Simply Sam

“Those the walkers carried into the Wood were less lucky. We didn't know what happened to them, but they came back out sometimes, corrupted in the worst way: smiling and cheerful, unharmed. They seemed almost themselves to anyone who didn't know them well, and you might spend half a day talking with one of them and never realize anything was wrong, until you found yourself taking up a knife and cutting off your own hand, putting out your own eyes, your own tongue, while they kept talking all the while, smiling, horrible. And then they would take the knife and go inside your house, to your children, while you lay outside blind and choking and helpless even to scream. If someone we loved was taken by the walkers, the only thing we knew to hope for them was death, and it could only be a hope.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Her stare was cold, inscrutable, as if she were weighing him in the white, hot fire of her eyes. He allowed himself to be weighed in that scale for it seemed the only means by which she had to judge the world around her. So beautiful a measure, he noted, but the scales so dreadfully unbalanced.”
― H. Leighton Dickson, To Journey In The Year Of The Tiger

“I quit smoking three years ago, and I’m very proud of that fact. Now I only smoke socially, and late at night, and sometimes during the day, and occasionally when I’m alone.”
― Loki Renard, Moth Wanted

“Since I’ve become a Druid, I’ve seen some pretty weird shit, Atticus,” Granuaile said, “but Beardy Baggins there squaring off against Squid Head McGee in the snow might be the weirdest.”
― Kevin Hearne, Staked