Tony

“The thought of creating an artificial creature for the sole purpose of carrying out a murder made Riffan shrivel inside. He was an anthropologist, well acquainted with humanity’s history of violence, whether one-on-one or between tribes and nations, or against the Earth itself. But those had been ancient conflicts, an aspect of history seldom repeated on the frontier, where time and distance and the need for cooperation had filtered the genome and shaped the culture so that interpersonal violence was rarely encountered.”
― Linda Nagata, Silver

“I felt haggard”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The cold in the warehouse was like nothing I’ve known before or since. I suppose if I’d had any sense I’d have gone out and bought an electric heater, but only four months before I had come from one of the warmest climates in America and I had only the dimmest awareness that such appliances existed. It never occurred to me that half the population of Vermont wasn’t experiencing pretty much what I put myself through every night—bone-cracking cold that made my joints ache, cold so relentless I felt it in my dreams: ice floes, lost expeditions, the lights of search planes swinging over whitecaps as I floundered alone in black Arctic seas. In the morning, when I woke, I was as stiff and sore as if I’d been beaten. I thought it was because I was sleeping on the floor. Only later did I realize that the true cause of this malady was hard, merciless shivering, my muscles contracting as mechanically as if by electric impulse, all night long, every night.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“A frame. Like in ‘Mission: Impossible,’ he meant, or one of those paranoia books by Philip K. Dick.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History