She stared at Raven in a long second of shocked silence, before sagging to the floor.
_ But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?_ Man governs it himself, _ Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question._ Pardon me, _ the stranger responded gently, _ but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years , but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact, _ here the stranger turned to Berlioz, _ imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem ... hem ... lung cancer ... _ here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure _ yes, cancer _ narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word __nd so your governing is over! You are no longer interested in anyone__ fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven. And sometimes it__ worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk _ here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz _ a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?
The Master and Margarita
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_ But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?_ Man governs it himself, _ Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question._ Pardon me, _ the stranger responded gently, _ but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years , but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact, _ here the stranger turned to Berlioz, _ imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem ... hem ... lung cancer ... _ here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure _ yes, cancer _ narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word __nd so your governing is over! You are no longer interested in anyone__ fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven. And sometimes it__ worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk _ here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz _ a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?
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We're not in a fairytale story. This is not a movie. Scriptwriters don't write our fates. We do.
It felt oily inside her head. There were strings of Xavier Stancliff caught inside of her, holding on and spiderwebbing out as he plotted and waited and thought: this is all the bitch deserves. Swallowing, Sandra pushed herself off the bed. It was late and the room was dark. She could see the bundled lump of Jack beneath his own covers. He__ left the television on and the light flickered down the tiny hall. Shadows danced and Sandra shivered as she left the room.In another life, she would have told Danny and Jack about the man. Danny would have whispered, __t__ alright,_ and smoothed back her hair from her face and kissed her, lips dry and coarse on her forehead. Then he and Jack would__e left while she was sleeping. They would__e trampled the flowers and climbed into Xavier Stanliff__ window and when Sandra woke up there would have been one less man in the world.
They say when you meet somebody that looks just like you, you die.
Snape looked horrified. 'You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?''Don't look shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?''Lately, only those whom I could not save', said Snape.
So you're lost, uh? Happens a lot out here. You walk around for days, seeing things, losing your bearings, crying out for God, But He can't hear you. You can scream and scream but nobody'll ever hear you.