Great Throughts Treasury

"Can I hug you? Do you want to? said Bod. Yes. Well then. He thought for a moment. I don't mind if you do. My hands won't go through you or anything? You're really there? You won't go through me, he told her,and she threw her arms around him and squeezed him so tightly he could hardly breathe."

"Can't make an omelet without killing a few people."

"Can I help you? said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor."

"Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's."

"Cats don't have shoulders, not like people do. But the cat shrugged, in one smooth movement that started at the tip of its tail and ended in a raised movement of its whiskers."

"Change. Change. Change. Change ? change. Change. Chaaange. When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do."

"Chad made a sour face. He turned to Shadow. Okay, said Chad. Through that door and into the sally port. What? Out there. Where the car is. Liz unlocked the doors. You make sure that orange uniform comes right back here, she said to the deputy. The last felon we sent down to Lafayette, we never saw the uniform again. They cost the county money. They walked Shadow out to the sally port, where a car sat idling. It wasn?t a sheriff?s department car. It was a black town car. Another deputy, a grizzled white guy with a mustache, stood by the car, smoking a cigarette. He crushed it out underfoot as they came close, and opened the back door for Shadow. Shadow sat down, awkwardly, his movements hampered by the cuffs and the hobble. There was no grille between the back and the front of the car. The two deputies climbed into the front of the car. The black deputy started the motor. They waited for the sally port door to open. Come on, come on, said the black deputy, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel. Chad Mulligan tapped on the side window. The white deputy glanced at the driver, then he lowered the window. This is wrong, said Chad. I just wanted to say that. Your comments have been noted, and will be conveyed to the appropriate authorities, said the driver. The doors to the outside world opened. The snow was still falling, dizzying into the car?s headlights. The driver put his foot on the gas, and they were heading back down the street and on to Main Street. You heard about Wednesday? said the driver. His voice sounded different, now, older, and familiar. He?s dead. Yeah. I know, said Shadow. I saw it on TV. Those fuckers, said the white officer. It was the first thing he had said, and his voice was rough and accented and, like the driver?s, it was a voice that Shadow knew. I tell you, they are fuckers, those fuckers. Thanks for coming to get me, said Shadow. Don?t mention it, said the driver. In the light of an oncoming car his face already seemed to look older. He looked smaller, too. The last time Shadow had seen him he had been wearing lemon-yellow gloves and a check jacket. We were in Milwaukee. Had to drive like demons when Ibis called. You think we let them lock you up and send you to the chair, when I?m still waiting to break your head with my hammer? asked the white deputy gloomily, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. His accent was Eastern European. The real shit will hit the fan in an hour or less, said Mr. Nancy, looking more like himself with each moment, when they really turn up to collect you. We?ll pull over before we get to Highway 53 and get you out of those shackles and back into your own clothes. Czernobog held up a handcuff key and smiled. I like the mustache, said Shadow. Suits you. Czernobog stroked it with a yellowed finger. Thank you. Wednesday, said Shadow. Is he really dead? This isn?t some kind of trick, is it? He realized that he had been holding on to some kind of hope, foolish though it was. But the expression on Nancy?s face told him all he needed to know, and the hope was gone."

"Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change."

"Chantal is having a relationship with a sentence. Just one of those things. A chance meeting that grew into something important for the both of them."

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city."

"Chesterton was important ? as important to me in his way as C. S. Lewis had been."

"Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis were, as I?ve said, not the only writers I read between the ages of six and thirteen, but they were the authors I read over and over again; each of them played a part in building me. Without them, I cannot imagine that I would have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of fantastic fiction. I would not have understood that the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming, nor that the majesty and the magic of belief and dreams could be a vital part of life and of writing."

"Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good."

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine."

"Coraline also explored for animals. She found a hedgehog, and a snakeskin )but no snake), and a rock that looked just like a frog, and a toad that looked just like a rock."

"Children's fiction is the most important fiction of all."

"Continuity isn't actually something that I ever worry about. You use it where you need to, and you don't use it where you don't need to."

"CHOW^TM contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly, the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman."

"CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler. MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing. CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing. MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged. CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, poison-toothed. MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed. CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying. MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing. CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating. MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing. CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord? MORPHEUS: I am hope."

"Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn?t hurt it almost always did."

"Coraline sighed. 'You really don't understand do you?' she said. 'I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted, just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?"

"Coraline went over to the window and watched the rain come down. It wasn't the kind of rain you could go out in - it was the other kind, the kind that threw itself down from the sky and splashed where it landed. It was rain that meant business, and currently its business was turning the garden into a muddy, wet soup."

"Coraline opened the box of chocolates. The dog looked at them longingly. Would you like one? she asked the little dog. Yes, please, whispered the dog. Only not toffee ones. They make me drool. I thought chocolates weren't very good for dogs, she said, remembering something Miss Forcible had once told her. Maybe where you come from, whispered the little dog. Here, it's all we eat."

"Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see."

"Coraline's story: There was a girl her name was apple. She used to dance a lot. She danced and danced until her feet turn?d into sossajes. The end."

"Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: Learn, guys."

"Could he be walking in circles? Maybe he would just walk and walk and walk until the warmers and the candy bars ran out and then sit down and never get up again."

"Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums"

"Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she met made any sense."

"Darling? This is Ursula Monkton,"

"Daddy, she said, you've made a recipe again."

"Death and famine and war and pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And grievous bodily harm, cruelty to animals, things not working properly even after you've given them a good thumping but secretly no alcohol lager, and really cool people travelled with them."

"Daisy was starting to feel like the kind of cop you only ever see in movies: tough, hard-bitten, and perfectly ready to buck the system; the kind of cop who wants to know whether or not you feel lucky or if you?re interested in making his day, and particularly the kind of cop who says I?m getting too old for this shit. She was twenty-six years old, and she wanted to tell people she was too old for this shit. She was quite aware of how ridiculous this was, thank you very much."

"Death is before me today: like the recovery of a sick man, like going forth into a garden after sickness. Death is before me today: like the odor of myrrh, like sitting under a sail in a good wind. Death is before me today: like the course of a stream, like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house. Death is before me today: like the home that a man longs to see, after years spent as a captive."

"Death's a capricious thing, innit? Yes. Yes, she is."

"DELIRIUM: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? DREAM: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. DELIRIUM: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility."

"DELIRIUM: What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago? DREAM: There isn't one. DELIRIUM: Oh. I thought maybe there was."

"Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything."

"Diana used to tell me she had a travel jinx, something I only really started to believe when the plane door fell off."

"Diggory's Dyke was a deep cut between two chalk downs-high, green hills, where a thin layer of green grass and reddish earth covered the chalk, and there was scarcely soil enough for trees. The Dyke looked, from a distance, like a white chalk gash on a green velvet board. Local legend had it that the cut was dug, in a day and a night, by one Diggory, using a spade that had once been a sword blade before Wayland Smith had melted it down and beaten it out, on his journey into Faerie from the Wall. There was those who said the sword had once been Flamberge, and others, that it was one the sword Balmung; but there was none who claimed to know just who Diggory had been, and it might all have been stuff and nonsense. Anyway, the path to Wall went through Diggory's Dyke, and any foot-traveler or any person going by any manner of wheeled vehicle went through the Dyke, where the chalk rose on either side of you like thick white walls, and the Downs rose up above them like green pillows of a giant's bed."

"Do not be jealous of your sister. Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut."

"Do not lose hope ? what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')"

"Do not take revenge in the heat of the moment."

"Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden."

"Doctor Who has never pretended to be hard science fiction? At best Doctor Who is a fairytale, with fairytale logic about this wonderful man in this big blue box who at the beginning of every story lands somewhere where there is a problem."

"Do you think they're still there?' 'Where?' 'Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked you'd see the gods?' 'Maybe. But I don't think people'd know that was what they'd seen."

"Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?"

"Does that change things? asked the old man. Maybe Anansi?s just some guy from a story, made up back in Africa in the dawn days of the world by some boy with blackfly on his leg, pushing his crutch in the dirt, making up some goofy story about a man made of tar. Does that change anything? People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the folk who never had any thought in their head but how to run from lions and keep far enough away from rivers that the crocodiles don?t get an easy meal, now they?re starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper?s changed. Yes? People still have the same story, the one where they get born and they do stuff and they die, but now the story means something different to what it meant before."

"Doing fine, thank you, I would say, never knowing how to talk about what I do. If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my heart. Some of them. Not all."

"'Doctor Who' was the first mythology that I learned, before ever I ran into Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythologies."