“Prosper's earliest memory was of hearing the enormous Hoover starting up somewhere in the house, brand-new then possibly, anyway unknown to him, an inexplicable noise at once a roar and shriek and coming closer; moving away; closer again, and evidently seeking him out where he lay in bed. Then to find the great gray floor-sucker thing entering his room, manipulated by his grim-faced mother, therefore not dangerous at all, maybe.”

Part Two, Chapter 2
Four Freedoms (2009)

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John Crowley27

American writer 1942

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“He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 29 (p. 339)

“Rose pictured him standing at the boundary of the Ogletree house in that enormous fur cape, with a giant sword sticking over his shoulder, roaring at the top of his lungs and then being upset that nobody came out, and laughed.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

“In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and moldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.
To none of these evidences of a fearful tragedy of a long dead day did little Tarzan give but passing heed. His wild jungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have been no more greatly moved.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

“Hey,” he said softly. He moved closer to the bars, pressing his face between them. “I always said you were jailbait, but this is ridiculous.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

“If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost

Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;

As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.

It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.

It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.

If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness

A vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10

“I eased him into his new bed [beneath the floorboards] … A week later, I wondered whether his body had changed at all or had started to decompose. I disinterred him and pulled the dirt-stained youth up onto the floor. His skin was very dirty. I stripped myself naked and carried him into the bathroom and washed the body. There was practically no discoloration and his skin was pale white. His limbs were more relaxed than when I had put him down there.”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 113, ISBN 1446428737

“He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red.
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed,
He kissed them all.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

Lyrics, Illinois (2005)

“For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer’s question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (1797)

“Nico started to crawl away, groaning. Percy wanted him to move faster and groan less. He considered throwing his wonder bread at him.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

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John Crowley27

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