Post a random quote from a book you're reading

Post Reply New Topic

THE WARNING

The majordomo slid the fur coat from Hwa Ling's shoulders and deferentially removed Jack Leland's black, silk cape.  The majordomo then handed them to a waiting servant.

"Mr.  Leland", the majordomo murmured in subdued and well-bred tones, "Miss Ling, you are most welcome.  His Grace, the Grand Duke Brunnhoff, and his guests are eagerly awaiting your arrival.  You will find His Grace in the card room."

Leland removed his top hat and his white gloves and handed those to the majordomo.  Hwa Ling, standing at Jack's side, cast a seemingly bored glance about the sumptuous entryway.  In truth, her gaze missed nothing of importance, sizing up the servants, seeking out hidden cameras, taking note of the alarms, locating the exits.  Although she was playing the role of Jack's paramour this night, she was, in truth, his bodyguard.  His safety was her responsibility -- a job she took quite seriously.

Hwa Ling turned to Jack with a smile and placed her hand lightly on his arm.  The smile and the gesture told him all was well.  If something had been wrong, she would have started a quarrel with him.  Jack smiled in acknowledgement.

The two followed the majordomo, who walked with subdued and well-bred pace across polished marble floors.  Portraits of olive-skinned nobles in lace and ribbons and supercilious smiles graced the walls.

"The Grand Duke's ancestors?"  Hwa Ling asked in a low voice.

"As you well know from your research, the 'Grand Duke' started out as a boot-black boy on Persephone", Jack replied softly, a glint of amusement in his eyes.  "He made his money in hog futures.  The portraits are fake.  The palm trees are holographic.  The 'majordomo' is a two-bit actor hired on for the night."

"I trust his money is real", said Hwa Ling with an arched eyebrow.

"His money is excellent", said Jack complacently.

"Is 'His Grace' any good at poker?"

"I won't play with anyone who isn't", Jack returned.  "It is not the winning so much as the game.  You know that about me, my dear."

Hwa Ling did know it, though she could never understand it.  For her, the game was inconsequential.  The winning was everything.

As they continued down the long expanse of hallway, Hwa Ling took note of each person they encountered.  She did this automatically, without even giving it conscious thought, registering their faces in her mind.  A young servant walking down the hallway caught her eye.  There was nothing remarkable about him.  He was like a hundred others who had fled the Core worlds to find their fortunes on the Rim.  His slanted, almond eyes did not even flick her direction as he passed.  But he carried in his hands a vase filled with red lilies.

"You never once mentioned my new perfume", Hwa Ling said, suddenly petulant.  She dropped her hand from Jack's arm and stamped her foot.  "I spent all day shopping for it."

Leland's amiable expression never changed, though the glint of amusement left his eyes, replaced by concentrated alertness.  He smoothed his hand over the left side of his dress jacket where he kept his derringer concealed.

"I meant to say something in the car, my dear.  Tuberose, I believe.  With a hint of jasmine?  It suits you."

"A lot you know!  It reeks!  I can't stand it."  Hwa Ling turned on her heel.  "I'm going to the ladies room to wash it off.  I'll meet you in the card room."

The majordomo indicated the way to the powder room.  Upon entering, Hwa Ling found a female servant in attendance.  Of Oriental extraction, the young woman kept her eyes properly lowered as Hwa Ling scrubbed off her favorite and extremely expensive perfume.  When she was finished, the servant handed Hwa Ling a paper towel.

Hwa Ling opened the towel.  She was preparing to dry off her throat and hands, when she saw Chinese characters, scrawled in lipstick, running up and down the length of the towel.  Hwa Ling read, comprehended, and crumpled up the towel in her hands.  She tossed the towel into the toilet.  The servant stepped forward, pressed the handle, and the towel and its message swirled away.

Hwa Ling handed the servant a coin and walked out of the powder room, her stiletto heels clicking on the marble.  Entering the card room, she cast a swift glance around.  She spotted the five "hidden" security cameras with laughable ease and noted -- with concern -- that there was only one way in and one way out.  She flicked her gaze over the assembled poker players: the Grand Duke in his phony finery and his five friends.  She'd screened them all in advance, of course, and discovered nothing in their backgrounds to make her suspicious.

She'd screwed up.

She had screened these men to find enemies from Jack's past.  She'd never thought to look for enemies from her own.

Jack sat at the table, shuffling a new deck of cards.  The assembled men watched in admiration as the cards flicked through his long, agile fingers in a snapping blur.

"A kiss for luck, Hwa Ling, my dear?" he said to her, smiling.

She walked over to him.  The admiration of the men shifted from the card-play to her.  Placing her hands on Jack's shoulders, Hwa Ling bent down.

"Someone from the tong is here", she said softly, brushing his cheek with her lips.  "He's going to try to kill me."

Any other man she'd known would have pitched a fit, insisted that she leave at once.  Jack would never insult her like that.  He merely twitched his eyebrows at the news and kept shuffling the cards.  Hwa Ling strolled about the room in a bored manner before finally taking a seat behind Jack.

One of these men was in the pay of the Hip-Sing, the Tong that had murdered her father.  She had taken her revenge on them, and now they'd sworn revenge against her.  The servants who had warned her were members of her own tong, the red lilies her tong's warning sign of danger.

"Gentleman", said Jack in his deep, rich voice, "tonight's game is..."

"...  Murder", thought Hwa Ling.


• Serenity Role Playing Game, pages 30-40, by Jamie Chambers, © 2005 by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.

The combination of a woodwind and a brass instrument produces a complex resonance in which the tone of the brass predominates. This resonance is naturally more powerful than that of each instrument taken seperately, but slightly sweeter than the brass instrument alone. The tone of the wood-wind blends with that of the brass, softens and rarifies it, as in the process of combining two wood-wind instruments of different colour. Instances of such doubling are fairly numerous, especially in forte passages.

The trumpet is the instrument most frequently doubled: trumpet + clarinet, trumpet + oboe, trumpet + flute, as well as trumpet + clarinet + oboe + flute. The horn, less often: horn + clarinet, horn + bassoon. Trombones and Tuba may also be doubled: trombone + bassoon, tuba + bassoon. Combining the English horn, bass clarinet and double bassoon with the brass, in corresponding registers, presents the same characteristics.

"Principles of Orchestration," Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”

EXCERPT from 'Infinite Jest.'

The horizons ring me like fa***ts,
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.

There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.

The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds,
Grey as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.

I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among the horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.


Wuthering Heights, Sylvia Plath (1961)

"They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them. They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness…"

From Tombs of Atuan by Ursula k. Le Guin which i've read years ago. I have a love hate relationship with that book.

"Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.”


“She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more - this idea was as sweet as a vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. She had moments in her journey from Rome which were almost as good as being dead. She sat in her corner, motionless, passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret . . .”


"He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear a mask.”


~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

"Games based on politics - a cross between crime, fantasy, and alternative history - go back a long way, but have yet to produce a classic. The Race for the Presidency predates 1897, The Way to the White House appeared in 1927, and, in the early 1980s, Jack Jaffe came up with one retitled Save the President! (after doubts were expressed about his original idea, Kill the President!). Class Struggle, by Bertel Ollmann (1978) attracted much attention in the American press; but perhaps more nostalgic in this line, in the light of subsequent events, was Police State, which Dan Gilmore describes as 'a rather bloody satire about life in Soviet Russia, where you had to denounce the other players and get them sent off to Siberia so you could take over their flats. There was a shortage of everything in the game, except back-stabbing....' One of the funniest, while at the same time attractive to serious games-players, was Junta (1979) by Vincent Tsao and others. 'Who will be the next El Presidente of la Republica de los Bananas?' it asks; and the answer eventually emerges when players have followed rules classified under such headings as 'The Consitution of the Republic,' 'The Bank,' 'The Swiss Bank Account,' 'The President's Brother-In-Law,' 'Assassination' etc."

-David Parlett: "Parlett's History of Board Games."

"The impulsive, lone-wolf side of McCarthy's nature would make him a problem in other ways as well- at least for some of his opponents, and occasionally even for his allies. Most notably, and central to the story, he simply couldn't be controlled. Considerations of political prudence, to the point of backing off from a cause he consider right, were alien to his nature. Nor was he willing to go along to get along, even within his own political party, if he believed fundamental issues were at stake. This made him the worst kind of loose cannon, worrisome to establishmentarian forces in both parties. "

"Blacklisted by History, The Untold Story of Senator Joseph McCarthy"

Villette, Charlotte Brontë (Chapter XXII):



"I have been told since that Dr. Bretton was not nearly so perfect as I thought him: that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass, and endurance it possessed in my creed."

_______________________

and,

"I shudder at the thought of being liable to such an illusion! It seemed so real. Is there no cure?—no preventive?”

“Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both.”

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

“Cultivate happiness!” I said briefly to the doctor: “Do you cultivate happiness? How do you manage?”

“I am a cheerful fellow by nature: and then ill-luck has never dogged me. Adversity gave me and my mother one passing scowl and brush, but we defied her, or rather laughed at her, and she went by.”

“There is no cultivation in all of this.”

“I do not give way to melancholy.”

“Yes - I have seen you subdued by that feeling.”

“Pooh! Stuff! Nonsense! You see I am better now.”

If a laughing eye with a lively light, and a face bright with beaming and healthy energy, could attest that he was better, better he certainly was.

“But you do not look much amiss, or greatly out of condition,” I allowed.

“And why, Lucy, can’t you look and feel as I do—buoyant, courageous, and fit to defy all the nuns and flirts in Christendom?"

He stood up: in the port of his head, the carriage of his figure, in his beaming eye and mien, there revealed itself a liberty which was more than ease—a mood which was disdain of his past bondage to emotion.

He laughed, and continued, “My nature varies: the mood of one hour is sometimes the mockery of the next."

_______________________

“You know the stories. Oedipus, Paris. Their parents tried to murder them, yet they still lived to bear their fates. This was always the path you walked. You must take comfort in that.”

For there are certain Theologians and Canonists who agree that it is lawful to remove witchcraft even by superstitious and vain means.  And of this opinion are Duns Scotus, Henry of Segusio, and Godfrey, and all the Canonists.  But it is the opinion of the other Theologians, especially the ancient ones, and of some of the modern ones, such as S. Thomas, S. Bonaventura, Blessed Albert, Peter a Palude, and many others, that in no case must evil be done that good may result, and that a man ought rather to die than consent to be cured by superstitious and vain means.

There are women who discover a witch by the following token.  When a cow’s supply of milk has been diminished by witchcraft, they hang a pail of milk over the fire, and uttering certain superstitious words, beat the pail with a stick.  And though it is the pail that the women beat, yet the devil carries all those blows to the back of the witch; and in this way both the witch and the devil are made weary.

But the devil does this in order that he may lead on the woman who beats the pail to worse practices.  And so, if it were not for the risk which it entails, there would be no difficulty in accepting the opinion of this learned Doctor.  Many other examples could be given.

-- MALLEUS MALEFICARUM, p157, Published 1928, translated into English from the edition of 1489.

The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, is the best known treatise on witchcraft.  It was written by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486.  It has been described as the compendium of literature in demonology of the 15th century.

On the death of Emily Jane Brontë, who died this day in 1848 at aged 30 ~

My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally, she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was pain no words can render.

Charlotte Brontë, in her preface to the second edition of Emily's Wuthering Heights entitled, ” Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” (1849)




My favourite description of Emily's personality, also by Charlotte:

My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word.

Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…

Timothy Leary

Rather than read Villette's expressive style as reflecting a kind of autistic failure, however, it is worthwhile to take a more oblique approach, taking note of the autistic resonances in the novel's expressive reticence, but also reflecting on the intense critical attention and intense critical hostility that emerge in reaction to the narrator's seemingly inaccessible style of thought.

It is the idea that Lucy "hides" that may best sum up the critical rub against this novel. There is a vague sense that - as with many clinical descriptions of autism - the narrator exists in a "shell" which readers cannot penetrate. In fact, descriptions of Lucy's narrative voice share the same kind of insistence on elemental narrative absence that show up in dominant and negative rhetoric about autistic communication.

Critics who characterise Lucy as "hideous", "plaguy", "disagreeable", "manipulative", "frigid", "contemptuous", "passive-aggressive", and "hostile" might thus be understood in the context of contemporary popular responses against autism where autistic silence and autistic speaking are both described as "abrasive" or "impenetrable", and also demonstrating a violation of fluid and more intuitive social skill.


"Neuroqueer Narration in Charlotte Bronte's Villette", Julia Miele Rodas