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peytonaaa's Reviews (927)
mysterious
"He stood there flustered, his mouth open from shock. In triumph I put my hands on my hips and thrust up my chin, while blocking the front doorway—the only opening that let the sun into that house. I had just one thought. 'Here I am, your one true daughter.'"
mysterious
"What was the whole stupid idea of the kentukis about? What were all those people doing rolling around on other people’s floors, watching how the other half of humanity brushed their teeth? Why didn’t anyone collude with kentukis to hatch truly brutal plots? Why didn’t anyone send a kentuki loaded with explosives into a crowded central station and blow it all to smithereens? Why didn’t any kentuki user blackmail an air traffic controller and force him to immolate five planes in Frankfurt in exchange for his daughter’s life? Why didn’t even one single user out of the thousands who must be moving at that very moment over truly important papers take note of some crucial detail and break the Wall Street markets, or hack into some software network and make all the elevators fall simultaneously in a dozen skyscrapers? Why wasn’t there a single miserable morning when thousands of consumers woke up dead from a simple bucket of lithium poured into a Brazilian milk factory? Why were the stories about kentukis so small, so minutely intimate, stingy, and predictable? So desperately human and quotidian."
mysterious
tense
"'I need to get out in front of anything that could happen, but everything is very dark and my eyes never get used to the darkness. I think I once had a very different idea of the night.'
'Why do mothers do that?'
'What?'
'Try to get out in front of anything that could happen—the rescue distance.'
'It’s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. And now I have to take care of Nina.'
'But you always miss the important thing.'
'And what is the important thing, David?'"
'Why do mothers do that?'
'What?'
'Try to get out in front of anything that could happen—the rescue distance.'
'It’s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. And now I have to take care of Nina.'
'But you always miss the important thing.'
'And what is the important thing, David?'"
mysterious
"What he felt at that moment was the complete opposite of fear—it was something close to madness, but with the absolute certainty he was taking the right step. The exciting anguish of recognizing that what one is doing will ultimately change something important. To free his father was to free them all."
emotional
reflective
"The story never changed, always the same words in the same order, the same conspiratorial delivery. So faithful to the first time she'd heard it she didn't believe it anymore."
emotional
mysterious
reflective
"I love you but there are things older and murkier than love. Things that live not in the heart but the entrails. I don't want you to see me with the wolf. I don't want you to see what he does to me. I don't want you to see what I do to him.
"I wouldn't love you any less, I told her.
"But I would love you less, she said."
"I wouldn't love you any less, I told her.
"But I would love you less, she said."
emotional
reflective
"but hasn't the story already changed because I told it // don't I circle my own life like a vulture for sound bites"
emotional
reflective
"No matter how far I've come, it's never far enough. The pattern was already in place."
emotional
reflective
"Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.
"There was no way that anyone was ever going to get into her mind. Not ever. Fine, she'd do the work, yes, fine. Fine, she'd sit with a straight back and crossed legs, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Who can sit up the straightest? Me, me, me! Yes, she could do all that, but after that, something in her said, They should leave me alone and let me read my books, let me think my thoughts. If they pushed her too far with their requests for her to open up, interact more, make friends, she would scream. They knew it. She'd done it before."
"There was no way that anyone was ever going to get into her mind. Not ever. Fine, she'd do the work, yes, fine. Fine, she'd sit with a straight back and crossed legs, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Who can sit up the straightest? Me, me, me! Yes, she could do all that, but after that, something in her said, They should leave me alone and let me read my books, let me think my thoughts. If they pushed her too far with their requests for her to open up, interact more, make friends, she would scream. They knew it. She'd done it before."
mysterious
"And now I understood they were not so much weaving a fabric of ritual with which to cover themselves but using the tools of ritual to shore up the very walls of the world."