Никто не может подготовить вас к той бесконечной любви и к тому страху, которые входят в вашу жизнь и ваше сердце, когда вы первый раз берете на руки своего ребенка.
«Будь умницей» — то был его фирменный наказ, имевший множество смысловых оттенков, как то: «успокойся», «сядь ровно», «заткнись». Если Моисею потребовалось десять заповедей, чтобы вразумлять людей, то Артур Альтер обошелся одной. Единственное правило, всеобъемлющее и непостижимое. Оно не просто призывало человека быть умным, оно вынуждало гадать, что значит «умный» — и какая провинность лишает тебя сего звания.
The hard part would be giving Jedao some sense of proportion. The man had a judgmental streak a planet wide.
If Kujen was going to spend eternity with someone, he might as well guarantee that that someone would be pleasant company.
Kujen happened to know that even monsters seek companionship. Or an audience, anyway.
The command center was everywhere awash with light, red and gold, gold and red. Sometimes Khiruev thought that the Kel had an institutionalized horror of dying in the dark, with not even a candle for your pyre.
Brezan wondered, very cynically, when Jedao had last known any form of human contact that didn’t involve killing people.
Jedao was evil, but that doesn’t mean he was automatically wrong.
Most people gave servitors less thought than the wallpaper. If they had wanted to slaughter humans in their sleep, they could have managed it forever ago. It spoke better of them than the humans.
Shuos Mikodez finished knitting his scarf. The first two people he offered it to were unable to hide their suspicion that it would come alive and strangle them. With modern fibers it was hard to tell.