The air is saturated with the stink of perfumes at war. There are video screens on which flawless complexions turn, preen, sigh through their parted lips, are caressed. On other screens are close-ups...
That way nobody feels exploited.Wait a minute, says Stan. Nobody’s exploited?I said nobody feels exploited, says Budge. Different thing.
That was the original idea, but once you’ve got a controlled population with a wall around it and no oversight, you can do anything you want.
Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.
So true, said Miss Violence, with a sigh. But she sighed about everything. She fit into Avilion very well – into its obsolete Victorian splendours, its air of aesthetic decay, of departed grace, of wa...
So that’s what art is, for the artist, said Crake. An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.
Siren SongThis is the one song everyonewould like to learn: the songthat is irresistible:the song that forces mento leap overboard in squadronseven though they see beached skullsthe song nobody knowsb...
She’s taken to renaming him according to her own analysis of his mood of the day, or his mood of the hour, or his mood of the minute: according to her, he’s moody. Each mood is personified and given a...
She's on some mission or other - feeding the Third World poor, soothing the dying; expiating the sins of the rest of us. A fruitless task - our sins are a bottomless pit, and there's lots more there t...
She'd learned a lot of things from Zeb in his Urban Bloodshed Limitation classes: in Zeb's view, the first bloodshed to be limited should be your own.
She who weeps when the sun’s in sky, Will never pile the platter high.
She sees where she is, she's here, by herself, she's stranded in the future. She doesn't know how to get back.
She is about to add, I have scars, inside me, but she stops herself. What is a scar, Oh Toby? That would be the next question. Then she'd have to explain what a scar is. A scar is like writing on your...
Sanity is a valuable possession.
Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
One boy had drawn a perfect isosceles triangle on every single page- meticulously, it was emphasized. Meticulously was a chilling touch: meticulousness, we knew, was just one step away from full-blown...
One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other.
On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be gluttony of the famished;...
On the way home from school we go to the record store... [Cordelia] expects me to roll my eyes in ecstasy, the way she does; she expects me to groan. She knows the rituals, she knows how we're suppose...
Nothing like love to put bloodback in the language,the difference between the beach and itsdiscrete rocks and shards, a hardcuneiform, and the tender cursiveof waves; bone and liquid fishegg, desertan...