The Electrical Menagerie

Some Favorite Quotes
(I could quote the whole thing, plus most of my favorites are spoilers, but here are some excellent non-spoiler-y ones.)

“Are you still alive?” Dominic asked him finally.
“Am I alive?” Huxley turned to him. “Yes, I’m alive. Why would you ask that?”
“You were uncharacteristically motionless and quiet. I thought you might be dead.”
Huxley blew air through his teeth. “Did I make a terrible mistake, Dominic?”
“The probability is high. But you’d have to be more specific.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome,” Dominic said without a trace of irony.

“You look like you’ve been run over by a train,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, and scrambled to rake his fingers through his hair and fix the tuck of his shirt.
“No, no…” She bit her lip. “The look on your face.”

He drank from a silver flask, which he held out to Carthage.
Carthage gave him a disapproving look. While at work?
“It’s /coffee/,” said Huxley. “Stars, you’re worse than the nuns at boarding academy.”
Relenting, Carthage took the flask. He drank a swig and nearly choked.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s /cold/.”
“Well, it’s been in my coat since this morning.”
Carthage wanted to spit the lingering traces out of his mouth, but that would have been improper. He swallowed his own grimace. “Don’t offer me anything that’s been in your coat since morning ever again.”

“You’re very talented, and I especially admire how collected you are in a crisis. Except for that time you broke a teacup on the floor. That wasn’t very collected.”
“Huxley… what’s wrong with you?”
“I was spiked with a truth serum which seems to have drastically lowered my inhibitions.” Huxley raised a confident hand. “But it’s alright. I think it’s wearing off.”
“I’m quite certain it’s not,” said Carthage.

Huxley’s hand darted out, finger aimed at a scallop of frosting. Carthage slapped the hand away.
“What are you /doing/?” he hissed.
“I’m /so/ hungry,” Huxley said.
“You can’t steal food from the table of the Future Queen!”
“It’s not /stealing/!” Huxley hissed back. “My tax dollars paid for that cake!”

“If only my mother could see me now,” he said aloud.
“If /my/ mother could see me now,” said Huxley, “I’d be legally disowned.”

Secondly, the swarms of biting insects that came out in the early evening. Huxley called them mosquitoes and seemed unconcerned by them, even though they could bite you through your clothes and suck the blood out of your body, which seemed to Carthage like something to be concerned about.