Isaac Item Quotes

Which is the main reason I refuse to let Isaac drag me out tonight for another one of his disastrous fix-ups. There’s another reason I don’t like to date—but I’m trying not to think about her. “Come on, man,” Isaac whines. It’s the third time he’s called me in twenty minutes. “I promise it won’t be like last time.” By “last time” he means when he hooked me up with Stacey Perkins. Apparently she’s a vegan—which is cool. Her choice. But nobody told me until after I brought her to Outback Steakhouse. Then she asked the waitress if they had any “cruelty free” items on the menu. Things only went downhill from there. Especially when I still ordered a steak. There are few things worse than an irritated vegan.

To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire. Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

He had steeled himself just a little for the Jump through hyper-space, a phenomenon one did not experience in simple interplanetary trips. The Jump remained, and would probably remain forever, the only practical method of travelling between the stars. Travel through ordinary space could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light (a bit of scientific knowledge that belonged among the items known since the forgotten dawn of human history), and that would have meant years of travel between even the nearest of inhabited systems. Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two neighboring instants of time. Gaal

Our faith in victory had been unquestioning, its opposite, defeat, had no currency among us. Victory was possible, that was all. It would be easy or difficult, quick or prolonged, but it would be victory. So here came the disturbing Hoosier, displaying the other side of the coin, showing us defeat. It shook us. And it was from this moment that we dated the feeling of what is called expendability. All armies have expendable items, that is, a part or unit the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole. In some ordeals, a man might consider his finger expendable, but not his hand, or in extremity his arm but not his heart. There are expendable items which may be lost or destroyed in the field either in peace or in war without their owner being required to replace them. A rifle is so expendable or a cartridge belt. So are men. Men are the most expendable of all. Hunger, the jungle, the Japanese, not one nor all of these could be quite as corrosive as the feeling of expendability. This was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt, that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice, that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being expended puts one in the roll of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach yet, for the same master he would have gone gladly to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifices of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one victim. If we were to be victims, we were as firmly secured to our role as Isaac bound to the faggots. No day passed without extenuating it.

The lasagna filled a huge roasting pan, covered in thick browned cheese that was crispy in the corners. "Get me a corner piece, and I'll owe you one," Sanna whispered to Isaac, who sat closer to the pan. "I'll hold you to that." He scooped the darkest corner onto her plate with a wink that caused Sanna's heart to skip. She wished she could come up with a pithy response, but instead she turned her attention to the food, unable to find her words. The garlic bread was made from a local bakery's signature item, the giant Corsica loaf. It was slathered in sesame seeds and baked in olive oil so the bottom was crispy yet dripping. Mrs. Dibble had carved huge slices, coated each with garlic butter, then warmed it until the butter soaked in. The salad rounded it out, something light to balance all the heavy food so you could keep nibbling on lettuce to stretch the time at the table. "Sanna, why don't you pull out a few bottles of cider for dinner?" Einars said. Glad for distraction, Sanna brought out three large bottles she had in the fridge, all from the same batch- toasty brown. Not the most appetizing color, but it was the best match to go with a dinner like this one. It was a nearly still, unfiltered scrumpy style that was layered and complex, but not sweet and not dry. It wasn't acidic, so it didn't compete with the tomato sauce, and the subtle apple notes didn't confuse the palate with too many conflicting flavors. It was refreshing and smooth, a dark amber in color with bits of sediment floating around. She poured it into stemless glasses for each of the adults and enjoyed how the evening light got trapped, making the liquid glow when she held it up in a beam of evening summer sunlight.