“
He looked exactly like a rat. Like the human being version of a rat. Like the villain in a Don Bluth movie.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
“
The 'sitch'? Did you watch that Kim Possible movie again? You know it only makes you sad that you don't have a naked mole-rat of your very own.'
'One, I've been watching Buffy, not Kim Possible. And two, it is so not fair that Dad won't let me get a Rufus when he lets Angel keep that stupid turtle.
”
”
Tammy Blackwell (Destiny Binds (Timber Wolves Trilogy, #1))
“
Creation is built upon the promise of hope, that things will get better, that tomorrow will be better than the day before.
But it's not true. Cities collapse. Populations expand. Environments decay. People get ruder. You can't go to a movie without getting in a fight with the guy in the third row who won't shut up.
Filthy streets. Drive-by shootings. Irradiated corn. Permissible amounts of rat-droppings per hot dog. Bomb blasts, and body counts. Terror in the streets, on camera, in your living room. Aids and Ebola and Hepatitis B and you can't touch anyone because you're afraid you'll catch something besides love and nothing tastes as good anymore and Christopher Reeve is [dead] and love is statistically false.
Pocket nukes and subway anthrax. You grow up frustrated, you live confused, you age frightened, you die alone. Safe terrain moves from your city to your block to your yard to your home to your living room to the bedroom and all you want is to be allowed to live without somebody breaking in to steal your tv and shove an ice-pick in your ear.
That sound like a better world to you? That sound to you like a promise kept?
”
”
J. Michael Straczynski (Midnight Nation)
“
I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3))
“
Qhuinn dived into the plane, pulled himself into the pilot’s seat, and tried to make sense of all the…fucking hell, there were a lot of dials. The only saving grace he had was that he’d—
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
—watched enough movies to know that the lever with the grip was the gas and the bow tie–shaped wheel was the thing you pulled up to go up, and pushed down to go down.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he stayed in a tuck position as much as he could.
”
”
J.R. Ward
“
We all like to believe that we'd be brave. We'd be the hero in the movie, the one who sacrifices himself to save others, the one who does the right thing when the world around him is wrong. In the movie the right choice is clear. And we leave the theater feeling good about ourselves because we can say, Me, I'd do the right thing. No one says, Me, I'd be the coward. Me, I'd rat out my neighbor to save myself. But that's what people do, mostly
”
”
Jillian Lauren (Some Girls: My Life in a Harem)
“
candor could not be more crucial to our creative process. Why? Because early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” This idea—that all the movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp. But think about how easy it would be for a movie about talking toys to feel derivative, sappy, or overtly merchandise-driven. Think about how off-putting a movie about rats preparing food could be, or how risky it must’ve seemed to start WALL-E with 39 dialogue-free minutes. We dare to attempt these stories, but we don’t get them right on the first pass.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
“
Time does not expand."
"But time is actually expanding, isn't it? You yourself said that time adds up."
"That's only because time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesn't change. It's only that you can see more movies.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3))
“
Phrases offered to the grief-stricken, such as “time heals all wounds” and “the day will come when you reach closure” irritated him, and there were times when he sat silent, seeming half-buried in some sediment of sorrow.
“Closure? When someone beloved dies there is no ‘closure.’”
He disliked television programs featuring tornado chasers squealing “Big one! Big one!” and despised the rat-infested warrens of the Internet, riddled with misinformation and chicanery. He did not like old foreign movies where, when people parted, one stood in the middle of the road and waved. He thought people with cell phones should be immolated along with those who overcooked pasta. Calendars, especially the scenic types with their glowing views of a world without telephone lines, rusting cars or burger stands, enraged him, but he despised the kittens, motorcycles, famous women and jazz musicians of the special-interest calendars as well.
“Why not photographs of feral cats? Why not diseases?” he said furiously. Wal-Mart trucks on the highway received his curses and perfumed women in elevators invited his acid comment that they smelled of animal musk glands. For years he had been writing an essay entitled “This Land Is NOT Your Land.
”
”
Annie Proulx (That Old Ace in the Hole)
“
The couple had only lived a short while in that village, and they were poor as rats. Leonarda's husband bought damaged cigarettes, personally extracted his own teeth, ate meat and polenta twice a week, drank mate from an earthenware mug, never took his wife to the movies, and when she was ill he took her to a veterinarian.
”
”
Silvina Ocampo (The Promise)
“
I hate being startled. I prefer controlled forms of fear. I like my podcasts, horror movies, and ghost stories that I can pause and rewind. I handle fear sort of like a warhorse. I could charge bravely into a planned battle, take in the sights of bombs and corpses, but I would still be spooked by an unanticipated barn rat.
”
”
Emily R. Austin (Interesting Facts about Space)
“
He was worried about his country. Something was rotting from the inside—a slow decay of what was right and wrong. It was as if hundreds of cynical little rats were chewing at its very fiber, gnawing away year by year, until it was collapsing into a vat of gray slime and self-loathing. It had oozed under the doors of the classrooms, the newscasts, and in the movies and television shows and had slowly changed the national dialogue until it was now a travesty to be proud of your country, foolish to be patriotic, and insensitive to even suggest that people take care of themselves. History was being rewritten by the hour, heroes pulled down to please the political correctors. We were living in a country where there was freedom of speech for some, but not all. What was it going to take to get America back on track? Would everything they had fought for be forgotten? He was so glad he and Norma had grown up when they had. They had come of age in such an innocent time, when people wanted to work and better themselves. Now the land of the free meant an entirely different thing. Each generation had become a weaker version of the last, until we were fast becoming a nation of whiners and people looking for a free ride—even expecting it. Hell, kids wouldn’t even leave home anymore. He felt like everything was going downhill.
”
”
Fannie Flagg (The Whole Town's Talking)
“
There were rat footprints in the dried lard in the frying pan. Sometimes the rats woke me, but this time I had slept through their visit. They were now a fact of life, like dogs or pigeons.
It was Raeberry Street, Maryhill, Glasgow in 1975. The cleansing department was on strike, and mountains of plastic bags full of garbage were piled in the back courts of the crumbling tenements. The flats didn’t have bathrooms or hot water, just closet-sized toilets.
”
”
Barry Graham (When the Light-Bulb Is Bare: Essays on Horror and Noir)
“
Someday, I’ll gain telepathic powers like every other regular movie ghost and I will go all Freddie Krueger on his bony, little, rat arse!”
I rolled my eyes, but kept marching down the street.
“Then I’d have to go all Ghostbusters on yours.”, I tried to keep my voice low to keep from drawing attention to myself.
“No, you wouldn’t. You love my arse, darling!”, he walked backwards few feet in front of me.
His big smile was enough to make me grin and roll my eyes again at him.
”
”
Tia Artemis (The Death's Daughter (The Death Whisperer's Diary, #1))
“
I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by our hero Remy, a rat. Voiced by the great Peter O’Toole, Ego says that Remy’s talents have “challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking … [and] have rocked me to my core.” His speech, written by Brad Bird, similarly rocked me—and, to this day, sticks with me as I think about my work. “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
“
I see around this marriage and beyond it. I’ll never again go for all the nonsense about marriage. Everybody you lay eyes on, except perhaps a few like you and me, is born of marriage. Do you see anything so exceptional or wonderful about it that makes it such a big deal? Why be fooling around to make this perfect great marriage? What’s it going to save you from? Has it saved anybody—the jerks, the fools, the morons, the schleppers, the jag-offs, the monkeys, rats, rabbits, or the decent unhappy people or what you call nice people? They’re all married or are born of marriages, so how can you pretend to me that it makes a difference that Bob loves Mary who marries Jerry? That’s for the movies. Don’t you see people pondering how to marry for love and getting the blood gypped out of them? Because while they’re looking for the best there is—and I figure that’s what’s wrong with you—everything else gets lost. It’s sad, it’s a pity, but it’s that way.
”
”
Saul Bellow (The Adventures Of Augie March)
“
I see an actress smoking a cigarette in an old Fred McMurray movie. She’s clever and beautiful and manipulative. I feel envy. I suddenly wish I smoked cigarettes and was as clever and beautiful and manipulative as she. I want to be that way at the restaurants I visit, as I’m walking to my car, with certain friends who might understand.
The actress has played her part well; she’s made me want to emulate her base desires if only for a while. Does that make me impressionable, a fool, or someone who will recognize the deepest secrets of her heart?
I fight hard to stay young—to keep the lines from further etching my face and hands and breasts, presumably to trick the world into believing I am young.
I’m an actress playing a part. I’m afraid to tell the truth. I fear losing those younger or becoming those older. In the presence of youth, a sort of unseen age-osmosis occurs within me. The years drop away and I don’t want to leave. It’s utterly selfish but I don’t care. After all, I’m no older than they—I’ve just been so longer. I was nineteen only yesterday and they don’t retire nineteen-year-old actresses.
”
”
Chila Woychik (On Being a Rat and Other Observations)
“
The story we are told of women is not this one.
The story of women is the story of love, of foundering into another. A slight deviation: longing to founder and being unable to. Being left alone in the foundering, and taking things into one's own hands: rat poison, the wheels of a Russian train. Even the smoother and gentler story is still just a modified version of the above. In the demotic, in the key of bougie, it's the promise of love in old age for all the good girls of the world. Hilarious ancient bodies at bath time, husband's palsied hands soaping wife's withered dugs, erection popping out of the bubbles like a pink periscope. I see you! There would be long, hobbledy walks under the plane trees, stories told by a single sideways glance, one word sufficing. Anthill, he'd say; Martini! she'd say; and the thick swim of the old joke would return to them. The laughter, the beautiful reverberations. Then the bleary toddling on to an early-bird dinner, snoozing through a movie hand in hand. Their bodies like knobby sticks wrapped in vellum. One laying the other on the deathbed, feeding the overdose, dying the day after, all heart gone out of the world with the beloved breath. Oh, companionship. Oh, romance. Oh, completion. Forgive her if she believed this would be the way it would go. She had been led to this conclusion by forces greater than she.
Conquers all! All you need is! Is a many-splendored thing! Surrender to!
Like corn rammed down goose necks, this shit they'd swallowed since they were barely old enough to dress themselves in tulle.
The way the old story goes, woman needs an other to complete her circuits, to flick her to fullest blazing.
”
”
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
“
Word spreads like wildfire in a town as small as Cedar Ridge, and by the time I make it to work, the streets of downtown are bustling with locals and tourists alike, all asking the same question. It’s sort of like being in the opening sequence of a Disney movie, but instead of singing about the funny girl who likes to read or the street rat who stole a loaf of bread, all of the colorful townspeople are wondering whether or not their neighbors have heard about the Bogman. And of course, everybody’s answer is “Yes.
”
”
Jacqueline E. Smith (Trashy Suspense Novel)
“
I never thought about food like that, but it makes sense. You aren't a different person when you read versus when you eat or do anything else----everything in us does intersect, I guess..." Cecilia's voice drifted away as she thought, and a blush suffused her face. "Put it that way, I see why I eat terribly. I love American teenage food, and it fits with my soft spot for eighties teen movies. You know, Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink... I even dress like that when I feel sad. Austen's much more intellectual."
"That's Jane. If it makes you feel better, I read only cookbooks, and they really shouldn't count as real books." I thought for a moment. "But I never forget a food reference."
"Never?"
I shrugged. "It's a gift."
"Sixteen Candles?"
"The cake, of course. Oh, but there's that quiche dinner too. See? Sixteen Candles and Dickens---all about breakfast."
"Under the Tuscan Sun?"
"Never read it, but I'm assuming a ton of Italian?"
"That was obvious." Cecilia smiled. "What's your favorite food reference?"
"I've got two. I think the best opening line in literature is Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. 'The year began with lunch.' All books and all years should begin that way."
"And the other?"
"Coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscressandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater-----"
"That's too much!" She laughed.
"That's exactly what Mole said. But Rat said, 'It's only what I always take on these little excursions, and the other animals are always telling me that I'm a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!'" I grinned. "I love that line."
"What's that even from?"
"The Wind in the Willows. It's the best picnic ever.
”
”
Katherine Reay (Lizzy and Jane)
“
Of course, you have probably heard about studies in which rats or even primates continually pressed levers to get cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine until they died, choosing drugs rather than food and water. But what you probably didn’t know is that these animals were kept in isolated, unnatural environments for most of their lives, where they typically became stressed without social contact and had little else to do. By analogy, if you were in solitary confinement for years with only one movie as a source of entertainment, you’d probably watch it over and over. But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that that particular movie is “addictive” or compulsively watchable. You’d probably still watch it if it were the worst film ever made, just to have something to do. Similarly, saying that unlimited access to cocaine “makes” animals addicted to the point of killing themselves, based on research in isolated rodents or primates, doesn’t tell us much about drug use in the real world.
”
”
Carl L. Hart (High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society)
“
How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said.
Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction.
Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?"
"But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook.
”
”
Amy E. Reichert (The Coincidence of Coconut Cake)
“
I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” This idea—that all the movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp. But think about how easy it would be for a movie about talking toys to feel derivative, sappy, or overtly merchandise-driven. Think about how off-putting a movie about rats preparing food could be, or how risky it must’ve seemed to start WALL-E with 39 dialogue-free minutes. We dare to attempt these stories, but we don’t get them right on the first pass. And this is as it should be. Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
“
Calling themselves the Slush Pile Brigade as a nod to the unsolicited writings sent to publishing houses, four friends take on the publishing industry and get caught up in dangerous events beyond their control in Samuel Marquis's The Slush Pile Brigade. This high-energy, rollicking misadventure will change the way you look at the publishing industry forever. The plot--complete with car chases and the requisite gun play--is unpredictable and sometimes turns violent; twists and turns and counterturns abound. So, too, does the humor. Numerous references to classic movies, songs, and literature are sprinkled throughout...The dialogue is superb, especially the rat-a-tat round robin responses given when the Slush Pile Brigade members are in discussion. Be prepared to never look at the publishing world in the same way again."
Foreword Reviews - Five Stars (******)
”
”
Foreword Reviews Magazine
“
None of it made any sense to her - the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one's parents or a move to a different city.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (The Story Hour)
“
Like a shapeless growing thing. A dark black breathing thing of smoke. Why do they call it a plume?” “Air time is valuable. They can’t go into long tortured descriptions. Have they said what kind of chemical it is?” “It’s called Nyodene Derivative or Nyodene D. It was in a movie we saw in school on toxic wastes. These videotaped rats.” “What does it cause?” “The movie wasn’t sure what it does to humans. Mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps.
”
”
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
“
Freedom from Uncontrolled Thinking A big habit I’m working on is trying to turn off my “monkey mind.” When we’re children, we’re pretty blank slates. We live very much in the moment. We essentially just react to our environment through our instincts. We live in what I would call the “real world.” Puberty is the onset of desire—the first time you really, really want something and you start long-range planning. You start thinking a lot, building an identity and an ego to get what you want. If you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point. They’re constantly judging everything they see. They’re playing back movies of things that happened to them yesterday. They’re living in fantasy worlds of what’s going to happen tomorrow. They’re just pulled out of base reality. That can be good when you do long-range planning. It can be good when you solve problems. It’s good for us as survival-and-replication machines. I think it’s actually very bad for your happiness. To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master. My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7. I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard. [4] A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time. There is no endpoint to self-awareness and self-discovery. It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at. There is no one meaningful answer, and no one is going to fully solve it unless you’re one of these enlightened characters. Maybe some of us will get there, but I’m not likely to, given how involved I am in the rat race. The best case is I’m a rat who might be able to look up at the clouds once in a while. I think just being aware you’re a rat in a race is about as far as most of us are going to get. [8] The modern struggle: Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising… Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.
”
”
Eric Jorgenson (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
“
I clear my throat. My sister is the queen of not keeping her mouth shut. “That’s where we all go to… pet rats,” she says. “Lots of rats. Brush ’em and stuff.
”
”
Sara Dobie Bauer (This is Not a Horror Movie)
“
And yet, candor could not be more crucial to our creative process. Why? Because early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” This idea—that all the movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp. But think about how easy it would be for a movie about talking toys to feel derivative, sappy, or overtly merchandise-driven. Think about how off-putting a movie about rats preparing food could be, or how risky it must’ve seemed to start WALL-E with 39 dialogue-free minutes. We dare to attempt these stories, but we don’t get them right on the first pass. And this is as it should be. Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
The rat wasn’t all that funny, but John was five snorts into his personal stash of crushed crystal and he might as well have been in a Jim Carrey movie.
”
”
Edward Lorn (Cruelty)
“
A rat can be trained to shock itself in order to get a treat. We do the same thing with our phones. Why would anyone in their right mind want to interrupt a physical conversation, pause a dinner party, or stop watching a great movie in the theater to answer a useless joke text from a friend? Yet, we all do it.
”
”
J.D. Yoder ([Minimalism] Simple- Live Life Minimal: The Unconventional Path to Minimalist Living [Declutter Your Home and Work] (Slow Down to Grow Book 1))
“
Laws are not drawn up near dumpsters with dirty needles and rats, but in mahogany trimmed board rooms where the marble gleams with the light of noble intentions. Rarely do these coincide with the gun toting men who are charged with the task of enforcing them. They are the offensive linemen of society. Nobody buys their jersey. People just yell at them when they are offsides. But without him everything will collapse! When I was an offensive guard I did whatever I could to block the other guy. So I can empathize with Inspector Harry Callahan and his methods. I love it when Callahan is still chewing his hot dog as he blows away punks who think they can steal from a bank during the middle of the day in San Francisco. Dirty Harry you had me at 'do you feel lucky?' Real cops couldn't catch the Zodiac killer, but Harry blew that scumbag into a pond, then followed up by throwing his badge into the same pond, because he too knows that the rules of 'decent' society are a myth that pretty people in big houses talk about over tea.
”
”
Graham Elwood (The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies: Featuring Dave Anthony, Lord Carrett, Dean Haglund, Allan Havey, Laura House, Jackie Kashian, Suzy Nakamura, ... Schmidt, Neil T. Weakley, and Matt Weinhold)
“
Unlike prostitution or promiscuity, stripping was entirely public. One foot on the state would forever mark me as a disreputable character, the sort respectable people called a sleaze. On the other hand ... I didn't know any respectable people and my workday would be a mere thirty minutes long. And, I had to face it, some quirk of my psychic constitution rendered the strictures of ordinary jobs insufferable to me. Restaurant work felt like a cross between the treadmill at the gym and one of those Japanese game shows on which contestants are abused and humiliated in front of a sadistic audience. Office work was even worse, calling to mind those B movies in which some poor soul--bound and gagged, but eyes wide with terror--is slowly walled up brick-by-brick in the dungeon of some damp, rat-infested Transylvanian castle.
”
”
Alvin Orloff (Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997)
“
He felt her open to him, her mind and heart and soul, softly feminine, exquisitely woman, all his. Her pleasure matched his own beat for beat, shudder for shudder. He had to hold her to keep himself on his feet, and they collapsed together into the soaked vegetation.
Holding each other, the rain cooling their bodies, they laughed like children. “I expected steam this time,” Jacques said, crushing her to him.
“Can you do that?” Shea fit the back of her head into the niche of his sternum. One hand idly slid over the heavy muscles of his chest.
“Make us so hot we turn the rain to steam?” He grinned boyishly down at her, for the first time so carefree that he forgot for a moment the torment he had suffered. She made him invincible. She made him vulnerable. Most of all, she made him alive.
“No, really--what they did, those others. They were like fog or mist. Can you really do that?” Shea persisted. “I mean, you said you could, but I thought maybe you were delusional.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Delusional?” Jacques flashed a cocky grin, held out his arm, and watched as fur rippled along the length of it, as the fingers curved and extended into claws. He had to make a grab for Shea as she scrambled away from him, her eyes enormous. Jacques was careful not to hurt her with his strength.
“Stop laughing at me, you brute. That’s not exactly normal.” A slow smile was beginning to curve her soft mouth. She couldn’t help but be happy for the innocent joy he found in each piece of information that came to him, each new memory of his gifts.
“It is normal for us, love. We can shape-shift whenever we like.”
She made a face. “You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?”
“Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?” He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn’t remember laughing aloud.
“Very funny, Jacques. I’m so glad you find this amusing. Those people actually formed themselves out of fog, like something in a movie.” She gave a punch to his arm for emphasis. “Explain it.”
“Shape-shifting is easy once you are strong. When I said we run with the wolf, I meant it literally. We run with the pack. We can fly with the owl and become the air.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
“
It is normal for us, love. We can shape-shift whenever we like.”
She made a face. “You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?”
“Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?” He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn’t remember laughing aloud.
“Very funny, Jacques. I’m so glad you find this amusing. Those people actually formed themselves out of fog, like something in a movie.” She gave a punch to his arm for emphasis. “Explain it.”
“Shape-shifting is easy once you are strong. When I said we run with the wolf, I meant it literally. We run with the pack. We can fly with the owl and become the air.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
“
One thought followed another, out of relaxation and into exasperation: the idiocy of animal activists, the bad influence of Disney cartoons, and the gullibility of the Bambi-loving American public. "Walt Disney did us in," he grumbled. "Before all those movies, people looked at animals differently." He snorted with disgust, mulling over that trend of animated movies populated by big-eyed deer and big-bad hunters that terrify defenseless animals. Bambi, Thumper, Flower the Skunk, Gerone sees them all as trouble, part of the reason that we live in a country filled with people who seem only to see animals as cuddly.
He put down his wine glass, watching the clear liquid slosh against the edges. Before this century, he points out, most Americans lived on farms. They butchered hogs themselves, took chicken eggs, milked cows, ate the animals that surrounded them. They shot wild animals to protect their herds, to add to their food supplies. Now, the country's population has concentrated in cities. Hunting is largely a recreational sport; farmers are in decline. People are sur- rounded instead by pets, sleepy cats, playful dogs, pet rats and guinea pigs. "There are kids out there who think meat is born cellophane wrapped," complained Gerone. How can they identify with the idea that animals—the ones they play and feed and sleep with-—should be available as tools, for research?
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Deborah Blum (The Monkey Wars)
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Movies are like poems. You’re supposed to experience them in a single sitting, then let them rattle around in your mind long after. TV is like reading a novel, or playing a video game, or having a roommate. It’s this thing that’s going to be around for a while. It always wants to keep going—to be more, to give more, to tell more. There’s room for nooks and crannies. Bottle episodes. Winking callbacks across baffled time, like Amy Madison stuck as a rat for a whole season of Buffy or that one half-second shot of Superintendent Rawls in the crowd at the gay bar in The Wire.
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Justin Taylor (Reboot: A Novel)