Hermetech Quotes

“Sometimes it is necessary to partake in sacrifice of self, but being a martyr to one’s causes inspires only impatience in others.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Through him, she began to visualise the landscape of her early years with new eyes and spoke of the secret knowledge of eventual immanence, which she thought illustrated most emphatically her difference to normal people.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Her whole body was sick of him, sore and bored and sick.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Later, as she lay in bed thinking, Ari could not help but be slightly envious of all these bondings and experiences that were going on around her, even though they were entrenched with hurt and intrigue. It was the passion that excited her, the finewire dancing that was the essence of all human relationships. There was also the ultimate prize to consider: the consummation, to possess and be possessed. It was something she’d never be able to feel for herself. Suddenly the idea and pictures of Star Eye’s varied sexual liasons rose up around her in a swirl of seductive energy. A wave of nausea rocked naggingly in the pit of her stomach. She sat up in bed to dispel the feeling. Not yet, she thought, but soon…”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“The living miracle lying across the room on a rug of black hair, this pale, porcelain miracle, as delicate as spun glass, as tough as steel, was a potential Goddess. And to be used for what? To partake in coldblooded, passionless experiences, without magick or reverence or love. It sickened him.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“It’s like having a demon in a bottle. It’s power, Jordan but, like a demon, unpredictable.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Lazar comfortably filled his cave-space with an abundant surplus of personality. One wall was entirely covered by monitor screens, all buzzing greyly but for one, which was trained on the outer door. Leila wondered whether the blank screens were a sham, turned off for her benefit, usually engrossed in being the sinister, roving eyes about the makebelieve world of Lazar Farm, the place of surreal shadows. She never felt at ease here. She accepted the offered refreshment; cruel wine, one of those vintages stiff with vanity for being rare and expensive and thus sour on the tongue, resentful of being drunk.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“The jellycrusts, scorning the protection of travelling within armoured trucks, walked in the dry lands in ragged groups, pushing or dragging their belongings in carts or sledges. Their skins were concealed by thick, insulating gel once manufactured for military use. Since then, the jellycrusts had bought up all the remaining stocks of the stuff, slapping it on their own integrement, where it accumulated the dust and debris of the desert lands; hence their nickname. It reminded Leila of certain larval creatures who once lived in freshwater streams, and which perhaps still did somewhere, who attached stones and water rubbish to their skins, making a shell to live in. The jellycrusts could look like that: frightening, peeling, gaunt creatures. She used to wonder whether they ever washed it all off and started again from a clear skin. Did they make love? It was not a pleasant image. The gel had a strange smell, rather like a room that had been locked up too long; a wooden room beaten by sunheat, rotted by rain, stale and with the promise of hidden corruption. Jellycrusts always wore bulky, colourless clothes, quasi-military in appearance, heavily adorned with totemic ornaments, constructed from the desert trash.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“He looked at the girl of hidden colours and saw a few of her paths, radiating off, diminishing glows.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Leila suddenly felt as if there was a great physical distance between her and this girl. She saw this serene young woman sitting there: it was like a visualisation of what Ari was to become. She smiled at her and shook her head. The aroman and smoke of the incense seemed to have moved the primitive tent to a new continuum.

I am looking at a goddess, Leila thought.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“How many times had she danced herself into a deliciously drunken frenzy around the edges of her smouldering offerings, breathing deeply the heady, powerful, almost frightening reek of smoke?”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“He and his brother had once been so close, literally part of each other; in defiling himself, he was defiling Cabochan. When this was pointed out, Cabochan was appalled to see an expression on his brother’s face, which suggested that that was one of his reasons for becoming what he had.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Fending him off became more of a ritual courtship than a defence, until the performance just had to reach its logical conclusion: a night under the stars communing with the Goddess.

Cabochan had half hoped his and Jordan’s physical union would be a failure. Fate had decreed otherwise.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“He’d danced like a dervish to the clay drums of his troupe, twisting his body, enjoying the experience of his own muscles. That’s when Jordan had seen him.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Funny how the camera had so quickly lost all its depressing associations. Ari looked on this as a good omen.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She traded delirium, a treasure of experience, and made a healthy living from it, so that ten years ago she’d been able to step down from public attention and began to train others to do her work for her.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She recognized the body language of self-loathing. Something would have to be done about that. The dog in him must be expelled. He must become cat: pampered, svelte, spoiled, confident of his own unique beauty. It would be a pleasure to teach him that.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Her excitement at finally landing this choice morsel was concealed behind her urbane talk of investment. For over a year, she would have given two of her best operatives in exchange for Zambia Crevecoeur, but the boy had been so awkward, resisting all her proud, veiled offers of employment to suffer starvation in the name of autonomy.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She regarded herself as a true professional; 50 percent carbon-steel image, honed to glittering perfection, 45 per cent killer class business woman, 5 per cent dangerous psychotic.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“I like to have room for my thoughts and the silence to think them in.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“There are too many souls in the world for any one of us to have the luxury of being unique.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“He did not care one way or the other what people thought of his lifestyle. It required more energy than he felt the subject deserved even to be amused by it.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Here the play of light from high roof-windows on fountains and pools created a moving fresco on the patterned walls. Where the columns thinned in number, a great plaza was revealed: the place where Roirbak worked and played. The austere shapes and superimposed perspectives of this ostentatious indulgence produced effects that made Tammuz feel as if he were trapped in some Cubist virtual reality.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“In Sector 23, life imitates art.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Clusters of translucent ceramic globes hang along the warren of boulevards and alleys, like fizzing crystal balls, gossiping prophecies.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“Leila felt as if he was a fluid in her hands, dripping away.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She was aware of all he was; a mind, thinking, impenetratable. Light played on his skin, deepening the hollows of his throat.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She was undeniably Ari, female, human, her bare arms pimpled with cold, who shivered in the breeze of a late spring night, who existed solely within the flesh that contained her spirit.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“She herself now has the power to make the sequence of messages run into one flowing nation; the drop of water will fall and explode upon impact, iniating new sequences, which will be confronted in the future.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech

“The group began to move, circling slowly, feeling with their hands for an invisible boundary. They were claiming the space for their own. There were no words, no verbal summoning of the elements. To Ari, this was something new; the silent, spiralling bodies describing the parameters of their temple. Then one by one, each member of the group spun in the middle of the circle, describing with gestures the sanctity of the chosen space, slowly whirling shapes of rags and hair.”
― Storm Constantine, Hermetech