“Hay algo extraño en él.”
“Her suspense was terrible.”
“Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter.”
“It didn t take a professional to end a life- Riley”
“The wine and the blood from a cut on his head mix into a new red that drips onto the hard, grey floor.”
“A picture is worth a thousand words. A book is worth a ... heartbeats, a ... feelings, a ... thoughts ...”
“What do you want, MacGuffin, a duel?” “No.” Julian held out both hands, one palm flat, the other held over it in a fist. “Rock, paper, scissors. Two out of three.” Ty rolled his eyes and held out his fist, apparently willing to play. Julian hit his palm three times, and Ty kept time with his fist in the air. But when Julian threw a paper, Ty reached into his jacket with his other hand and pulled his gun, aiming it at Julian. “Ty!” Zane said in exasperation from the front seat. “Glock, paper, scissors. I win.” “You are an ass,” Julian muttered.”
“Siry answered with one simple, shattering word. Veelox.”
“Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man.”
“An hour before his world exploded like a ripe tomato under a stiletto heel, Myron bit into a fresh pastry that tasted suspiciously like urinal cake.”
“Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don t give much thought to yesterday, don t worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie.”
“Random lines, Beyond the Darkness: Playing tag, you re it against a car is a bad idea.”
“Brannagh Maloney had lived with disappearances all her life. They were as familiar to her as the changing of the Fundy tides. People who disappeared left cast-off shadows of themselves, murky tremblings that slunk out of corners on drizzly autumn afternoons. They lurked offstage, silent or sighing or reaching out to run a finger across her arm. They were the curtains fluttering in the window on a breezeless morning, the musty scent that arose when opening an abandoned cellar door. LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU (Kunati Books)”
“Her name was Mora ... and she was waiting.”
“Mark had a better chance interpreting body language at Madame Tussauds.”
“Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God s blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable.”
“There is a distinct difference between suspense and surprise, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I ll explain what I mean. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, Boom! There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: You shouldn t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode! In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”