Favorite Quotes

[AgoriShy]

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
- Barack Obama

---

Anonmoos leejun

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

"Yeah, don't you EVER tell me how to live my life again."
-Rico, Hot Rod (2007)

[EquestrianPenguin]

"Cmon kids, X marks the spot"- Red X Teen Titans TV series (the good one)

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

"Ah, what a lovely island nation. Let's kill people."
-EatMyDiction1

[Gentian]

Cutter performed its last download to Ship that evening before passing out of range. There were better targets for its lasers than the lifeless hulk skating far behind it. Grubb had the watch at the time, but he barely noticed the transmission. He stared mournfully at the viewscreen where The River of Stars receded from him into the void and he wiped away a tear, for he did love beautiful things, and wept to lose them.








'Shoot him, Major,' Washington asked. 'He's dying anyhow.'
All it would take was the word. Easier still, all it would take was his silence. Branch had only to turn his head, and it would be done.
'Dying?' said the thing, and opened its eyes and looked up at them. Branch alone did not jump away.
'Pleased to meet you,' it said to him.
The lips peeled back upon white teeth. It was the grin of someone whose last sole possession was the grin itself.
And then he started laughing that laughter they had heard. The mirth was real. He was laughing at them. At himself. His suffering. His extremity. The universe. It was, Branch realized, the most audacious thing he'd ever seen.
'Shoot the thing,' Sergeant Dornan said.
'Don't,' Branch commanded.
'Ah, come on,' said the creature. The nuance was pure Western. Wyoming or Montana. 'Do,' he said. And quit laughing.
In the silence, someone locked a load.
'No,' said Branch. He knelt down. Monster to monster. Cradled the Medusa head in both hands.
'Who are you?' he asked. 'What's your name?' It was like taking confession.
'He's human? He's one of us?' a soldier murmured.
Branch brought the head closer, and saw a face younger than he'd thought. That was when they discovered something that had been inflicted on none of the other prisoners. Jutting from one vertebra at the base of his neck, an iron ring had been affixed to his spinal column. One yank on that ring, and he would be turned into a head atop a dead body. They were awed by that. Awed by
the independence that needed such breaking.
'Who are you?' Branch said.
A tear streaked down from one eye. The man was remembering. He offered his name like surrendering his sword. He spoke so softly, Branch had to lean in.
'Ike,' Branch told the others.

[Fiction]

"People like their PCs. Each person gets to have the one that they like, rather than the one that someone else has defined for them. They are great! I have like 12 of them." -Gabe Newell

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

The two most worthwhile lines of text in all of A Song of Ice and Fire (out of, at least, the four novels I actually bothered to read):

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
"That is the only time a man can be brave."

[Gentian]

In a gut of coiled granite, the mortal fed. The meat was still warm from life. It was more than food, less than sacrament.

Flesh is a landmark, if you know its flavor. The trick was setting your clock, so to speak, then categorically marking the shifts in tone or odor, or changes in the skin and muscle and blood, as you moved through the territory. Memorize the particulars, and you could begin to orient yourself in a cartography based on raw flesh.

In terms of taste, the liver was often most distinct, sometimes the heart. He crouched in the pocket of darkness with this creature squeezed between his thighs, the chest cavity opened. He rummaged. Like a mariner finding north, he committed to memory the organs, their relative position and size and smell. He sampled different pieces, just a taste. Palmed the skull, lifted the limbs, ran his hands along the limbs. He'd never encountered a beast quite like this one. Its uniqueness did not register as a new phylum or species. The kill barely registered at the level of language. And yet it would permanently acquaint him. He would remember this creature in every detail.

Head held high to listen for intruders, he inserted his hands in the animal's hide and let his wonder run. He was utterly respectful. He was a student, no more. The animal was his teacher.

It was not just a matter of locating yourself east or south. Depth was sometimes far more consequential, and the consistency of flesh could serve as an altimeter of sorts. In the deep seas, such bathypelagic monsters as anglerfish were slow moving, with a metabolic rate as low as one percent of fish living near the surface. Their body tissue was watery, with little muscle and no fat.

So it was at certain depths in the subplanet. Down some channels, you found reptiles or fish that were little more than vegetables with teeth. Even the ones that weren't poisonous weren't worth eating. Their food value verged on plain air. Even them he'd eaten.

Again, there were more reasons to hunt than filling your belly. With care you could plot a course, find a destination, locate water, avoid – or track – enemies. It made simple survival something more, a journey. A destiny. The body spoke to him. He felt for eyes, found stems, tried to thumb open the lids, but they were sealed. Blind. The talons were a raptor's, with an opposing thumb. He had caught it drafting on the tunnel's breeze, but the wings were much too small for real flight. He started at the top again. The snout. Milk teeth, but sharp as needles. The way the joints moved. The genitals, this one a male. The hip bones were abraded from scraping along the stone. He squeezed the bladder, and its liquid smelled sharp. He took one foot and pressed it against the dirt and felt the print. All of this was done in darkness.

Finally, Ike was done. He laid the parts back inside the cavity and folded the arms across and pressed the body into a cleft in the wall.

[Fiction]

"Mind if I take my face off?" -Deadpool, Cable and Deadpool

[Gentian]

She was staring at the video screen. The hadal had reached the piled sewer pipes. He was pulling himself upright before the dark, round openings. The video screen showed him forty feet tall. His bare rib cage, scored with old wounds and ritual markings; bucked in quick, pumping waves. The creature was vocalizing, that much was evident.

Sandwell went over and rotated the round button on the wall. The audio feed came over the speakers. It sounded like the hooting and huffing of a captured ape. A face had appeared at the mouth of one sewer pipe. Then other faces surfaced at other openings. Crusted and wet with their own filth, they came out from their cement burrows and fell upon the ground at the hadal's feet. There were only nine or ten of them left. The hadal's voice changed. He was singing now, or praying. Beseeching or offering. To his own image, of all things. To the video screen. The others, women and their young, began to ululate.

'What's he doing?' Still singing, the hadal took a child from one of the females and cradled it in his arms. He made a sacramental motion, as if tracing ashes on its head or throat, it was hard to see. Then he set the child aside and took another that was held up to him and repeated his gesture.

'He's cutting their throats,' January realized.

'What!'

'Is that a knife?'

'Glass,' said Foley.

'Where did he get glass?' Cooper roared at the general. An emaciated female stood before the butcher hadal. She cast her head back and opened her arms
wide and it took her killer a minute to find the artery and saw her throat open. A second female stood. Voice by voice, their song was dying.

'Stop him,' Cooper shouted at Sandwell. 'The bastard's killing off my pack.' But it was too late.

Love is duty. He took in the crook of his arm his own son, as cold as a pebble. He cried out the
name of the messiah. Weeping, he made the cut and held his final child while it bled down his
breast. At last he was free to join his own blood with theirs.