Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years.

Il Diavolo raggiunse l’infinito. Lo chiamava così, perché lo associava alla spinta creatrice primordiale, cui assistette quando il suo giovane cuore aveva ancora la massa del sole, e quel cuore pulsava ogni due secondi emettendo la luce più intensa che si avesse l’umiltà di mirare. Il Diavolo fissò l’infinito. Al suo cospetto, breve appariva il tempo da cui vagava tra i meandri oscuri dell’inferno, trascurabili i sensi di colpa e le perplessità che lo avevano attanagliato per tutta la vita, limitato il sapere che lo colmava. Il Diavolo divenne l’infinito. Non era il cosmo a delinearsi, bensì un uomo, o qualcosa più di un uomo, ma meno di un dio.

RIDE A WHITE SWAN""Ride it on out like a bird in the skyway,Ride it on out like you were a bird,Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam,Ride it all out like you were a bird.Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old daysWear a tall hat and a Tattooed gownRide a white swan like the people of the Beltane,Wear your hair long,babe,you can't go wrong.Catch a bright star and place it on your forehead,Say a few spells and baby,there you go,Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder,And in the morning you'll know all you know.Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old daysWear a tall hat and a Tattooed gownRide a white swan like the people of the Beltane,Wear your hair long, babe ,you can't go wrong.Da di di da, da di di da

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

HARV appeared in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. “You really should read your e-mails from Randy more carefully,” he lectured.“I skim them,” I protested.“Well, if you skimmed them more carefully you would know that prolonged exposure to stealth mode may lead to side effects.”“I can handle . . .”“Impotence.” HARV smiled.“Oh,” I said.“Randy hasn’t really tested it on humans. It’s extra tough to get volunteers for those types of experiments,” HARV said. “Though he has computer simulated it and the results tend to support this conclusion.”“Let’s try to limit our use of stealth mode from now on,” I said.

Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's a god who will... who obsessed the degree to which people worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him.

But life is beautiful, Sariel!’ Gabriel said, trying to convince him. ‘Watch the sunrise sometime lying in the scented flowers of the field, or the shooting stars at the end of summer! Read a couple of really exciting books or lose yourself in the unselfconscious smiles of children. Have a swim in a clear mountain lake or take a run among trees clothed in autumn colours. If you can see the good in Earth, your own existence will become the richer for it!’‘That all sounds very well and good, but you haven’t convinced me,’ the deep-voiced angel murmured and Ariel laughed. ‘My friend, Gabriel was very gently trying to suggest that you should fall in love and that will better dispose you to the world!

«Non ti è chiara una cosa, voglio godermi il calore del tuo corpo fino in fondo. Sai che voglio dire? Non vorrei consumare prima della tua consacrazione alla famiglia,ma è così difficile resisterti», disse accarezzandomi il viso, mentre l’altra mano mi sollevava la veste scorrendo sulla gamba. Il suo tocco gelido mi fece venire i brividi.«Cassian, ti prego», mugolai.«Shhhh… Rilassati», disse lui sfiorando le mie labbra con le sue.«Non vorrai approfittare così della situazione, sei un gentil uomo!», ribattei agitata.«Magari un assaggino posso concedermelo», sussurrò vicino al mio orecchio, mentre la sua mano era arrivata alla coscia.

The last great bat­tle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn it­self. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my sol­diers had fallen, and the ac­cursed woman, my sis­ter, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the ter­race. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one an­other’s faces. She flashed her hor­ri­ble, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Vic­tory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Vic­tory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the De­plorable Word. A mo­ment later I was the only liv­ing thing be­neath the sun.

So why hadn’t he confronted me? Why hadn’t he torn through my lies and forced me to own up that I’d caught him in a Binding? It wasn’t like he could just brush this off. And that smile before he left, as if he’d been pulling my leg to see my reaction…I shook my head. Ryan was certainly providing his fair share of riddles. There was the tiny possibility he was still clueless and was just teasing me, but I doubted anyone could be that naïve. Even him. My mind began to tick over, desperate for an answer. Only one other thing stuck out in his behaviour. Maybe he was going for a fair exchange strategy. He wouldn’t question my secrets, in the hope I wouldn’t question his.Now that was naïve.

The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it’s hard work trying to track someone’s movements using CCTV – especially if they’re on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own systems, as do pubs, clubs and buses. When you walk around London it is important to remember that Big Brother may be watching you, or he could be having a piss, or reading the paper or helping redirect traffic around a car accident or maybe he’s just forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.

Not a wonder you are out camping with us princess,” Rizz said dryly.Falita gave a clearing snort of her opposite nostril and looked up. “Why's that?”“One can't go snorting and blowing snot all over a castle. It would ruin the décor!”Falita ignored the comment. “A bath would certainly freshen things up.”“You've bathed three times in five days. How many more baths do you need?” Artamos asked.“Enough to stay clean, and I don't recall either of you bathing on this trip.”“I don't need to Princess,” Rizz replied. “I have my own naturally sweet odor.”Falita scrunched up her nose, “I'm aware of that, and it is not pleasing in camp.

Tant que mes jambes me permettent de fuir, tant quemes bras me permettent de combattre, tant quel'expérience que j'ai du monde me permet de savoirce que je peux craindre ou désirer, nulle crainte : jepuis agir. Mais lorsque le monde des hommes mecontraint à observer ses lois, lorsque mon désir briseson front contre le monde des interdits, lorsque mesmains et mes jambes se trouvent emprisonnées dansles fers implacables des préjugés et des cultures,alors je frissonne, je gémis et je pleure. Espace, jet'ai perdu et je rentre en moi-même. Je m'enferme aufaite de mon clocher où, la tête dans les nuages, jefabrique l'art, la science et la folie.

Although now long estranged,Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Lightthrough whom is splintered from a single Whiteto many hues, and endlessly combinedin living shapes that move from mind to mind.Though all the crannies of the world we filledwith Elves and Goblins, though we dared to buildGods and their houses out of dark and light,and sowed the seed of dragons- 'twas our right(used or misused). That right has not decayed:we make still by the law in which we're made.Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

As McMasters raised the shotgun, the man removed his glasses. There were fields of stars where his eyes should have been. But they weren’t reflections of the night sky. These stars were a glimpse of a dim and distant future where the very laws of physics had been reduced to relics of a forgotten age. Feeble as dying embers, they were the palsied mourners at time’s wake.McMasters could hear the ultimate silence and feel the biting cold of the one true void. The promise of the eternal nothing beckoned to him. There was a sort of peace in the death it represented, not the death of mind and body but of shape and form. It was the final revelation, the casting off of life’s illusion in favor of the void’s embrace. from "Riders of the Necronomicon