Friday, February 14, 2003

Thursday, February 06, 2003

The night is hot as hell. Everything sticks. It's a lousy room in a lousy part of town.

— Sin City, Frank Miller

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

— The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.

— The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis

"Who's there?" I called sharply.
I turned and looked across the room. The window had been widely opened when I entered, and a faint fog haze hung in the apartment, seeming to veil the light of the shaded lamp. I watched the closed door intently, expecting every moment to see the knob turn. But nothing happened.
"Who's there?" I cried again, and crossing the room, I threw open the door.

— Dr. Fu Manchu: The Si-Fan Mysteries, Sax Rohmer

I feel the need to write something more before I go on my way, something that can go on top of this pile of papers, and the last shall be first, as someone or other said in a different context. It has been several days since I've been up in this little room, and in that time spring has come on with a vengeance. There's a little joke for you, lover. But I don't feel much like laughing. Since I was here last, I read this—what? What shall I call it? Collection of typed pages, I suppose. I read it, and it did to me what I hadn't thought could be done anymore.

— Agyar, Steven Brust

The old ram stands looking down over rockslides, stupidly triumphant. I blink. I stare in horror. "Scat!" I hiss. "Go back to your cave, go back to your cowshed—whatever." He cocks his head like an elderly, slow-witted king, considers the angles, decides to ignore me. I stamp. I hammer the ground with my fists. I hurl a skull-size stone at him. He will not budge. I shake my two hairy fists at the sky and I let out a howl so unspeakable that the water at my feet turns sudden ice and even I myself am left uneasy. But the ram stays; the season is upon us. And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war.

— Grendel, John Gardner

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.

— Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.

— The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

A whiskey tumbler
It sits on an oak bar under a glowing green banker's lamp. Two ice cubes are dropped in. From elsewhere in the room:

man (off)
I'm talkin' about friendship. I'm talkin' about character. I'm talkin' about—hell, Leo, I ain't embarrassed to use the word—I'm talkin' about ethics.

— Miller's Crossing, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Through a veil of blue mist did I first behold Talislanta: dreamlike and surreal, as if suffused in amberglow.

— The Chronicles of Talislanta, Stephan Michael Sechi

In order to be consistent and have any significance whatsoever, a book—any book—must have a purpose and a system for achieving that purpose.

— Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere,
Adele Westbrook and Oscar Ratti

Monday, February 03, 2003