Walter Linan

“I think I hate Capaldi because deep down I suspect he may be right. That what he claims is true. That science has now proved beyond doubt there’s nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing there our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn’t know better. That’s how Capaldi sees it, and there’s a part of me that fears he’s right. Chrissie, on the other hand, isn’t like me. She may not know it yet, but she’ll never let herself be persuaded. If the moment ever comes, never mind how well you play your part, Klara, never mind how much she wishes it to work, Chrissie just won’t be able to accept it. She’s too … old-fashioned. Even if she knows she’s going against the science and the math, she still won’t be able to do it. She just won’t stretch that far. But I’m different. I have … a kind of coldness inside me she lacks. Perhaps it’s because I’m an expert engineer, as you put it. This is why I find it so hard to be civil around people like Capaldi. When they do what they do, say what they say, it feels like they’re taking from me what I hold most precious in this life. Am I making sense?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“Cindy Divine and her parents paused by their boat to take in the natural beauty. Lake Barkley could have been a top-paid model for a glossy postcard company that morning. It lay between little hills all dressed up in new green, and its mirror-like water reflected a cloudless sky everywhere except along the shoreline where the hills were upside down. Clusters of blossoms, dogwood and redbud, were scattered here and there on the hillsides, and a brightening red was coloring the sky along the eastern hilltops.”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“The sunset bled into the edges of the village. Smoke curled out of the cottage chimney like a crooked finger.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms