Jess

“The lesson you receive from The Chronicles of Narnia is that reality is not where it’s at, my friend, so get out by any point of egress you can find and get into somewhere better.”
― John Joseph Adams, Other Worlds Than These

“I thought you hated them,” Nine Hibiscus said, dryly. “Was all of that complaining about ecosystem disruption for show, then?”
Twenty Cicada looked up at her, and dismissed most of his work holos with the hand that wasn’t petting the small void on his knee. “I do hate them,” he said, smiling. “But this one likes me, and what am I going to do with the things, space them? It’s not their fault they exist.”
She came to sit next to him, knee to knee. There always seemed to be more oxygen in one of Twenty Cicada’s garden rooms. (Not seemed: there was. Plant respiration. She’d checked the readouts once. It was a fractional difference, but real.) The Kauraanian pet lifted its head and opened yellow eyes. It made a noise like a badly tuned stringed instrument, stood, paced in a tight circle on Twenty Cicada’s lap, and settled down again. “I didn’t think you’d space them, Swarm,” she said. “But this is cuddling.”
“It yowls if I don’t,” Twenty Cicada said, perfectly bland, and Nine Hibiscus laughed.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“I had to practice this line to use with people who come to signings and things: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have sex with strangers.’
Interview at Locus magazine, 2000”
― Laurell K. Hamilton

“Claudio Bianchi did write poetry [...] He had no vanity about this, no fantasies of literary celebrity; he simply took pleasure putting words in order, exactly as he laid out seedlings in the spring, and tasting them afterward, as he tasted fresh new scallions or ripe tomatoes, or smelled mint or garlic on his hands.”
― Peter S. Beagle, In Calabria