sharing is caring, day six & seven

[starlady]

I missed day six. Whoops! So that means it's quotation time.

I used to collect quotations. I read my Bartlett's (15th edition) cover-to-cover at least twice. But of course the ones I like best are the ones I found myself. The following is a random sampling, more or less, of those.

It is futile to debate whether a chessboard should be considered black or white:
not only is the board chequered, but is in the nature of the game that this should be so.
—J. W. Lever, Introduction to Measure for Measure

If women had power, what would men be but women who can’t bear children? And what would women be but men who can?
—Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone


"We shouldn't live as if it matter more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place."
"He said we had to build something..."
"That's why we needed our full life, Pan. We would have gone with WIll and Kirjava, wouldn't we?"
"Yes. Of course! And they would have come with us. But--"
"But then we wouldn't have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build..."
[....]
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.
—Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

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Day seven is whatever I like. So, first of all, check out Rebecca Dart's art LJ, it is awesome and sff-ish and rather like Shaun Tan in some ways.

Other than that, I have three short stories I want to recommend. I did this whole meme just to rec this stories, which may be a case of carts and horses in reversed order, but whatever.

• "White Charles" by Sarah Monette (aka truepenny) at Clarkesworld Magazine. It's one of Monette's Kyle Murchison Booth stories--though you don't have to have read any of them to enjoy any of them, though the first dozen-odd were collected in The Bone Key, which I highly recommend--and i think this one is the best one yet.
• "Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (aka nojojojo), at same. I had the privilege of meeting Jemisin back in May, and she is awesome. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, is made of awesome according to the buzz and I can't wait to read it. The story is about an alternate New York (and not just because it takes place in Brooklyn), where luck matters a lot more than it ought.
• "The Heart of the City" by Garth Nix. Nix is absolutely one of my favorite authors, period, and this story is a perfectly Nixian take on Dumas' metier (i.e. Musketeers!). The final volume in The Keys to the Kingdom, Lord Sunday, comes out next spring. Eee!