Quotes from R.A. MacAvoy

Grabbed in the ass by fate," his father used to say about coincidences like this. If there were coincidences like this. If there were coincidences...

But two things I have ever respected are warmth and the ability to sit still." Martha

Systems analysts rarely call their parents from across the country with mysterious problems. Still more rarely do they disappear. It is not part of the technical mentality to disappear.

Fire was Mr. Long's chosen element; he had no sympathy with the rain. Yet he knew water was preordained to win, in the end. In man's end, at least. No vault or sepulcher could keep out the damp forever, and even ashes dissolved.

Live or dead, no creature might escape the unfolding of its own actions. He

What was she, after all, except the memory of all she had done, telling her the sort of person she was and guiding her next act consistently? Without that, what was left but blind chance and leaves blown meaninglessly through the trees?

Pragmatism was a sword that cut through such knots; an action was to be judged by its consequences alone.

A wizard," Long echoed, thoughtfully. "Odd word to use in connection with computers. I've always found there to be so much Ã¢â'¬Â¦ flimflam about wizards, and I can't see how one could get away with that in computer engineering. But perhaps that's my own innocence.

You, Nazhuret, once of Sordaling, are the lens of the world: the lens through which the world may become aware of itself. The world, on the other hand, is the only lens in which you can see yourself. It is both lenses together that make vision.

But engineers can be really naive about themselves; they think because they can design a pc board and it's right and it works, that everything they do or believe is going to be just that right.

Behind the church lot stood a hedge of yew. He passed through the omen of its furry branches and found himself beside a noise of waters.

If I give the impression that Powl taught me personal combat by beating me repeatedly, I do him wrong. He disapproved of such teaching, and knocked me down not out of punishment but by way of illustration. Unfortunately, there was so very much to illustrate. By the second year of my instruction

You have taught me to be still, so that I could move properly. You have taught me to listen, so that I can speak properly. You have taught me to see, so that I might not always be seen.

She turned to John to share the joke, and he was transfixed, looking into the catastrophe of her sagging, bleary-eyed face.

There was that odor about her: not a sweetness, exactly, but a wildness suggesting breezes that have touched cold water and living wood.

The level of my worldly ignorance cannot easily be overestimated." Nor that of the damage that ignorance could do

The rose," he announced. "Loveliest and most formidable of flowers. Arms of York and Lancaster. In medieval times, a symbol of Jesus. Always, it has meant, beauty, love, peace ..." He presented the bud to Martha Macnamara. It lay resting on his long fingers until she scooped it up. She sniffed it and held it up to the light. "Symbol? What's a symbol? This is a rose." She smiled and walked on,.

He did not look so old, since age generally follows on tailoring. He did not look so terribly well bred, since class follows the same rules.

But lately I have learned what it is to be human. Learned, but not understood. It seems to involve a great deal of misery crammed into a very short lifetime." His

When a nation starts to hug its own particularities to itself it is showing fear and it will soon cease having any characteristics worth saving.

We're not allowed miracles," she told John. "We traded them in for technology some years ago and now we're stuck with finding out how things work.

I discover that waiting may be accomplished in divers ways. And stillness has many . . . appearances, as does warmth.

How can one scandalize a maitre d'hotel? Such a man has seen it all before. And if one did succeed in subjecting him to scandal, I don't believe his face would express his condition.

She had found that her fellow students were friendliest when they were about to borrow money from her. In