Billiard-Fannon’s expression hardened. “Say the words,” he ordered. “Say them, or displease me. You do not wish to see the displeasure of the Holy On… - Adam Roberts

It could be any one of a dozen things. Experience has taught me that we much more often see connection where there is only random copresence. Pattern-seeking consciousness, you know. Great plains ape, you know.

She had expected to encounter death as a kind of existential depth and had been disappointed. But maybe there was a deeper truth there. Maybe profundity actually is a mode of disappointment. The rhythm of the climax—joy and despair, sex and pain—is of course the currency of life. Death can only ever be a sort of anticlimactic belatedness.

“Do not,” Dakkar barked, “juxtapose yourself and myself in any sentence your mouth may form!