Stephen King
- Don't answer that phone! -- Pet Sematary
He was working his way back to the stove when the telephone rang. Don't answer that, you don't want to answer that because that's the bad news, that's the end of the leash that leads around the corner and into the darkness, and I don't think you want to see what's on the other end of that leash, Louis, I really don't think you do, so don't answer that phone, run, run now, the car's in the garage, get in and take off, but don't answer that phone. He crossed the room and picked it up.
Peter Watts
- Democracy - Starfish
A starfish is the ultimate democracy. They walk along on all these tube feet. But the weird thing is, they have no brains at all. Not surprising for a democracy. There's nothing to coordinate the tube feet, they all move independently. Usually that's not a problem; they all tend to go towards food. But it's not unusual for a third of these feet to be pulling in some other direction entirely. Sometimes, some really stubborn tube feet just don't give up, and literally get torn out at the roots.
Albert Camus
- No obligation to the dead - The Fall
But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they forced us to anything, it would be to remembering, and we have a short memory. No, it is the recently dead we love among our friends, the painful dead, our emotion, ourselves after all!
Dante Alighieri
- The Divine Comedy: Bertrand de Born
Living soul in this abyss, see what a sentence has been passed upon me, and search all Hell for one to equal this! When you return to the world, remember me: it was I who set the young king on to mutiny, son against father, father against son. And since I parted those who should be one, in duty and in love, I bear my brain divided from its source within this trunk; and walk here where my evil turns to pain, an eye for an eye to all eternity: thus is the law of Hell observed in me.
John Ciardi
- The Divine Comedy: Friar Alberigo in translator notes
In 1284 Alberigo's brother Manfred struck him in the course of an argument. He pretended to let it pass, but in 1285 he invited Manfred and his son to a banquet and had them murdered. The signal to the assassins was the words: "Bring in the fruit." "Friar Alberigo's bad fruit," became a proverbial saying.
Dante Alighieri
- The Divine Comedy: Dante witnesses Bertrand
I saw it there; I seem to see it still, a body without a head, that moved along like all the others in that spew and spill. It held the severed head by its own hair, swinging it like a lantern in its hand; and the head looked at us and wept in its despair.
James S. A. Corey
- Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse): Holden and his dog
Holden held Rufus' head on his lap and cried as Rufus struggled to breathe and occasionally gave a halfhearted thump of his tail. But hours passed, and against his will and every good thought he'd had about himself, Holden became bored. It was a lesson he'd never forgotten. Humans only have so much emotional energy. No matter how intense the situation or powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you'd just get tired and want it to end.
Steven Brill
- America's Bitter Pill: “all of us were walking around with PTSD”
Public relations people and government administrators comparing their stress to that of soldiers stopping bullets or stepping on improvised explosive devices was more than an over-the-top expression of self-importance and self-pity. It was emblematic of their amazing ability to be indignant, to assume the role of the victims when it was their own failure to govern that had fortified and emboldened the opposition.
Tony Soprano
- Ground Floor
It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.
Marcus Aurelius
- Meditations
If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it's appropriate for you. Don't be put off by other people's comments and criticism. If it's right to say or do it, then it's the right thing for you to do or say.
Dan Simmons
- Martin Silenus in The Fall of Hyperion
This pain has a structure. It has a floor plan. It has designs more intricate than a chambered nautilus, features more baroque than the most buttressed Gothic cathedral. Even as he screams, Silenus studies the structure of this pain. He realizes that it is a poem.
Albert Camus
- Meursault execution- The Stranger
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself, I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Albert Camus
- The Stranger
I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why.
H.P. Lovecraft
- Mountains of Madness
Our sensations of tense expectancy as we prepared to round the crest and peer out over an untrodden world can hardly be described on paper; even though we had no cause to think the regions beyond the range essentially different from those already seen and traversed. The touch of evil mystery in these barrier mountains was a highly subtle and attenuated matter not to be explained in literal words.
TJ
- Pangrams
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Back in June, we delivered oxygen equipment of the same size. A quivering Texas zombie fought republic-linked jewelry.
