blast is a million times more powerful than the shock he endured. To someone who has never felt a bomb, bomb is only a word. An H-bomb's fireball is something you see on television. It is not something that incinerates you to a cinder in the thousandth part of a second. So the H-bomb is beyond the imagination of all but a few Americans, while the British, Germans, and Japanese can comprehend it, if vaguely. And only the Japanese have personal understanding of atomic heat and radiation.

Thalia grimaced. “Well, don’t just stand there! I’ll be fine. Go!” We didn’t want to leave her, but I could hear Kronos laughing as he approached the hall of the gods. More buildings exploded. “We’ll be back,” I promised. “I’m not going anywhere,” Thalia groaned. A fireball erupted on the side of the mountain, right near the gates of the palace. “We’ve got to run,” I said. “I don’t suppose you mean away,” Grover murmured hopefully.

He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings, disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows. It veered, struck a parked car and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned.

look. The fireball

There are storms that are frankly theatrical, all sheet lightning and metallic thunder rolls. There are storms that are tropical and sultry, and incline to hot winds and fireballs. But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land.

They lit her wings with the flames, but she raised to the sky soaring over the clouds until the whole sky caught fire. She flew staring at the destruction with her cold eyes, while the clouds came down as the balls of fire and burnt everyone, who tried to take her wings away into ashes.

I watch the stock-car races sometimes but you don't see anything but cars. I know about Fireball Roberts though and I watched an interview with Tiny Lunn. He is a huge dead-serious innocent-faced boy who must have made it big, he had just won the one in Jacksonville when I saw him but he never smiled once.

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away, and think this to be normal, is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be,

I pondered my friend's words. I liked best what he had said about the fireballs since I myself often had the same feeling. The quiet spell of the colored flame, rising into the darkness and all too soon drowning in it, struck me as a symbol of all human pleasure, for the more beautiful it is, the less it satisfies us and the more quickly it is spent.

Oh,bleep no. "Jack! What are you-" He lit both wicks and grabbed one of the bottles. Grinning maniacally at me, he turned and hurled his bottle. It spun lazily,a trail of light until it disappeared behind the deck of the ship.Maybe it wouldn't work.Maybe- A massive fireball billowed up, scorching the air and flowering along the boat. "Evie?You might want to throw that thing." I looked down in horror at my own burning Molotov cocktail,then flung it as far from myself as I could. It smashed against the side of the boat, most of the falmes falling down into the silver water. Which proceeded to catch fire. "Wow.Didn't expect that!" Jack nodded appreciatively as the flames spread, eating their way outward along the top of the lake.The boat,now engulfed, creaked and groanded its death cries. "Adding a touch of faerie liguor to the petrol gave it the extra kick,I think." An unearthly shriek ripped through the air, jarring me to the bones.I did not want to meet the owner of that voice. Jack laughed,taking my trembling hand. "This is the part where we run.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball ninety million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

There would be no more hot dog-eating contests or NASCAR or picnics in the park or Cheetos or America's Funniest Home Videos or revving truck engines or books or children laughing or fetch with a stick or i{hone updates or shopping or electrical jobs or songs or genius inventions or drunken dancing or Fireball whiskey or snow globes or wedding vows or ugly ties or Christmas hugs or...families

Richards remembered the day - that glorious and terrible day - watching the planes slam into the towers, the image repeated in endless loops. The fireballs, the bodies falling, the liquefaction of a billion tons of steel and concrete, the pillowing clouds of dust. The money shot of the new millennium, the ultimate reality show broadcast 24-7. Richards had been in Jakarta when it happened, he couldn't even remember why. He'd thought it right then; no, he'd felt it, right down to his bones. A pure, unflinching rightness. You had to give the military something to do of course, or they'd all just fucking shoot each other. But from that day forward, the old way of doing things was over. The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice and couldn't remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees - the subjects hadn't changed, they never would, all coming down, after you'd boiled away the bullshit, to somebody's quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where - but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

If you didn’t already know this, the sun is going to die. When I think about the future, I don’t think about inescapable ends. But even if we solve global warming and destroy nuclear bombs and control population, ultimately the human race will annihilate itself if we stay here. Eventually, inevitably, we will no longer be able to live on Earth: we have a giant fireball clock ticking down twilight by twilight. In many ways, I think mortality is more manageable when we consider our eternal components, our genetics and otherwise that carry on after us. Still, soon enough, the books we write and the plants we grow will freeze up and rot in the darkness. But maybe there’s hope. What the universe really boils down to is whether a planet evolves a life-form intelligent enough to create technology capable of transporting and sustaining that life-form off the planet before the sun in that planet’s solar system explodes. I have a limited set of comparative data points, but I’d estimate that we’re actually doing okay at this point. We already have (intelligent) life, technology, and (primitive) space travel. And we still have some time before our sun runs out of hydrogen and goes nuclear. Yet none of that matters unless we can develop a sustainable means of living and traveling in space. Maybe we can. What I’ve concluded is that if we do reach this point, we have crossed a remarkable threshold—and will emerge into the (rare?) evolutionary status of having outlived the very life source that created us. It’s natural selection on a Universal scale. “The Origin of the Aliens,” one could say; a survival of the fittest planets. Planets capable of evolving life intelligent enough to leave before the lights go out. I suppose that without a God, NASA is my anti-nihilism. Alone and on my laptop, these ideas can humble me into apathy.

Holy. Shit,” Lucian whispered when they were alone. “Love, you neglected to tell me that she was a fireball!” he busted out in silent laughter and Tara put her head on his chest, welcoming his tight embrace. “I fucking love her, oh my God.” He took her face in his hands and looked at her, smiling. “Tara Mae.

It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats," Vic says, looking through his magic site. "Five guys on it. Headed our way." He fires another round. "Correction. Four guys on it." Boom. "Correction, they're not headed our way anymore." Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. "Correction. No boat.

Take the first step... and the next will be revealed.

Give Coolness. Get Coolness. It's the LAW.

I am a master of folklore - I should be able to throw folklore fireballs or something.

Because nothing cuts through bullshit like a proper fireball.

Tsunami was a fireball that blazed up and down and sideways at everything that made her mad (which was most things).

Projectile Protection protects you from damage from arrows and ghast or blaze fireballs.

Something was growing inside Ruby: a tight ball of dancing warmth, like a fireball in her chest. It was red and orange and wonderful. Was it love?

And there the Lava Sipper, Vesuvio of the chafed tongue, of the scalded teem, who spun scores of fireballs up, hissing in a ferris of flame which

But when life hands you fireballs, you learn how to juggle—preferably with oven mitts.

Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic. In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day.

At the sound of her name, Lucia’s blue eyes honed in on me. She cocked her head to the side as if puzzled. “Why me?” she wondered. “Lucia, you exploded with power after Ehno was killed.” I shot Ehno an apologetic look. “I felt your sorrow before I even knew something was wrong. It hit me like a freight train of boulders. You made the sky rain fireballs with red lightning. Need I say more?

Raistlin ran to Fizban’s side. “Now is the time for the casting of the fireball, Old One,” he panted. “It is?” Fizban’s face filled with delight. “Wonderful! How does it go?” “Don’t you remember!” Raistlin practically shrieked, dragging the mage behind a pillar as the slug spat another glob of burning saliva onto the floor. “I used to … let me see.” Fizban’s brow furrowed in concentration.

The cruciform does not like pain. Nor do I but, like the cruciform, I am willing to use it to serve my purposes. And I will do so consciously, not instinctively like the mindless mass of alien tissue embedded in me. This thing only seeks a mindless avoidance of death by any means. I do not wish to die, but I welcome pain and death rather than an eternity of mindless life. Life is sacred--I still hold to that as a core element of the Church's though and teachings these past twenty-eight hundred years when life has been so cheap--but even more sacred is the soul. I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so--but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ. It must go into the darkness not willingly but well--bravely and firm of faith--like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerful that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices., All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable conviction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I... and so must the Church.

Like most astronauts, I made the mistake of asking about safety during training. My instructor tried not to laugh. “The abort system produces eighteen to twenty gees as it catapults you the hell away from any fireball, but it’s a mixed blessing. How safe would it be to pile eighteen to twenty people directly on top of you? You’ll probably survive. Probably. But you won’t be walking away from an abort.

Moloka'i. It was not a name spoken lightly in these islands. Sometimes it was called “Moloka'i of the potent prayers,” known for centuries as the home of powerful sorcerers capable of praying men to death, of sending giant fireballs hurtling across the sea, fiery planets of destruction seeking out hapless victims. Today the island was still an object of fear and fascination; but for very different reasons.

We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages. We now know that our universe or at least its most recent incarnation - is some fifteen or twenty billion years old. This is the time since a remarkable explosive event called the Big Bang. At the beginning of this universe, there were no galaxies, stars or planets, no life or civilizations, merely a uniform, radiant fireball filling all of space. The passage from the Chaos of the Big Bang to the Cosmos that we are beginning to know is the most awesome transformation of matter and energy that we have been privileged to glimpse. And until we find more intelligent beings elsewhere, we are ourselves the most spectacular of all the transformations - the remote descendants of the Big Bang, dedicated to understanding and further transforming the Cosmos from which we spring

We don’t know what triggered the big bang, nor what, if anything, existed before it. But somehow the universe emerged as a vast sea of ultrahot gas, expanding fast in all directions like the fireball ignited by a nuclear bomb blast or by the explosion of a gas pipeline. Except that the big bang was not destructive (so far as we know). Instead, it created everything in our universe, or rather the seeds for everything.

When the air gets heavy so it's hard to breathe, you know what's coming. The birds come down from the ridges and hide in the hollows and in the pines. Heavy black clouds float over the mountain, and you run for the cabin. From the cabin porch we would watch the big bars of light that stand for a full second, maybe two, on the mountaintop, running out feelers or lightning wire in all directions before they're jerked back into the sky. Cracking claps of sound, so sharp you know something has split wide open--then the thunder rolls and rumbles over the ridges and back through the hollows. I was pretty near sure, a time or two, that the mountains was falling down, but Granpa said they wasn't. Which of course, they didn't. Then it comes again--and rolls blue fireballs of rocks on the ridge tops and splatters the blue in the air. The trees whip and bend in the sudden rushes of wind, and the sweep of heavy rain comes thunking from the clouds in big drops, letting you know there's some real frog-strangling sheets of water coming close behind.

Aaron used the Blade to direct another wave of water at Kyran, who managed to block it. In retaliation, Kyran sent a stream of fireballs at him. Aaron’s defence wasn’t as good as Kyran’s, and he was struck by one, burning his shoulder. He fell back with a cry, the sword almost slipping from his grip. Aaron swung it, sending a wave of water at Kyran, but this time commanded it to spin around him, build tall as a tower and then fall on him, crushing him under its weight. It did just that and for the second time that day, Kyran was pulled under the water. Rage thrummed inside Aaron, blinding him, taking over him, and he instructed the water to hold on to Kyran, to not let him go – to let him drown.

We know it had a beginning. About 13.8 billion years ago, the universe went from a state of unimaginable density, to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball, to a cooling, humming fluid of matter and energy, which laid down the seeds for the stars and galaxies we see around us today. Planets formed, galaxies collided, light filled the cosmos. A rocky planet orbiting an ordinary star near the edge of a spiral galaxy developed life, computers, political science, and spindly bipedal mammals who read physics books for fun. But what’s next? What happens at the end of the story? The death of a planet, or even a star, might in principle be survivable. In billions of years, humanity could still conceivably exist, in some perhaps unrecognizable form, venturing out to distant reaches of space, finding new homes and building new civilizations. The death of the universe, though, is final. What does it mean for us, for everything, if it will all eventually come to an end?

To your mind, a nuclear bomb is detonated and then explodes, but the actual process is more like burning. The greater the yield, the longer the combustion. A twenty-megaton nuclear explosion, for example, has a fireball that can last for over twenty seconds.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away, and think this to be normal, is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.’104

Sex comes from such a lost, primitive place, we can never understand it's meaning until we're in its throes, until we've released that second being within us, shut down, shadowed, who doesn't know how to think of speak but can only communicate in burning grandiose sensations, from the heart of a fireball.

What the fuck is that?" one of the cops yells. "I'm the magic Negro from all your worst nightmares," Cyrus laughs. "Now scatter!" He swirls his arms like he's gonna shoot a fireball at them and they take off, tearing through the ranks of NYCOD agents and disappearing around the corner. "I like this dude," Riley whispers. Cyrus

Success is the last thing you should be afraid of. When you hit the top of one mountain, it makes it easier to see the peaks of the mountains you never knew existed before.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy and duty of life. Those whom we have come to honor and, in God’s name to bless, never shrank from life, but welcomed it—welcomed life and its every aspect—loved life and were responsible to both its duties and its joys…. Each believed steadfastly in the glorious life to come.

At the center of our own Milky Way lies a monster black hole whose mass is two to four million times that of our sun. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius. (Unfortunately, dust clouds obscure the area, so we cannot see it. But if the dust clouds were to part, then every night, a magnificent, blazing fireball of stars, with the black hole at its center, would light up the night sky, perhaps outshining the moon. It would truly be a spectacular sight.)

All-out. Thaumaturgical. War. And there were of course no alliances, no sides, no deals, no mercy, no cease. The skies twisted, the seas boiled. The scream and whizz of fireballs turned the night into day, but that was all right because the ensuing clouds of black smoke turned the day into night. The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet, and the very fabric of space itself was tied in multidimensional knots and bashed on a flat stone down by the river of Time.

I once read the most widely understood word in the whole world is ‘OK’, followed by ‘Coke’, as in cola. I think they should do the survey again, this time checking for ‘Game Over’. Game Over is my favorite thing about playing video games. Actually, I should qualify that. It’s the split second before Game Over that’s my favorite thing. Streetfighter II - an oldie but goldie - with Leo controlling Ryu. Ryu’s his best character because he’s a good all-rounder - great defensive moves, pretty quick, and once he’s on an offensive roll, he’s unstoppable. Theo’s controlling Blanka. Blanka’s faster than Ryu, but he’s really only good on attack. The way to win with Blanka is to get in the other player’s face and just never let up. Flying kick, leg-sweep, spin attack, head-bite. Daze them into submission. Both players are down to the end of their energy bars. One more hit and they’re down, so they’re both being cagey. They’re hanging back at opposite ends of the screen, waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Leo takes the initiative. He sends off a fireball to force Theo into blocking, then jumps in with a flying kick to knock Blanka’s green head off. But as he’s moving through the air he hears a soft tapping. Theo’s tapping the punch button on his control pad. He’s charging up an electricity defense so when Ryu’s foot makes contact with Blanka’s head it’s going to be Ryu who gets KO’d with 10,000 volts charging through his system. This is the split second before Game Over. Leo’s heard the noise. He knows he’s fucked. He has time to blurt ‘I’m toast’ before Ryu is lit up and thrown backwards across the screen, flashing like a Christmas tree, a charred skeleton. Toast. The split second is the moment you comprehend you’re just about to die. Different people react to it in different ways. Some swear and rage. Some sigh or gasp. Some scream. I’ve heard a lot of screams over the twelve years I’ve been addicted to video games. I’m sure that this moment provides a rare insight into the way people react just before they really do die. The game taps into something pure and beyond affectations. As Leo hears the tapping he blurts, ‘I’m toast.’ He says it quickly, with resignation and understanding. If he were driving down the M1 and saw a car spinning into his path I think he’d in react the same way. Personally, I’m a rager. I fling my joypad across the floor, eyes clenched shut, head thrown back, a torrent of abuse pouring from my lips. A couple of years ago I had a game called Alien 3. It had a great feature. When you ran out of lives you’d get a photo-realistic picture of the Alien with saliva dripping from its jaws, and a digitized voice would bleat, ‘Game over, man!’ I really used to love that.

What did I do now?” He reluctantly pulled the car the curb. I needed to get out of this car – like now. I couldn’t breathe. I unbuckled and flung open the door. “Thanks for the ride. Bye.” I slammed the door shut and began down the sidewalk. Behind me, I heard the engine turn off and his door open and shut. I quickened my stride as James jogged up to me. I slowed down knowing I couldn’t escape his long legs anyway. Plus, I didn’t want to get home all sweaty and have to explain myself. “What happened?” James asked, matching my pace. “Leave me alone!” I snapped back. I felt his hand grab my elbow, halting me easily. “Stop,” he ordered. Damn it, he’s strong! “What are you pissed about now?” He towered over me. I was trapped in front of him, if he tugged a bit, I’d be in his embrace. “It’s so funny huh? I’m that bad? I’m a clown, I’m so funny!” I jerked my arm, trying to break free of his grip. “Let me go!” “No!” He squeezed tighter, pulling me closer. “Leave me alone!” I spit the words like venom, pulling my arm with all my might. “What’s your problem?” James demanded loudly. His hand tightened on my arm with each attempt to pull away. My energy was dwindling and I was mentally exhausted. I stopped jerking my arm back, deciding it was pointless because he was too strong; there was no way I could pull my arm back without first kneeing him in the balls. We were alone, standing in the dark of night in a neighborhood that didn’t see much traffic. “Fireball?” he murmured softly. “What?” I replied quietly, defeated. Hesitantly, he asked, “Did I say something to make you sad?” I wasn’t going to mention the boyfriend thing; there was no way. “Yes,” I whimpered. That’s just great, way to sound strong there, now he’ll have no reason not to pity you! “I’m sorry,” came his quiet reply. Well maybe ‘I’m sorry’ just isn’t good enough. The damage is already done! “Whatever.” “What can I do to make it all better?” “There’s nothing you could–” I began but was interrupted by him pulling me against his body. His arms encircled my waist, holding me tight. My arms instinctively bent upwards, hands firmly planted against his solid chest. Any resentment I had swiftly melted away as something brand new took its place: pleasure. Jesus! “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him softly; his face was only a few inches from mine. “What do you think you’re doing?” James asked back, looking down at my hands on his chest. I slowly slid my arms up around his neck. I can’t believe I just did that! “That’s better.” Our bodies were plastered against one another; I felt a new kind of nervousness touch every single inch of my body, it prickled electrically. “James,” I murmured softly. “Fireball,” he whispered back. “What do you think you’re doing?” I repeated; my brain felt frozen. My heart had stopped beating a mile a minute instead issuing slow, heavy beats. James uncurled one of his arms from my waist and trailed it along my back to the base of my neck, holding it firmly yet delicately. Blood rushed to the very spot he was holding, heat filled my eyes as I stared at him. “What are you doing?” My bewilderment was audible in the hush. I wasn’t sure I had the capacity to speak anymore. That function had fled along with the bitch. Her replacement was a delicate flower that yearned to be touched and taken care of. I felt his hand shift on my neck, ever so slightly, causing my head to tilt up to him. Slowly, inch by inch, his face descended on mine, stopping just a breath away from my trembling lips. I wanted it. Badly. My lips parted a fraction, letting a thread of air escape. “Can I?” His breath was warm on my lips. Fuck it! “Yeah,” I whispered back. He closed the distance until his lush lips covered mine. My first kiss…damn! His lips moved softly over mine. I felt his grip on my neck squeeze as his lips pressed deeper into

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and the wind at eighty miles per hour. That would do it every time.   THE

Destiny Enchanted cloud castle in which we're suspended... Who knows if we have not already moved through many heavens with glazed eyes? We, who are banished from time and thrust from space, we, who are refugees in the night and exiled. Who knows if we have not flown past God, for we fly off, swift as an arrow, without seeing Him and only cast our seeds wider in order to live on through darker lineage, suspended and guilty. Who knows if we died recently or long ago? The fireball containing us strains ever higher. The thin air today makes the hands lame. And what if our voice should snap and our breathing stop? Does enchantment remain for final instants?

Standing on a golden perch behind the door was a decrepit-looking bird that resembled a half-plucked turkey. Harry stared at it and the bird looked balefully back, making its gagging noise again. Harry thought it looked very ill. Its eyes were dull and, even as Harry watched, a couple more feathers fell out of its tail. Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames. Harry yelled in shock and backed away into the desk. He looked feverishly around in case there was a glass of water somewhere but couldn't see one; the bird, meanwhile, had become a fireball; it gave one loud shriek and next second there was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash on the floor. The office door opened. Dumbledore came in, looking very somber. "Professor," Harry gasped. "Your bird- I couldn't do anything- he just caught fire-" To Harry's astonishment, Dumbledore smiled. "About time, too," he said. "He's been looking dreadful for days; I've been telling him to get a move on." He chuckled at the stunned look on Harry's face. "Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes. Watch him..." Harry looked down in time to see a tiny, wrinkled, newborn bird poke its head out of the ashes. It was quite as ugly as the old one. "It's a shame you had to see him on a Burning Day," said Dumbledore, seating himself behind his desk. "He's really very handsome most of the time, wonderful red and gold plumage. Fascinating creatures, phoenixes. They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets.

In terms of the Trinity, I believe in the Father and the Holy Ghost but not really Jesus that much. Yes, Jesus was pretty badass because he stood up for what he believed in and was definitely an alpha and a man of his convictions, and all that respectable shit, and he took a hell of a beating in the end, but his message was wrong. All that turn the other cheek and love thy neighbor nonsense; be a lamb and so on. It’s silly and doesn’t work. The God of the Old Testament, the Father, that guy makes a lot more sense to me. He had it in him to be mean and spiteful. I get that I was made in the image of a guy who’d fuck over a nobody like Job basically for fun and to prove a point to a rival. I get that I was made in the image of a guy who’d kick two shitheads out of the Garden of Eden for disobeying Him. I get the idea of Him laying waste to entire cities with fireballs or whatever because He didn’t very much like the type of people that lived there (though Sodom and Gomorrah seem like just the sort of places I’d like to hang out). If God is love, it ain’t Jesus’. The Father’s love, tough love, is what works. Sometimes there’s difficulty distinguishing it from hate, and that’s why it applies to the way I live my life. Jesus’ message just makes people nice, makes them pussies, and while I’m thankful for it because it’s given me the upper hand throughout my life in very Christian America, believing in it, really, would be idiotic for anyone like me, a winner. And I believe in the Holy Ghost too mostly because I’ve felt Him working through me while doing really cool shit, like playing football and writing good songs or whatever. He’s what people mean when they say God-given talent, which I have a lot of.

Despite the chaos that was tearing her head apart, Tevi understood what scene Yenneg was attempting to play out, with herself as a conscripted actor. She needed to force out an explanation or denial, but no words could get past her lips. Jemeryl's presence was paralysing her, an effect far more irresistible than anything Yenneg had achieved. Tevi watched Jemeryl take another few steps forwards and then crouch down so that their eyes were no more than a foot apart. Tevi thought she would die from the shock. Yet somehow, she forced her mouth to shape the words, "Wine. Love potion." Her voice was not loud enough even to count as a whisper. Certainly nobody else in the room would have heard, yet Tevi could not control her breathing to manage anything else. At first Jemeryl showed no sign of comprehension, but then suddenly, the bewilderment on her face transformed into fury. She leapt up, her arms moving in a blurred aggressive swirl. The gesture ended with an action like hurling a ball. Blue fire erupted from Jemeryl's hands and shot towards Yenneg. The other sorcerer had obviously recognised the gesture and made an effort to protect himself. A shimmering shield sprung up before Yenneg, but it was not strong enough, and the shockwave knocked him off his feet. His shoulders slammed into the wall behind him and he crumpled to the floor. Jemeryl had been telling the truth when she claimed to vastly excel the acolytes in magical ability, not that Tevi had ever entertained doubts. Jemeryl's hands moved again, and this time Yenneg was sprawled on the floor and in no state to mount a defence. A second bolt of blue fire burst in his direction. Lightning in the form of a whip snapped across the room, intercepting Jemeryl's attack before it struck. The diverted fireball hit the wall of the summerhouse two feet from Yenneg's head and smashed through it, as if it were a stone going through wet paper.

She immediately suffers guilt for not feeling grateful for her abundance—she has her health, her children, a spouse, a home, and a career. However, it doesn’t explain the feeling of emptiness—of something missing. With sudden clarity, she feels unhappy—not with her life, but rather herself in her life. Where is the girl she used to know? Where is that fireball—the one with personal goals and dreams on the forefront of her life? She used to move forward with clarity and conviction. She used to have focus on where she was going and how she could get there. Why she was not connected to the most dynamic person in her life, she no longer knew. She could barely remember being her. She sits on the cold tile reflecting on her life… she let her personal ambitions and priorities go. In fact, she realizes that she hasn’t thought about herself in a really long time. Did she really know going in that she would inadvertently sell her soul in exchange for her life today? She stands and again looks in the mirror. Her reflection confirms it. She has become the sacrificial lamb.

to move. More gunfire. Although his vision was dimmed, Alex saw two more grenades arc through the air. They landed next to one of the ships and exploded, a huge fireball of flame. Two of Sarov’s men were lifted into the air. At the same time, two or even three machine guns began to chatter simultaneously. There were screams. More flames. Conrad loomed over him. He seemed to have forgotten what was happening in the shipyard. Or perhaps he didn’t care. He tossed aside the metal rod, then slowly pulled up his sleeves. Finally he dropped down so that he was sitting on Alex’s chest, one knee on either side. His hands closed around Alex’s neck. Gently, enjoying what he was doing, he began to squeeze. Alex felt fingers as hard as iron clamp shut on his throat. He couldn’t breathe. There were already black spots in front of his eyes. Straining past Conrad, he saw something moving toward him. It was the magnetic disc. Conrad had left the controls on in the cabin in his haste to get over to Alex, and the arm of the crane was still swinging around. There was a sudden, loud clang. The

Every building was just gone, and every soul as well. Across the Potomac River, the Pentagon shuddered violently from the blast wave and then began to partially collapse. What remained standing was utterly ablaze, as was every structure not flattened for as far as the eye could see. Howling, scorching winds soon began sweeping lethal radioactivity through the city’s northeast quadrant and into Maryland, surging through Prince George’s County and Anne Arundel County, as if they were following 295 to the north and Routes 50 and 214 to the east, through Capitol Heights and Lanham and Bowie toward Crofton and Annapolis. Soon more than five thousand square miles of Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia were contaminated with deadly levels of radioactivity. And the nightmare had only just begun. Moments after the first missile hit D.C., a second missile struck the CIA building at Langley directly, its superheated fireball and cataclysmic blast wave obliterating the nation’s premier intelligence headquarters in the tree-lined suburbs of northern Virginia and vaporizing every home and office building, every church and mall for mile after mile

When Jim found a bone that had been part of somebody’s hand, I understood that this wasn’t just Carole Lombard’s story. It was the pilot’s story and the co-pilot’s and the stewardess’s. It was the story of 15 Army Air Corps personnel who perished, men as young as 19 and as “old” as 28, and it was the story of three other civilians, all of whom died right there, on the spot where I stood shivering in the fading October sunshine at 7,700 feet. I started writing on the plane ride home and haven’t stopped since. I have had extreme good fortune in my research, accessing the complete Civil Aeronautics Board investigation, including the exhibits and testimony. I have examined the U.S. House of Representatives

This is the best idea you’ve had all day. And you’ve had a ton of good ones. You are so the idea girl. Quitting your job? Great idea. Getting Lay to give you the latex replica of yourself? Stellar. Just gotta follow through. The excessive drinking? Also masterful. And now we’re going to kick ass in person. I love it. Let’s dress you up, though. We’ll make Hudson’s balls cry big, girly tears when he thinks of all the anal he could have had with you tonight.” “Did I tell you he has his tongue pierced? And his dick pierced?” Verity asked, holding Angie by her face. “Do you know what that means to a vagina? Are you aware of the commitment he’s made to my vagina’s happiness? He slapped his man meat out somewhere…” She waved a boozy hand at the city. “Thought about pleasure, and took a stab in his pee hole. Do you even understand that?” “You did mention that already. And the tongue one is hard to miss.” Angie nodded seriously. “Let’s find the hottest thing you own and pour your boobs in it. Have I told you you have great tits? Your tits are the sweetest friends with my tits.” They proceeded to bump their boobs together. “Okay, let’s go.” Angie dragged Verity to her closet.   Verity Michaels @VerityPics03 I’ve never thunk Fireball was a bad idea. #RageDrinking   Verity Michaels @VerityPics03 Angie made me sexlicious. #GreatTitBuddies   Verity Michaels @VerityPics03 Pierced dicks are fucktacular. #PoundTown

For Dylan, this electric assault threatened to suck the air out of everything else, only there was too much radio oxygen to suck. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the giant, all-consuming anthem of the new “generation gap” disguised as a dandy’s riddle, a dealer’s come-on. As a two-sided single, it dwarfed all comers, disarmed and rejuvenated listeners at each hearing, and created vast new imaginative spaces for groups to explore both sonically and conceptually. It came out just after Dylan’s final acoustic tour of Britain, where his lyrical profusion made him a bard, whose tabloid accolade took the form of political epithet: “anarchist.” As caught on film by D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, the young folkie had already graduated to rock star in everything but instrumentation. “Satisfaction” held Dylan back at number two during its four-week July hold on Billboard’s summit, giving way to Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” come August, novelty capstones to Dylan’s unending riddle. (In Britain, Dylan stalled at number four.) The ratio of classics to typical pop schlock, like Freddie and the Dreamers’ “I’m Telling You Now” or Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” suddenly got inverted. For cosmic perspective, yesterday’s fireball, Elvis Presley, sang “Do the Clam.” Most critics have noted the Dylan influence on Lennon’s narratives. Less space gets devoted to Lennon’s effect on Dylan, which was overt: think of how Dylan rewires Chuck Berry (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) or revels in inanity (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). Even more telling, Lennon’s keening vocal harmonies in “Nowhere Man,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Dr. Robert” owed as much to the Byrds and the Beach Boys, high-production turf Dylan simply abjured. Lennon also had more stylistic stretch, both in his Beatle context and within his own sensibility, as in the pagan balalaikas in “Girl” or the deliberate amplifier feedback tripping “I Feel Fine.” Where Dylan skewed R&B to suit his psychological bent, Lennon pursued radical feats of integration wearing a hipster’s arty façade, the moptop teaching the quiet con. Building up toward Rubber Soul throughout 1965, Beatle gravity exerted subtle yet inexorable force in all directions.

For a moment, the fog remained unmoved. It sat around, swirling in place, very clearly listening but showing no sign of offering answers. Then, just as Nausicaä began to contemplate conjuring a few more fireballs, the fog began to thin. Little by little it drained from the air until, finally, all that was left was a vaguely damp, translucent haze. She could only stare at what was revealed. “Huh,” she breathed when speech at last overcame her surprise. “This is…new.” It wasn’t just the changelings that had gathered. They were present, of course—one mere step away. Nausicaä briefly took in the unmistakable pale green tint of his fawn-brown skin and the snaking twists of ivy that grew from the sharp flares of his little shoulders. But there were others. There were so many others. In all of Nausicaä’s very long life, she had never encountered so many of magic’s children in one place. The crowd of them stretched far in almost every direction, faces of all shapes and sizes peeking out of the foliage and trees. There were centaurs, goblins, brownies, imps and sprites. There were redcaps, with their crimson-stained hats and vicious scythes, which glinted in the moonlight. There were kelpies dripping sodden weeds, lilies strangled in their manes. Littered throughout the branches above were crows that weren’t really crows at all, but sluagh—wandering souls of the violent dead who preyed on those soon to die. There were larger things too. Unnameable things. Things that had undoubtedly been calling this forest their home long before Nausicaä had ever been born. She narrowed her eyes at the distance—something massive as a mobile hill stood still as silence too far away for mortal eyes to see. Their form was not unlike an overlarge, poisonous tree frog, all vibrant blues and yellows and greens, a crown of velvet antlers on their head and hundreds of glittering black eyes on their face. A freaking Forest Guardian, she would hazard a guess, not that she’d ever seen one to say for sure. “Uh…okay, well, weird time to have a company meeting, but you do you, I guess. I’m going to…go. Gar, maybe it’s best you stick with these guys until I square things up with my Reaper. Thanks for lifting the fog, forest brats! Good luck with…whatever this is. May the force be with you.” She turned back around. There weren’t any faeries in front of her, either—just trees and misty gloom and a darkness unnatural even for this time of night. And, of course, the glass-chime tinkling of magic, which now sounded to her a bit distressed.

So why haven’t we been visited? Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy—or in the observable universe—on which it happened. Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self-reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life as an inevitable consequence of evolution, but what if it isn’t? The Anthropic Principle should warn us to be wary of such arguments. It is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes. It is not even clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single-cell organisms, may live on if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions. Perhaps intelligence was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution, as it took a very long time—two and a half billion years—to go from single cells to multi-cellular beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available before the Sun blows up, so it would be consistent with the hypothesis that the probability for life to develop intelligence is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life. Another way in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. In 1994, we observed the collision of a comet, Shoemaker–Levy, with Jupiter. It produced a series of enormous fireballs. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about sixty-six million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last sixty-six million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision-free period to evolve intelligent beings. A third possibility is that there is a reasonable probability for life to form and to evolve to intelligent beings, but the system becomes unstable and the intelligent life destroys itself. This would be a very pessimistic conclusion and I very much hope it isn’t true. I prefer a fourth possibility: that there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been overlooked. In 2015 I was involved in the launch of the Breakthrough Listen Initiatives. Breakthrough Listen uses radio observations to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, and has state-of-the-art facilities, generous funding and thousands of hours of dedicated radio telescope time. It is the largest ever scientific research programme aimed at finding evidence of civilisations beyond Earth. Breakthrough Message is an international competition to create messages that could be read by an advanced civilisation. But we need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further. Meeting a more advanced civilisation, at our present stage, might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus—and I don’t think they thought they were better off for it.