193 books
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1,507 voters
The virus was clearly an impressive piece of work, as far as she could grasp it. Infected individuals would produce offspring mutated in a number of useful ways: greater brain size and complexity, greater body size to accommodate it, more
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“Ankit makes a drink that’s gonna make Randall absinthe with envy. It’s like a liquid portal between dimensions. You’ve gotta try it.’ ‘Always a pleasure to prepare the portal for you, sir.’ ‘You girls have got so much in common,’ I said, and thought to say more, but Blue Hijab and Karla looked at me in exactly the same not very flattering way, and I unthought it. ‘You marry them,’ Blue Hijab said, ‘hoping they’ll change, and grow. And they marry us, hoping that we won’t.’ ‘The connubial Catch 22,’ Karla said, taking Blue Hijab by the arm and leading her back to the Bedouin tent. ‘Come with me, you poor girl, and freshen up. You look very tired. How far have you come today?”
― The Mountain Shadow
― The Mountain Shadow
“I've always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product like - and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.”
― Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
― Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
“The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
“I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
“I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
Ralph’s 2025 Year in Books
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