Nate Q

“Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Well … things are beginning to stack up a little,” said Gordo. It was the same old sod-hut drawl. He sounded like the airline pilot who, having just slipped two seemingly certain mid-air collisions and finding himself in the midst of a radar fuse-out and control-tower dysarthria, says over the intercom: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be busy up here in the cockpit making our final approach into Pittsburgh, and so we want to take this opportunity to thank you for flying American and we hope we’ll see you again real soon.” It was second-generation Yeager, now coming from earth orbit. Cooper was having a good time. He knew everybody was in a sweat down below. But this was what he and the boys had wanted all along, wasn’t it?”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

“(Veronica comes back with a tray. Drinks and the clafouti.)

VERONICA. I don't know who put the clafouti in the fridge. Monica puts everything in the fridge, she won't be told. What's Benjamin said to you? Sugar?

ALAN. No, thanks. What's in the clafouti?

VERONICA. Apples and pears.

ANNETTE. Apples and pears?

VERONICA. My own little recipe. (She cuts the clafouti and distributes slices.) It's going to be too cold, it's a shame.

ANNETTE. Apples and pears, this is a first.

VERONICA. Apples and pears, it's pretty textbook, but there's a little trick to it.

ANNETTE. There is?

VERONICA. Pears need to be cut thicker than apples. Because pears cook faster than apples.

ANNETTE. Ah, of course.

MICHAEL. But wait, she's not telling you the real secret.

VERONICA. Let them try it.

ALAN. Very good. It's very good.

ANNETTE. Tasty.

VERONICA. … Gingerbread crumbs!

ANNETTE. Brilliant!

VERONICA. To be quite honest, I got it from his mother.

ALAN. Gingerbread, delicious . . . Well, at least all this has given us a new recipe.

VERONICA. I'd have preferred it if it hadn't cost my son two teeth.

ALAN. Of course, that's what I meant.

ANNETTE. Strange way of expressing it.”
― Yasmina Reza, The God of Carnage

“I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.”
― Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here