Debra Tagg

“But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms,’ he said, ‘and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart? No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not yet entered?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“Gabriel Mackie had just celebrated his fourth birthday the first time he visited the whisper room, a windowless enclave with lavender walls brimming with daydreams, obscured from reality. All he knew for certain was that his older brother, Griff, nicknamed Boo, was gone. His bedroom at the end of the long hallway had been transformed into a guest room with ecru lace duvets instead of the blue and white pinstriped spreads covering the twin beds. Vanished were his toy box and New York Yankee American League pennants that had plastered the walls, replaced by paintings of water lilies and wheat fields. A stray tear trickled down Gabe’s cheek when he remembered Boo’s curly blonde hair and how he snorted when he laughed. Silence is deafening and the Mackie household screamed heartbreak.”
― JoDee Neathery, A Kind of Hush

“The trial awaiting Helen was known among the Toltecs as a Kazil,
a special court convened to consider only those state crimes serious
enough to be punished by death. It consisted of a joint session of
the Kinshazen and the highest-ranking priests of the Temple of Kronos,
who were referred to as the Host of the Faithful.
A Kazil was always conducted at Kindred House, the building where
the members of the Kinshazen met. Its outer layer consisted of massive
blocks of polished pink granite, which had a decidedly dark cast to it.
Kindred House was closest to Lake Shambhala of all the structures in
the Nighthall government complex.
Those summoned before a Kazil and convicted of the charges were invariably put to death within three days of the proceeding. And in only a few, very rare, instances had anyone been found innocent on trial before a Kazil.”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“Time is a luxury we don’t have. Each passing second raises the probability that someone else just took their last breath.”
― S.E. Stitcher, The Doomsday Butcher