Red Rising Quotes & Sayings

Dear Gris, if there's one thing I can't abide it's a bad poet. — Cat Hellisen

The horizon is touched with red: the sun is rising, a rusty colour, the colour of old blood, and I'm so filled with fear it is an agony, a shredding feeling, worse than any nightmare I've ever had. — Lauren Oliver

He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. — Charles Dickens

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off. — Sylvia Plath

Troy has perished, the great city.
Only the red flame now lives there.
The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke and all is hidden.
We now are gone, one here, one there.
And Troy is gone forever.
Farewell, dear city.
Farewell, my country, where my children lived.
There below, the Greek ships wait. — Homer

You are the wolf that howls and bites. i am the mustang that nuzzles the hand People know they can work with me. With you? Hell, kill or be killed. — Pierce Brown

An optimistic early-rising whore with red lips and red boots sauntered along, smiling hopefully at middle-aged men, but there were no takers at this hour. — Ken Follett

I stand over them and cock my head. 'Is this the first time you've lost at something?' No answer. I frown. 'Well, that must be embarrassing.' — Pierce Brown

I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. — Ralph Ellison

Red is rising, Mickey. — Pierce Brown

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall! — J.R.R. Tolkien

The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. "For Gogol Ganguli," it says on the front endpaper in his father's tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. "The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name" is written within quotation marks. — Jhumpa Lahiri

In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked. — Pierce Brown

I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.'
'I live for you,' I say sadly.
She kisses my cheek. 'Then you must live for more. — Pierce Brown

I am a child of hell, and I've spent too long in their heaven. — Pierce Brown

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in 'Red Storm Rising'. — Dan Quayle

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. — Mary Oliver

She put
two-fingered guns to her temples when she saw us: red patch
of smoker's skin around her mouth like a raw sun rising. — Adrian Matejka

While they sorted us out for transportation I had a chance to look around. In the light of the dying sun the image glimpsed earlier through the crack in the box car seemed to have changed, grown more eery and menacing. One object immediately caught my eye: an immense square chimney, built of red bricks, tapering towards the summit. It towered above a two-story building and looked like a strange factory chimney. I was especially struck by the enormous tongues of flame rising between the lightning rods, which were set at angles on the square tops of the chimney. I tried to imagine what hellish cooking would require such a tremendous fire. Suddenly I realized that we were in Germany, the land of the crematory ovens. I had spent ten years in this country, first as a student, later as a doctor, and knew that even the smallest city had its crematorium. — Miklos Nyiszli

I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins that reached for the dark centers, that warm hand burning my cold hunger as he guided me to a chair. And then all around me I saw faces blazing, faces rising in the smoke of the lamps, in the shimmer of the burning stove, a wonderland of colors on canvases surrounding us beneath the small, sloped roof, a blaze of beauty that pulsed and throbbed. — Anne Rice

You have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it. — Pierce Brown

Beautiful!

Honesty is beautiful
Kindness is beautiful
Intelligence is beautiful
Talent is beautiful

Beautiful is a romance with such abundance
Beautiful are the flowers that roam the earth
Beautiful is awaking to the sound of singing birds
Beautiful is a disguise
Playing hide and seek inside and outside
Beautiful is as naked as the rising sun
Beautiful is delightful and truthful
Beautiful is the golden daylight that shines
And the taste of sweet colored red wine
Beautiful was never ever created by mistake
Beautiful is the ingredient we bake life's cake
When all or nothing is at stake

I am beautiful
You are beautiful
We are beautiful

Beautiful is great
Beautiful is sweet
Beautiful is love
Beautiful is power

Come to me Mr. & Mrs. Beautiful
Let me into your little secret
Of why you are so obedient and dutiful — Sylvia Chidi

November is chill, frosted mornings with a silver sun rising behind the trees, red cardinals at the feeders, and squirrels running scallops along the tops of the gray stone walls. — Jean Hersey

Sere grass grew in tufts out of a pale, sandy soil, no richer for the thousands of souls planted there. Red-brown moss clumped amidst blankets of lichens of pale lavender-gray. Dark, twisted shrubs prickled rising above a knobby hillock, sharp, tiny leaves turning bronze or bright red and yellow with the advancing autumn. A wrought-iron gate guarded deep shadow inside a crypt, illustrated the silence of the grave, he thought. — Antonio Dias

Break the chaings. — Pierce Brown

My chair rolls to a stop. his voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn't in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage.
"You! Troll!" Sevro shouts. "I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!" Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. "Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that? Six! Six!"
Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I'm probably mistaken, I think I see him smile. — Pierce Brown

Emma whirled and looked up. Someone stood at the top of the stairs: a young Shadowhunter with dark hair, a gleaming chakhram still in his right hand. Several others were hooked to his weapons belt. In the red light of the demon towers he seemed to glow- a tall, thin figure in dark gear against the darker black of night, the Accords Hall rising like a pale moon behind him.
"Brother Zachariah?" said Helen in amazement. — Cassandra Clare

Got it all scheduled," he noted.
"Yes," I returned.
"What's a huge-ass wedding?"
"Don't ask that," I advised. "Just show up."
His grin turned wicked and I liked it. That was, I liked it until he enquired, "You askin' me to marry you, Red?"
I wasn't even sipping coffee and, still, I chocked. Then I pushed out, "What?"
"I accept."
I shook my head and kept shaking it when I requested clarification, "Let me get this straight. Did you just accept my non-marriage offer?"
"Non-marriage?"
"I didn't ask!" My voice was rising.
"So you just wanna shack up?" he asked but didn't wait on my answer. "I'm good with that too."
Gah!
"I'm getting my huge-ass wedding," I declared.
"So you are askin' me to marry you," he noted.
Gah! Gah! Gah!!
Sharp as a tack.
Someone kill me. — Kristen Ashley

'Found the sheep too easy to kill?' I ask. 'Where'd you get the weapon?'
'Born with them.' His fingernails are bloody. — Pierce Brown

She can take a year to read something, whereas I like a book that becomes more important in my life that life itself.
When I was in the middle of 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy - which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist - you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn't have noticed. — Jeremy Clarkson

We never asked to bow. Who is he to say Red and Browns toiling to death is for the greater good? Who is he to say Pink children being harvested for rape, Obsidians and Grays for battle, is a necessity? How can he sit there and say that he alone knows what is best for me, for my family? It's not his right — Pierce Brown

Mary bring out your umbrella -
The sun shines down on this fine, fine day
But the ashes raining down forever
Are going to turn your hair to gray.
Mary keep your oars a-steady
Sail away on the rising flood
Keep your candle at the ready
Red tides can't be told from blood.
- "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play — Lauren Oliver

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.
There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.
His train of thought, the story's lifeline, beer-lubricated but no whit impeded, flashed and sputtered and coursed ahead like lightning in a topaz mist, and the loose fingers and hiccuping keys followed as fast as they could. ("The Penny-A-Worder") — Cornell Woolrich

After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only - spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring. — Willa Cather

I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
"They are broken, they are broken!" for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts -
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he -
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader. — Alfred Tennyson

On one side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand shore of the bar; on the other extended a long, curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude about such a shore. The woods are never solitary-they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its infinite mystery-We may only wander, awed and spell-bound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only-a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is in the company of the archangels. — L.M. Montgomery

Martin thought of the iron El trestles winding and stretching across the city, of department store windows and hotel lobbies, of electric elevators and street-car ads, of the city pressing its way north on both sides of the great park, of dynamos and electric lights, of ten-story hotels, of the old iron tower near the depot at West Brighton with its two steam-driven elevators rising and falling in the sky
and in his blood he felt a surge of restlessness, as if he were a steam train spewing fiery coal smoke into the black night sky as he roared along a trembling El track, high above the dark storefronts, the gaslit saloons, the red-lit doorways, the cheap beer dives, the dance halls, the gambling joints, the face in the doorway, the sudden cry in the night. — Steven Millhauser

Break the chains. — Pierce Brown

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream — Sylvia Plath

They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I'm still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation. — Pierce Brown

To prosper, your superior must prosper. — Pierce Brown

Midsummer Night was roasting hot. The shore, of red granite, glowed with the heat; the dark blood of the earth seemed to be rising from below. There was a sharp, unbearable smell of birds, of cod, of green decaying seaweed. Through the mist the huge ruddy sun loomed nearer and nearer. And in the sea, dark blood welled up to meet it - in bloated, rearing, huge white waves.
Night. The mouth of the bay between two cliffs was like a window. A window shutting out curious eyes with a white shade-white woolly fog. And all that you could see was that behind it something red was happening. ("The North") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Back at the cottage we explored the topography of my body; twigs in my hair, calves striped red and my skirt smudged in meadowtones. The forest underlined me, accentuated me, illustrated me. I felt alive in that midnight village whose dark places left their signatures on my skin, whose bites still hummed around my wrists. I didn't notice till then the thousand nettle stings rising like pearls; burning bracelets that my love kissed and rubbed with dock leaves; a folk remedy painting my pulse points green; honorary stalks. — Jalina Mhyana

The Mexicans relate that, shortly before our arrival in New Spain, there appeared a figure in the heavens of a circular form, like a carriage wheel, the colours of which were a mixture of green and red. Shortly after a second, of a similar form, made its appearance, which moved towards the rising of the sun, and joined the first. — Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

This is a trap I cannot ride away from. I guess there are those times in life. It's like staring at the ground as you fall from a height. Seeing the end coming doesn't mean you can dodge it, fix it, stop it. — Pierce Brown

'I killed their pack leader,' Sevro says when I ask why the wolves follow him. He looks me up and down and flashes me an impish grin from beneath the wolf pelt. 'Don't worry, I wouldn't fit in your skin.' — Pierce Brown

It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the "Giulia" blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water. People shouted farewells, waved furiously, held up babies for last looks they wouldn't remember. Propellers churned; handkerchiefs fluttered, and, up on deck, the balls of yarn began to spin. Red, yellow, blue, green, they untangled toward the pier, slowly at first, one revolution every ten seconds, then faster and faster as the boat picked up speed. Passengers held the yarn as long as possible, maintaining the connection to faces disappearing onshore. But finally, one by one, the balls ran out. The strings of yarn flew free, rising on the breeze. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The situation of Leh is a grand one, the great Kailas range, with its glaciers and snowfields, rising just behind it to the north, its passes alone reaching an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet; while to the south, across a gravelly descent and the Indus Valley, rise great red ranges dominated by snow-peaks exceeding 21,000 feet in altitude. — Isabella Bird

The tail of the comet slashed the dawn and in the red light of the rising sun, for a brief instant, it seemed as if the comet was bleeding across the sky. — Kathryn Lasky

Colored lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from horizon to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great veils of color swathed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun. — Celia Rees

All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students
I must not let that change. I must not become like them. I'll remember that every sin, every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom. — Pierce Brown

He reaches forward slowly, to lift the pen from my lax grip. Wearily I regard the faltering trail of ink it has tracked down my page. I have seen that shape before, I think, but it was not ink then. A trickle of drying blood on the deck of a Red-Ship, and mine the hand that spilled it? Or was it a tendril of smoke rising black against a blue sky as I rode too late to warn a village of a Red-Ship raid? Or poison swirling and unfurling yellowly in a simple glass of water, poison I had handed someone, smiling all the while? The artless curl of a strand of woman's hair left upon my pillow? Or the trail of a man's heels left in the sand as we dragged the bodies from the smoldering tower at Sealbay? The track of a tear down a mother's cheek as she clutched her Forged infant to her despite his angry cries? Like Red-Ships, the memories come without warning, without mercy. — Robin Hobb

A lot of times, I faced bullies - or the 'big dogs' at school. What I wanted 'Red Rising' to be is not necessarily an indictment on bullies, but it reflects my experiences and attitudes that I had with bullies growing up. — Pierce Brown

The radar directed flak intensifies. Like swarms of angry red-and-yellow-eyed snakes slithering up invisible ropes in the sky. The sky around them is a glittering maelstrom of light. The stars pale into insignificance. Down below the city is lit up in sections as shockwaves fan out in kaleidoscopic bursts. Shell smoke rising up from the ground. On his right a burst of flame and a thick guttering of black smoke lit up by the geometry of the searchlights. — Glenn Haybittle

Rising, the woman who had carried the jar began to dance to the music of the rebab, fevered music that was like to the flashing of the recurved blade she flourished aloft. Ever the chimings of the red-gold finger cymbals slipped through, around, and over the exigent strains, and in a minute or three (though it had grown dark) the fluting notes of a syrinx joined them, an eerie piping, more distant far in time than space, that railed against death and the desert, and like a child forlorn sobbed of wildflowers. "Flitting — Gene Wolfe

None of the billion lowReds beneath Mars would be happy if they knew what the highReds knew - that they are slaves. So is it not better to lie?"

"It is better to not make slaves. — Pierce Brown

Furi feverishly jerked his own cock. His hand moving so fast on his length, it was a blur. Syn wished he could see his lover's face, see him in the throes of passion. His head was too heavy to lift and Furi's face was buried in his damp pubic hair, his red, swollen mouth still hovering near Syn's sensitive dick, panting hot breaths on him as he howled his own release into the red-lit room, coating Syn's thigh with wet heat. Furi dropped between his thighs and rested his head on his groin, his chest rapidly rising and falling as his orgasm left him weak as well. Syn absently ran his hand through Furi's long tresses, while they both came back down to earth. Syn — A.E. Via

I feel the color in my cheeks rising again. I must be the color of The Communist Manifesto. — E.L. James

Finally the dawn came, the sky fringed with pink, and the sun bright as a coin in a spill of rising red. — Lauren Slater

In her red dress and black boots, she stood straight and tall, blue eyes flashing with righteous fury, breasts rising and falling rapidly. Se had never looked more beautiful. — Trinity Faegen

You have made me give up the hair Father gave me, the eyes Mother left me, the Color I was born to, so I will keep the name they granted me, and you can make it work. — Pierce Brown

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire
Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world

I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by your side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world"~David Gray — David Gray

I wanted Red Rising to be the Cave from the Republic. The dark cradle in which you see shadows on the wall and you think you know existence. Then they get out of the cave, and shit look at those space ships and the feuds and the size of everything.

It's hard to come right out and introduce people to a Space Opera. I wanted to lull them into one — Pierce Brown

He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except to shout the truth. He felt it building from the blood of Abel to his own, rising and spreading in the night, a red-gold tree of fire ascended as if it would consume the darkness in one tremendous burst of flame. The boy's breath went out to meet it. He knew that this was the fire that had encircled Daniel, that had raised Elijah from the earth, that had spoken to Moses and would in the instant speak to him. He threw himself to the ground and with his face against the dirt of the grave, he heard the command. GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY. The words were as silent as seed opening one at a time in his blood. — Flannery O'Connor

Pliny is a leech," I say. "A liar as much as you're an honest man."
"And that makes him dangerous. Liars make the best promises. — Pierce Brown

Dolly Parton was a hero of the Rising, and I dare you to tell any red-blooded American girl who's ever felt bad about her wardrobe differently," said Governor Kilburn. — Mira Grant

Bagehot The hunter and the hapless The decade-old fox-hunting ban has irked countryfolk, spared few foxes and damaged politics Mar 7th 2015 | From the print edition RISING on his stirrups, somewhere in the west of England, the huntsman issued the same statement he, impeccable in red coat and white stock, gives every Saturday morning of the — Anonymous

You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do. — Pierce Brown

The Lost Girls

Nomad girls are Lost Ones too,
With leaves at foot and crown;
They too seek shelter in the tress,
Drink Red and Gold and Brown.

Their circlets made of steam and rain,
Their lashes powdered ash,
They're firelight, they're fox's kill,
They're blood and sweat and scratch.

Lost Boys fly forever, and crow the rising sun.
They play all day in Neverland, their laughter mermaid-spun.
But Lost Girls live underground:
They steal from hole to hole.
They drink the shadows, wear the night,
And paint their cheeks with coal.

And when the wind turns colder,
They split a doe and climb inside.
Still-warm sinew wraps their hands,
Dead muscle soaks the light.

You'll never tell what's girl, what's beast,
Once bloody fur's been trussed-
So think your happy thoughts, Lost Boy,
Wish on your Fairy Dust. — Lauren Bird Horowitz

It's not victory that makes a man. It's his defeats. — Pierce Brown

Wise men read books about history. Strong men write them. — Pierce Brown

He pulled one of his brands out of the fire and stepped toward me, raising it. The sharp smell of red-hot metal made me sneeze--and when I looked up, the man's mouth was open with surprise.
My gaze dropped to the knife embedded squarely in his chest, which seemed to have sprouted there. But knives don't sprout, even in dungeons, I thought hazily, as the torturer fell heavily at my feet. I turned my head, half rising from the chair--
And saw the Marquis of Shevraeth standing framed in the doorway. At his back were four of his liveried equerries, with swords drawn and ready.
The Marquis strolled forward, indicated the knife with a neatly gloved hand, and gave me a faint smile. "I trust the timing was more or less advantageous?"
"More or less," I managed to say before the rushing in my ears washed over me, and I passed out cold right on top of the late torturer. — Sherwood Smith

Things are set in stone. Things are well ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now you're looking at me and you're realizing that we don't bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising, Mickey. — Pierce Brown

'And now I Carve the things I saw in my fever dreams, just as they always wished. I dreamed of you, I think. In the end, I suppose they'll wish I hadn't dreamed at all.' — Pierce Brown

When a slave must be executed, the slaves from those plantations nearby are brought to watch; a deterrent, aye? against future ill-considered action." "Indeed," Jamie said politely. "I believe that was the Crown's notion in executing my grandsire on Tower Hill after the Rising. Verra effective, too; all my relations have been quite well behaved since." I had lived long enough among Scots to appreciate the effects of that little jab. Jamie might have come at Campbell's request, but the grandson of the Old Fox did no man's bidding lightly - nor necessarily held English law in high regard. MacNeill had got the message, all right; the back of his neck flushed turkey-red, but Farquard Campbell looked amused. He uttered a short, dry laugh before turning round. — Diana Gabaldon

I do not sing. I am made for other things.
My death is senseless. It is love — Pierce Brown

He could feel the shape of his eyeballs beneath his lids, round and hot, tasty bits of jelly rolling restless to and fro, looking vainly for oblivion, while the rising sun turned his lids a dark and bloody red. — Diana Gabaldon

Skeptics might argue that pharmaceutical companies will fight anything that casts their products in a dubious light - especially if it results in people using lower doses across the board - but the truth is that, for many drug companies, reliable information on the placebo effect can't come soon enough. To pass muster, a drug must outperform placebo. But a 2001 study of antidepressant drug trials showed that while drug efficacy is rising, placebo rates are rising faster. It's almost ironic; the factors behind this are many and varied, but a significant contributor is our society's knowledge of - and belief in - the power of medicines. The pharmaceutical industry's palpable success means that unless something radical happens, it could soon be, like the Red Queen, running to stand still. — Michael Brooks

Nina turned her face to the water, looking out at the narrow houses that lined the Geldcanal. Jesper saw that the residents had filled their windows with candles, as if these small gestures might somehow push back the dark.
"I'm pretending those lights are for him," she said. She plucked a stray red petal from Matthias' chest, sighed, and released his hand, rising slowly. "I know it's time."
Jesper put his arm around her. "He loved you so much, Nina. Loving you made him better."
"Did it make a difference in the end?"
"Of course it did," said Inej. "Matthias and I didn't pray to the same god, but we knew there was something beyond this life. He went easier to the next world knowing he'd done good in this one. — Leigh Bardugo

The caterpillars are coming. They're coming. As they passed a blunt rolled with marijuana shake around the bonfire, filled plastic cups with beer from a keg in the back of John Anderson's Bronco, snuck cigarettes at the red doors that led to the make-out woods behind school. As they waited on line at the cafeteria for pizza and Tater Tots, warmed up during choral practice, and changed for gym in the locker room. Until Maddie felt something titanic rushing toward the island, gathering steam like a nor'easter barreling toward shore, and the waiting filled with a tingling urgency she knew they all felt. She felt it. Car engines revved harder, highs soared higher, buzzes and crushes burned brighter. "Look." She lifted her palm as the insect inched across. The two lines of blue and red dots on its back glimmered like spots of blood rising after a pinprick. "They're here. — Julia Fierro