Sasha Bear

“One of the nice thing about Time, Crowley always said, was that it was steadily taking him further away from the fourteenth century, the most bloody boring hundred years on God's, excuse his French, Earth”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Must we always kill the people?’
‘Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them — except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.’
‘Ransomed? What’s that?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we’ve got to do.’
‘But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?’
‘Why, blame it all, we’ve GOT to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?’
‘Oh, that’s all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ran- somed if we don’t know how to do it to them? — that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead. ‘
‘Now, that’s something LIKE. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too — eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.’
‘How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?’
‘A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?’
‘Because it ain’t in the books so — that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you? — that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn ‘em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Every day, she saw planets and comets and stellar nurseries right up close,
plain as weather. Yet, there was something about being planetside that made it
feel different. Perhaps stars were supposed to be viewed from the ground.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet