There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman__he white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles__he work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries__omething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey__ startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

For the first time she realized she'd spent so much time mourning a world that had ended ages ago, hoping to resurrect it, that she'd never paid attention to what it was becoming. Or returning to again, now that it was unfettered. Where were the centaurs, she might have asked instead. Where were the gorgons, the furies, the giants and the gods?

But he doesn't see what's so great about leaving your mark on things. You have a life and then it ends and you're dead. Living it is the point, not proving to other people that you were there. The whole thing is really just water pouring down a plughole, but that's absolutely fine. Standing water gets stagnant.

They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead.

The war consciousness is purposely cultivated to guide the male away from the natural, healthy balances between masculine and feminine energies, and toward more unbalanced and detached psychologies.

The most powerful tools of revolution through intention are humility and consciousness.