Kendare Blake
- Anna Dressed in Blood
But that means she's really gone. The unfairness of it almost chokes me for a second... Two months with her? It's not enough... We deserve more than that. Or maybe we don't. Anyway, life doesn't work like that. It doesn't care about fair or unfair... She opened a door, from here to some place else. And doors can be made to swing both ways, in my experience.
Peter Miller
- The Genius of Swarms
The bees' rules for decision-making seek a diversity of options, encourage a free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices... A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, unthinkingly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do... If you're looking for a role model in a world of complexity, you could do worse than to imitate an ant or a bee.
Alice Pung
- Unpolished Gem, quote 2
I had to let certain inevitabilities sink into my mind. Things were not going to be this way forever. These moments with the little ones would not last, they would grow up and lose the dimples on their fingers and the excitement of their days.
Alice Pung
- Unpolished Gem
We felt pity and resentment and plenty of embarrassment for their eagerness and their countryside errors. But most of all, unacknowledged envy of their pure, rooted-to-the-moment, every-day-is-a-wonderland existence, because it reminded us of a distant self we once were, we of the wide-eyed, shut-mouth stupor, we of the wide-mouth, shut-eyed delirium, when things were louder and funnier and lettuce was greener and gleaming concrete seemed newer.
Harper Lee
- To Kill a Mockingbird
It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the side walk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the side walk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet, and they made their way home.
Harper Lee
- To Kill A Mockingbird 2
Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
Primo Levi
- 'Zinc' from The Periodic Table
So take the solution of copper sulfate - which is in the shelf of reagents, add a drop of it to your sulfuric acid, and you'll see the reaction begin: the zinc wakes up, it is covered with a white fur of hydrogen bubbles, and there we are, the enchantment has taken place.
Arthur Golden
- Memoirs of A Geisha - Ending
And yet when his death happened only a few months later, I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees... I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean... Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.
