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Oh, for crying out loud, I thought. Here we go again.
Not my fault, I decided. Never mine. Always His.
Very Catholic of you
the word gift here used in its technical sense, meaning the ability, as opposed to something anyone in his right mind might conceivably want to be given),
His fault, of course. All His fault.
Poets don’t write hexameters on their day off, whores don’t make love, soldiers don’t kill people; I can’t help noticing, but I’m under no obligation to do anything about it, particularly when I’m not getting paid.
the sharp dry-stick crack of a bone, broken by the monstrous contraction of its own muscles and sinews.
And, of course, They have Their territories, as all predators do; like my fellow practitioners; like me.
They just get moved on, like the poor—
Or he could break your jaw, and still leave splinters of crushed tooth in there.
It
could cause if you have to yank It out. Factor against all that the pain and trauma It’ll feel being extracted, of which It’s so very, very scared; and then you ask yourself, is It really so tired and hungry that It’ll risk
being manhandled, or is It simply trying it on, the way They all do...
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Sometimes I wonder if it’s more that I hate Them than that I love my fellow humans. But nobody pays me to think that, so I don’t do it often.
And all that proves is, beauty isn’t the only mote in the beholder’s eye.
People never seem to ask to see them before I operate; only afterwards, when they’re called upon to pay the bill.
Actually, I have made the empty threat before now, and it works like a charm, but you can’t always rely on people being deplorably ignorant.
Which is why nobody is ever pleased to
see me, and why I never have to buy my own drinks.
But it didn’t take me long to figure out what He—
We neither know nor care whether They are divided into genders as we are, nor, as far as I can tell, do They.
For some reason I need Him to be male in order to deal with Him.
Precisely because everybody sees Them differently, the risk is always of creating Them in your own image.
would you care to meet this person, shake hands with him, maybe invite him into your home and have dinner with him? You’re kidding, right.
It lays eggs of sheer horror deep inside you, and you can feel them hatching, growing, their burgeoning new life trapping your nerves against the bone.
The finest painter and sculptor of his age, even though he very rarely finished anything; the most learned scholar, though everything he’d ever published fit neatly into one small, handy pocket edition; the most exquisite and refined musician; the most outstanding natural philosopher and engineer.
Now, conceding that Prosper was at least 40 percent full of the stuff that makes roses grow, that still left quite a lot of sheer unparalleled genius.
Memories are tricky; there’s what you remember, and what you think you remember, the editions and redactions of memory, the corrections and amendations and blundered readings and the whole apparatus criticus of the conscious mind trying to make bread out of soup.
Sometimes I’m so stupid, I’m amazed I manage to breathe.
parts. If you pass beauty through the eye of an imperfect beholder, you may get nothing; just canvas daubed with oil, or a piece of stone, or the noise made by blowing down a tube with holes in it.
Derail it, divert it, make it take some other shape entirely—well, maybe you could and maybe you couldn’t.
Dust and grass and sand will cover all of us, all our achievements, apart from those of Master Prosper, whose work will survive in translations of translations of translations, while our bones and stones will lie forgotten in the wet earth, unless the plow turns them up, and scholars will puzzle themselves to death trying to decipher our work.
Oh, They have them, for sure. It’s a bizarre but widespread myth that only heroes have good qualities, and the only qualities heroes have are good; villains are, by definition, all bad. Bullshit.
I love the philosophy of this book. It actually makes you think and consider stuff and it's just a good time
Do you really, honestly think these changes will be permanent?)
But you keep on seeing the cat, out of the corner of your eye, and it becomes unbearable not to bark, chase, bite.
it was consumption or fever or all the thousands of things that tear you up and kill you that aren’t Them.
Would you care to speculate about how that happened? I can’t be bothered.)
just call me a nerd next time
Yes, sure. People aren’t getting killed on time, and what an appalling state of affairs that must be. You do realize, most of the people he’d have killed, but for me, are completely innocent.
sixty percent.
Completions are for assistants and apprentices; genius needs only to make the incredible, inspired start.
it. You know—a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Something I can point to, a thousand years from now, and say, I did that. Just because it’s beautiful.
But you’re immortal and I’m not, so if I stop you now, you’ll just wait till I’m dead and start all over again, so really, what’s the point in me interfering?
And thousands and millions of people who haven’t even been born yet will look at that horse and hear about how it was made, even though it was impossible, and maybe it’ll give them that little extra bit of strength and hope they need to persevere with scrambling up this shit heap we call life.
Rules are made to be broken, I said. If it’s the right thing to do.
wow it's my entire personal philosophy
(“You mean I’m stupid.” “Good heavens, no. Just ignorant.”)
And belief, like love and sleep, is something you can’t do anything about. You can’t make it come if you want it, and you can’t make it go if you don’t.
(Good word. Two artists collaborate on a masterpiece. Traitors collaborate with the enemy.)
Collaboration, I told It. It’s the next big thing.
And the grand design goes on, presumably, in some form or other, world without end, amen. But not on my watch.
