Mole Mann > Mole's Quotes

“Citizens of both sexes withdrew along the walls and watched the water turn into a thin gruel of blood and filth and none could take their eyes from the judge who had disrobed last of all and now walked the perimeter of the baths with a cigar in his mouth and a regal air, testing the waters with one toe, surprisingly petite. He shone like the moon so pale he was and not a hair to be seen anywhere upon that vast corpus, not in any crevice nor in the great bores of his nose and not upon his chest nor in his ears nor any tuft at all above his eyes nor to the lids thereof. The immense and gleaming dome of his naked skull looked like a cap for bathing pulled down to the otherwise darkened skin of his face and neck. As that great bulk lowered itself into the bath the waters rose perceptibly and when he had submerged himself to the eyes he looked about with considerable pleasure, the eyes slightly crinkled, as if he were smiling under the water like some pale and bloated manatee surfaced in a bog while behind his small and close-set ear the wedged cigar smoked gently just above the waterline.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of the earth's origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat. A few would quote to him scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings. The judge smiled.
Books lie, he said.
God dont lie.
No, said the judge, he does not. And these are his words.
He held up a chunk of rock.
He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Excitedly, Leela pounced on a fragment the Doctor had thrown her earlier. 'Are these your lands? The Doctor said you lived here.'
'He was probably talking about the Penacooks,' Kristal explained quietly. 'They were of the same nation, the Algonquin. These lands belong to a larger nation now, Leela. Not necessarily a better one, whatever my captain tells you.”
― Simon A. Forward, Doctor Who: Drift

“You do realise that sentence contained three halves?’
‘It’s a crazy universe, Doctor.”
― Paul Ebbs, Doctor Who: The Book of the Still

“Train held up the head of the statue, the priceless Primavera of Florence, the seventeenth-century prize created by the Great Frenchman Pierre Tranqueville, which he'd found in the gutter next to the Arno and couldn't unload for fifty dollars. In the dim light of the barn loft, the dirty piece of marble looked like a piece of whitened shit.”
― James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna

“Fire and sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked the land. From the ashes of
defeat and the smoke of despair, the people of Earth, searching for a future,
plundered the past. It was the time of the Great Concoction, when the world was
remade.
In the thirty-first century of Our Lord, the Europe of the past rose again in the
shape of Europa. In Europa, history was reborn.
The geologic upheavals of Europa's formation resulted in an acute psychic
backlash, manifested in periodic shifts in reality and embodied hallucinations. Spatial
dimensions became mercurial in their behaviour. Entire counties could be crammed
into a field. These anomalies were exacerbated by advances in psionics which
produced dream worlds that were as close to the notion of a real supernatural as
makes no odds. Spectres, poltergeists, fallen angels, unfallen angels, trolls,
hobgoblins, vampires, werewolves and suchlike entities sprang into pseudo-being.
It was upon this ontological quicksand that the Dominions of Europa were
founded, recreations of ancient European countries, each containing several time
periods. Within each of these historical eras there existed a small percentage of
'Reprises'; clones of famous figures from history artificially encoded with the
appropriate personality matrix. These Reprises were prone to severe identity
confusion. Yet more acute was the confusion of the fictional Reprises, clones of
actors who became identified with particular roles: in these cases, it was not the
actor's personality that was encoded into clone-body, but the role he played.
By the thirty-third century, Europa was plunging into chaos. Reality unravelled. It
was a time of heroes, whimsical worlds, blood and thunder, and general Byronic
excess. Dark powers arose. Fearful villagers locked their shutters at night. Fire and
sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked...
Excerpt from The Tenebrous Testaments of the House of Rue. chapter XIV. volume
CLXVII
[From Count (Baron) Dracula and Baron (Count) Frankenstein]”
― Stephen Marley, Perfect Timing

“Your new world, Monsieur President,’ she said. Well, maybe she didn’t say “mister” in the French style, maybe Jefferson’s just remembering it that way because he likes the accent, but the point remains that when he slid the box open he found inside it just a few blades of green, green grass. Mr. Jefferson fails to remember how he responded to this, or even whether he asked his visitor to explain herself; she may well have vanished from his office before he could so much as speak (after all, a mysterious entrance should always be complimented by a mysterious exit). [from Grass]”
― Lawrence Miles, Dead Romance

“Oh, you're usually so good with everybody.' A propensity for sarcasm was
something that Romana had noticed she had developed since joining the Doctor on
his travels. She put it down to meeting so many Earthlings. They were good at
sarcasm. Romana realised that she still needed to work on the skill as the Doctor
seemed oblivious to her use of it.”
― Paul Ebbs, Perfect Timing

“It seemed to Romana rather a lot of expression to use to accompany a solitary 'Dunno.' But there you are, she thought, that was the Doctor all over - lots of noise; but a definite lack of signal.”
― Paul Ebbs, Perfect Timing

“It had not been murder of course, oh no, no, no! Just the gardeners way; cutting out the dead wood to allow the fresh, young growth to flourish. Something that Borax himself had taught Henderman.”
― Paul Ebbs, Perfect Timing

“Now the judge on his midnight rounds was passing along at just this place stark naked himself - such encounters being commoner than men suppose or who would survive any crossing by night - and he stepped into the river and seized up the drowning it, snatching it aloft by the heels like a great midwife and slapping it on the back to let the water out. A birth scene or a baptism or some ritual not yet inaugurated into any canon. He twisted the water from its hair and he gathered the naked and sobbing fool into his arms and carried it up into the camp and restored it among its fellows.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“The River of Stars is dying. Desert is all that remains.
Desert remembers the universe but Desert, too, will pass away.
The country of Man is dying. Oasis is all that remains.
Man remembers Desert's stories but Mankind, too, must pass away.
Every night there are fewer stars. Every day there are fewer stories.
Desert is dying. Man is dying.
Who will remember? Who will remember?”
― Nakula Somana, Decalog 5 - Wonders

“. . . Much was made of the fact that Yuri Gagarin was an ordinary citizen of the Soviet Union. He was born in the Gzhatsk District of Smolensk and entered secondary school in 1941. But his studies were interrupted by the German invasion. After World War Two Gagarin's family moved back to Gzhatsk, where Yuri resumed his studies. In 1951 he graduated with honours from a vocational school in the town of Lyubersy, near Moscow. He received a foundryman's certificate. He then studied at an industrial technical school in Saratov, on the Volga, from which he graduated with honours in 1955. It was while attending the industrial school that the man who would be the first to fly in space took his first steps in aviation, when he commenced a course of training at the Saratov Aero Club in 1955 . . .”
― Stephen Baxter, Decalog 5 - Wonders

“And so, as night chases the sun from Desert, Man moves, motionless, into the future, shaping the world and shaped by it, his presence defining Desert's stories as the stories define Desert.
He moves as an amphibian killer destroys cities with dreams, slows as a regiment of artists raid history's corpse, stumbles as men lactate and machines are incarcerated for speaking the truth, dies as understanding deafens a world with whispers. His life shed in the storm of his own desire.”
― Nakula Somana, Decalog 5 - Wonders

“Washington is certainly not a city of restaurants, any more than it is a city of theaters. It is a city of official cocktail parties and excellent home-cooked dinners with wonderful conversation afterward and that provides all the entertaining anyone needs. It's also a city of whispering, maneuvering, tattling, declaiming - a city that's still having growing pains, that naive in spite of its imagined sophistication, that's beautiful in the same way an adolescent is beautiful, though he insists on pretending to a maturity and a mellowness that he hasn't achieved.”
― Frances Parkinson Keyes, Joy Street

“As for the saints (your thorough-paced ones I mean, with screwed faces and wry mouths), I despair of them, for they are friends to nobody. They love nothing but their altars and themselves; they have too much zeal to have any charity; they make debauches in piety as sinners do in wine, and are as quarrelsome in their religion as other people are in their drink; so I hope nobody will mind what they say.”
― John Vanbrugh, The relapse : or, Virtue in danger.

“How true is that Philosophy which says
Our Heaven is seated in our Minds!
Through all the roving Pleasures of my Youth,
(Where Nights and Days seem all consum'd in Joy,
Where the false Face of Luxury
Display'd such Charms,
As might have shaken the most holy Hermit,
And made him totter at his Altar)
I never knew one Moment's Peace like this.
Here—in this little soft Retreat,
My thoughts unbent from all the Cares of Life,
Content with Fortune,
Eas'd from the grating Duties of Dependence,
From Envy free, Ambition under foot,
The raging Flame of wild destructive Lust
Reduc'd to a warm pleasing Fire of lawful Love,
My Life glides on, and all is well within.”
― John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

“That Trial past, and y'are at ease for ever;
When you have seen the Helmet prov'd,
You'll apprehend no more for him that wears it:
Therefore to put a lasting Period to your Fears,
I am resolv'd, this once, to launch into Temptation.
I'll give you an Essay of all my Virtues;
My former boon Companions of the Bottle
Shall fairly try what Charms are left in Wine:
I'll take my Place amongst them,
They shall hem me in,
Sing Praises to their God, and drink his Glory;
Turn wild Enthusiasts for his sake,
And Beasts to do him Honour:
Whilst I, a stubborn Atheist,
Sullenly look on,
Without one reverend Glass to his Divinity.
That for my Temperance,
Then for my Constancy——”
― John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

“No, my Conscience shan't starve me, neither. But thus far I'll hearken to it; before I execute this Project, I'll try my Brother to the bottom, I'll speak to him with the Temper of a Philosopher; my Reasons (tho' they press him home) shall yet be cloth'd with so much Modesty, not one of all the Truths they urge, shall be so naked to offend his Sight: if he has yet so much Humanity about him, as to assist me (tho' with a moderate Aid) I'll drop my Project at his Feet, and shew him how I can do for him, much more than what I ask he'd do for me. This one conclusive Trial of him I resolve to make—”
― John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

“But you thought wrong, Amanda; For turn the case, and let it be your story; Should you come home, and tell me you had seen a handsome man, should I grow jealous because you had eyes?”
― John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

“Whate'er they are, there is a weight in resolution sufficient for their balance. The soul, I do confess, is usually so careless of its charge, so soft, and so indulgent to desire, it leaves the reins in the wild hand of nature, who, like a Phaeton, drives the fiery chariot, and sets the world on flame. Yet still the sovereignty is in the mind, whene'er it pleases to exert its force. Perhaps you may not think it worth your while to take such mighty pains for my esteem; but that I leave to you.

You see the Price I set upon my Heart,
Perhaps 'tis dear: But spite of all your Art,
You'll find on cheaper Terms we ne'er shall part.”
― John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

“The Devil's in the fellow, I think——I was told before I married him, that thus 'twou'd be: But I thought I had charms enough to govern him; and that where there was an estate, a woman must needs be happy; so my vanity has deceiv'd me, and my ambition has made me uneasy. But there's some comfort still; if one wou'd be reveng'd of him, these are good times; a woman may have a gallant, and a separate maintenance too—The surly puppy—yet he's a fool for't: for hitherto he has been no monster: But who knows how far he may provoke me? I never lov'd him, yet I have been ever true to him; and that, in spite of all the attacks of art and nature upon a poor weak woman's heart, in favour of a tempting lover. Methinks so noble a defence as I have made, shou'd be rewarded with a better usage—Or who can tell?——Perhaps a good part of what I suffer from my husband, may be a judgment upon me for my cruelty to my lover.——Lord, with what pleasure could I indulge that thought, were there but a possibility of finding arguments to make it good!—--And how do I know but there may?—Let me see——What opposes?—My matrimonial vow——Why, what did I vow? I think I promis'd to be true to my husband. Well; and he promis'd to be kind to me. But he han't kept his word——Why then I'm absolv'd from mine—Ay, that seems clear to me. The argument's good between the King and the people, why not between the husband and the wife? O, but that condition was not exprest—No matter, 'twas understood. Well, by all I see, if I argue the matter a little longer with myself, I shan't find so many bug-bears in the way as I thought I shou'd. Lord, what fine notions of virtue do we women take up upon the credit of old foolish philosophers! Virtue's its own reward, Virtue's this, Virtue's that——Virtue's an ass, and a gallant's worth forty on't.”
― John Vanbrugh, The Provok'd Wife: A Comedy

“There was a place in Hell where skulls were the only ornaments, and the servants had no faces. Even from there he had been cast out. As a shadow of a shade he came to dwell at the edge of a certain abyss, in a tower built out of the bodies of those he had personally marked when he had been allowed in the dark councils of Mictlan. This happened soon after the masters of the Celestial Intervention Agency, the Celestis, had pulled the doors of perception closed behind themselves lest their histories be unravelled in the war with the Time Lords’ future enemy, in the battles they had foreseen. They had put reality behind them like a bad dream and turned themselves into creatures built out of mythemes and the working of nanoscopic machine-demons. They had poisoned the walls of reality itself, until Mictlan had bubbled up into existence on its far side, a cyst of galled space-time cut off from the time winds. It was their glorious world of the dead.”
― Simon Bucher-Jones, Doctor Who: The Taking of Planet 5

“Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.”
― John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit

“Odd that you mention new words.' The Doctor's face was red now, capillaries swelling under the biomass probes of the stone. 'Gallifreyan's always been a static language, hasn't it? We go out into the universe and talk to everyone, but we don't take loan words back into our own tongue. TARDISes translate everything for us, or time rings, or things like your locket there. We don't have to integrate our experiences into words: they do it for us.' A vein in his neck began to pulsate, and next to it a warm glow spread through the blackness of the stone as if it were pleased.”
― Simon Bucher-Jones, Doctor Who: The Taking of Planet 5

“Oh yes, yes indeed NNNNNNNN Good Evening Tyrone Slothrop We Have Been Waiting For You. Of Course We Are Here. You Didn't Think We Had Just Faded Away, No, No Tyrone, We Must Hurt You Again If You Are Going To Be That Stupid, Hurt You Again And Again Yes Tyrone You Are So Hopeless So Stupid And Doomed. Are You Really Supposed To Find Anything? What If It Is Death Tyrone? What If We Don't Want You To Find Anything? If We Don't Want To Give You Your Discharge You'll Just Go On Like This Forever Won't You? Maybe We Want You Only To Keep On. You Don't Know Do You Tyrone. What
Makes You Think You Can Play As Well As We Can? You Can't. You Think You're Good But You're Really Shit And We All Know It. That Is In Your Dossier. (Laughter. Humming.)”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Can't have someone mucking around behind the scenes like that. Manipulating people and manoeuvring them into the right place at the right time. Next thing we know, we'll have a pyrotic in a big skin balloon full of methane, just when it needs to be exploded or something. Can't have something like that, right?”
― Dave Stone, Doctor Who: Sky Pirates!

“The thing that worries me,' Benny said, 'is that I can feel myself starting to think the same way. Becoming one-dimensional. Playing the part that was slotted for me.' She looked at the Time Lord, suddenly, sharply. 'How much of that are you doing? Suppressing this and emphasizing that and greasing the other along? Making us fit in where we don't really belong?”
― Dave Stone, Doctor Who: Sky Pirates!

“This was currently that magic point in the cycle before
the party broke apart spectacularly into mass violence. The social mechanisms that inhibited Sereans en masse from the more extreme forms of enjoying themselves were gone -and next, catastrophically, would go the last vestigial mechanisms
that restrained them from wholesale assault and murder. For pleasure and hatred, and revenge, and for the hell of it and then, when the food at last ran out, for bare survival.”
― Dave Stone, Doctor Who: Sky Pirates!

“Beside this, almost incidentally, she noticed a large
wooden tub, fixed to the floor with ichor and covered with tarpaulin.
The leech-thing rotated in the air to regard her. 'Most Supreme Captain will ejaculate now.'
The monstrosity opened its grinning mouth.”
― Dave Stone, Doctor Who: Sky Pirates!