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She looked back across the table, and the man was not there. She blinked for a second, and he returned. 'Keep your eyes on me,' he said, 'or you will forget.' 'Evan,' Diane said uncertainly. 'My name is not Evan,' said the man whose name was not Evan. Then he said his name. 'Evan,' Diane said uncertainly. He repeated his actual name. 'Evan, I don't care what your name is. I'm sorry, I don't.'

welcome to night vale, joseph fink & jeffrey cranor

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'Now listen to me, sir,' he began slowly and deliberately, restraining himself as best he could, but still gasping for breath. 'I discerned your animosity the moment I walked in, but I remained here on purpose, so as to find out more. There is much that I might have forgiven a sick man and a relative, but you...now...never, sir...' 'I'm not sick!' cried Raskolnikov. 'All the more reason...' 'Clear off, damn you!' But Luzhin, without finishing what he wanted to say, was already wriggling his way out between the table and the chair; and this time, Razumikhin got up to let him through. Without glancing at anyone or even nodding in the direction of Zosimov, who had long been nodding at him to leave the sick man in peace, Luzhin went out, taking care to raise his hat to the level of his shoulder as he ducked beneath the door-frame. Even the curve of his back seemed to suggest that he was bearing away with him some deadly insult.

crime and punishment, fyodor dostoevsky

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Then a new voice spoke from beneath me. It was the Fox's. I thought he too was going to give some terrible evidence against me. But he said, 'Oh, Minos, or Rhadamanthus, or Persephone, or by whatever name you are called, I am to blame for most of this, and I should bear the punishment. I taught her, as men teach a parrot, to say, "Lies of poets," and "Ungit's a false image." I made her think that ended the question. I never said, Too true an image of the demon within. And then the other face of Ungit (she has a thousand)...something live anyway. And the real gods more alive. Neither they nor Ungit mere thoughts or words.'

till we have faces, c.s. lewis

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'Will it please you to dine with me to-day?' he asked, as we re-entered the gates. 'No, thank you, sir.' 'And what for "no, thank you," if one may inquire?' 'I never have dined with you, sir; and I see no reason why I should now: till --' 'Till what? You delight in half-phrases.' 'Till I can't help it.'

jane eyre, charlotte brontë

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Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi should be included among those who severed their ties with the theater, although the only connection between Nikanor Ivanovich and the theater was his fondness for free passes. Not only does Nikanor Ivanovich not attend the theater either with a paid ticket or a free pass, his face actually changes whenever the theater is mentioned. Besides the theater, his hatred for the poet Pushkin and for the gifted actor Savva Potapovich Kurolesov has increased rather than diminished. He hates the latter so much that last year when he saw a black-bordered announcement in the paper to the effect that Savva Potapovich had died of a stroke at the height of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich got so red in the face that he almost followed in Savva Potapovich's steps, and then he let out a roar, 'Serves him right!'

the master and margarita, mikhail bulgakov

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'What does it mean,' I said, 'when you are wearing the Jewel and everything begins to slow down about you? Fiona warned me that this was dangerous, but she was not certain why.' 'It means that you have reached the bounds of your own existence, that your energies will shortly be exhausted, that you will die unless you do something quickly.' 'What is that?' 'Begin to draw power from the Pattern itself -- the primal Pattern within the Jewel.' 'How is this achieved?' 'You must surrender to it, release yourself, blot out your identity, erase the bounds which separate you from everything else.' 'It sounds easier said than done.' 'But it can be done, and it is the only way.'

the hand of oberon, roger zelazny

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Mort hesitated. He wanted to say: you're wrong, [Death's] not like that at all, he doesn't care if people are good or bad so long as they're punctual. And kind to cats, he added. But he thought better of it. It occurred to him that people needed to believe things.

mort, terry pratchett

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'Have you ever heard of the giardinetti di San Francesco -- the gardens of Saint Francis? In Italy I often visited them: the tiny flower gardens of one or two beds, three feet square, inside high solid walls, in almost all Franciscan monasteries. Now, in exchange for silver soldi and in violation of the tradition of Saint Francis, one may view them, if only through a grille, from without. In the past, even that was forbidden: flowers grew there -- as Saint Francis had willed -- not for others, but for themselves: they could not be picked or replanted outside the enclosure; those who had not taken vows could not set foot in the gardens, or even look at the flowers: immune from people's touch, protected from eyes and scissors, they could bloom and be fragrant for themselves. 'Well, I decided -- I hope you won't find this strange -- to plant a garden immured in silence and secrecy in which all my conceptions, all my most exquisite phantasms and monstrous inventions might, far from people's eyes, grow and bloom for themselves. I hate the coarse rinds of heavily pendant fruits that torments and wither branches; I wanted my tiny garden to contain an eternal, non-deciduous and non-bearing composite of meanings and forms! Don't think I am an egoist who cannot step out of his "I," a misanthrope who hates thoughts not his own. No: in the world only one thing is truly hateful to me: letters.'

the letter killers club, sigizmund krzhizhanovsky

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'What we need is to find a safe place soon, and I'd rather succeed in doing what we can than fail to do what we can't.' Fiver gave no sign of having heard him. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. When he spoke again, it was as though he were talking to himself. 'There's a thick mist between the hills and us. I can't see through it, but through it we shall have to go. Or into it, anyway.' 'A mist?' said Hazel. 'What do you mean?' 'We're in for some mysterious trouble,' whispered Fiver, 'and it's not elil. It feels more like -- like mist. Like being deceived and losing our way.' There was no mist around them. The May night was clear and fresh. Hazel waited in silence and after a time Fiver said, slowly and expressionlessly, 'But we must go on, until we reach the hills.' His voice sank and became that of a sleep-talker. 'Until we reach the hills. The rabbit that goes back through the gap will run his head into trouble. That running -- not wise. That running -- not safe. Running -- not --' He trembled violently, kicked once or twice and became quiet.

watership down, richard adams

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At night in sleep he had dreamed of a measureless void, yet a void which was alive. The void extended and drifted and seemed totally empty and yet it possessed personality. The void expressed delight in seeing Fat, who, in the dreams, had no body; he, like the boundless void, merely drifted, very slowly; and he could, in addition, hear a faint humming, like music. Apparently the void communicated through this echo, this humming. 'You of all people,' the void communicated. 'Out of everyone, it is you I love the most.' The void had been waiting to be reunited with Horselover Fat, of all the humans who had ever existed. Like its extension into space, the love in the void lay boundless; it and its love floated forever. Fat had never been so happy in all his life.

VALIS, philip k. dick

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Mother, So much to tell, so little time to tell it. Those who were present at last night's meeting have chosen to embrace the challenge with absolute relish. The prospect of actually being able to control the outcome of this ghastly assault on our collective spirit, let alone our very humanity, by turning this offensive upon its cephalus, has sent some among our subterra movement to heights of unencompassable ecstasy. The best news of all: the Council is in full agreement with the challenge (It was official as of this morning.), so secure they seem to be in this asinine 'unassailable' position of theirs. We approach the ramparts ourselves commensurably secure. High noon awaits.

ella minnow pea, mark dunn

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'He only spoke a few words to me. I saw him just that once. He chased me with a stick, asked me the way to the abbey, and made marks on the rock where I found the crypt. Then I never saw him again.' 'No halo?' 'No, Messér.' 'No heavenly choir?' 'No!' 'What about the carpet of roses that grew up where he walked?' 'No, no! Nothing like that, Messér,' the monk gasped. 'He didn't write his name on the rock?' 'As God is my judge, Messér, he only made those two marks. I didn't know what they meant.' 'Ah, well,' sighed the postulator. 'Travelers' stories are always exaggerated.'

a canticle for leibowitz, walter m. miller jr

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John-the-dig's family had always been gardeners at Angelfield. In the old days, when the house had a head gardener and seven hands, his great-grandfather had rooted out a box hedge under the window and, so as not to be wasteful, he'd taken hundreds of cuttings a few inches long. He grew them on in a nursery bed, and when they reached ten inches, he planted them in the garden. He clipped some into low, sharp-edged hedges, let others grow shaggy, and when they were broad enough, took his shears to them and made spheres. Some, he could see, wanted to be pyramids, cones, top hats. To shape his green material, this man with the large, rough hands learned the patient, meticulous delicacy of a lacemaker. He created no animals, no human figures. Not for him the peacocks, lions, life-size men on bicycles that you saw in other gardens. The shapes that pleased him were either strictly geometric or bafflingly, bulgingly abstract. By the time of his last years, the topiary garden was the only thing that mattered. He was always eager to be finished with his other work of the day; all he wanted was to be in 'his' garden, running his hands over the surfaces of the shapes he had made, as he imagined the time, fifty, a hundred years hence, when his garden would have grown to maturity.

the thirteenth tale, diane setterfield

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The two Chagnys were left alone. But the men were not out of earshot before the count's valet heard Raoul say, distinctly and emphatically: 'I shall carry off Christine Daaé to-night.' This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the examining-magistrate. But no one ever knew exactly what passed between the two brothers at this interview. The servants declared that this was not their first quarrel. Their voices penetrated the wall; and it was always an actress called Christine Daaé that was in question.

phantom of the opera, gaston leroux

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Diane was sitting in a corner booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner without any clear idea how she got there. She glanced to her right and saw her car parked in the lot. 'Don't turn your head.' Across the table sat a man wearing a tan jacket. He looked familiar. 'Keep your eyes on me, Diane.' In her lap were some notes in her handwriting. One said 'Evan McIntyre.' One said 'King City?' The second one was circled twice and underlined. How had she ended up here? Think back through it. What had been done to her? Or what had she done to herself? She felt like she was outside of herself, looking at her life through a stranger's eyes, and she didn't love what she saw.

welcome to night vale, joseph fink & jeffrey cranor

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'So is it true that you,' Raskolnikov cut in again, in a voice trembling with anger and reverberating with a kind of injured joy, 'is it true that you told your intended...the moment you received her consent...that what pleased you most of all...was her beggarly condition...because there is much to be said for taking a wife out of beggary, the better to rule over her later...and to reproach her with the favor you bestow?' 'My good sir!' cried Luzhin, with anger and irritation, all flushed and flustered. 'My good sir!...What a way to twist my words! Forgive me, but I must make it clear to you that the rumors that have come to your attention, or rather, that have been brought to your attention, are devoid of any sound foundation, and I...have an inkling as to who...in a word...this dart...in a word, your mama...She struck me even before as having, for all her outstanding qualities, a slightly overenthusiastic and romantic cast of mind...But still, I was a million miles from presuming that she might apprehend and present the matter in a light so distorted by fantasy...And finally...finally...' 'Well, do you know what?' cried Raskolnikov, propping himself up on the pillow and fixing him with piercing, flashing eyes. 'Do you know what?' 'What, sir?' Luzhin paused, waiting with an offended and defiant air. The silence lasted a few seconds. 'If you dare utter...another word, ever again...about my mother...I'll send you flying down the stairs!'

crime and punishment, fyodor dostoevsky

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I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

till we have faces, c.s. lewis