Ian

“The one thing that stung Zhenya was the insinuation that he ducked the best players,
"Anyone I play it's their choice," Zhenya said. "I can't help it if I'm better than they are. Sometimes I play a rook or a bishop down. What could be fairer than that?"
"They never know what hit them," Sosi said; her eyes grew as round as moons. She looked like the perfect fanatic to encourage a leap into a volcano. She rolled a rook back and forth on the Formica, as if she were gathering an electric charge. "Zhenya can turn any game into a slaughter."
It was like visiting the Macbeths, Arkady thought.”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma

“Before there is science, there are stories to explain the world. They make it happier somehow.”
― Georgia Scott, American Girl: Memories That Made Me

“As Seward did not understand the reference, he did not ask for an explanation. In any case, he had a constitutional dislike of being told things that he did not know, as opposed to ferreting them out.”
― Gore Vidal, Lincoln

“Love is not weakness. It's the bravest act of our lives.”
― Georgia Scott, American Girl: Memories That Made Me