All Quotes

"In the Rhine itself, nearly 100 miles in length, is the most famous island of the Batavi and the Canninefates, as also other islands of the Frisii, the Chauci, the Frisiabones, the Sturii, and the Marsacii, which lie between Helium and Flevum. These are the names of the mouths into which the Rhine divides itself, discharging its waters on the north into the lakes there, and on the west into the river Mosa. At the middle mouth which lies between these two, the river, having but a very small channel, preserves its own name."

"Germany is separated from Gaul, Rhaetia, and Pannonia by the rivers Rhine and Danube; from Sarmatia and Dacia by mountains and mutual dread. The rest is surrounded by an ocean, embracing broad promontories and vast insular tracts, in which our military expeditions have lately discovered various nations and kingdoms. The Rhine, issuing from the inaccessible and precipitous summit of the Rhaetic Alps, bends gently to the west, and falls into the Northern Ocean. The Danube, poured from the easy and gently raised ridge of Mount Abnoba, visits several nations in its course, till at length it bursts out by six channels into the Pontic sea; a seventh is lost in marshes."

"I believe today is the day I become an excessively rich little bitch!"

"His tent was a dream. It was gigantic... filled with servants, and dancing girls… and belly dancers! They do incredible things with their stomachs, Cat!"

"Hey! That's not the way we did it last time. But, then I was a little girl. Now, I’m a woman. Do you want to taste my blood?"

"I have come all this way to give you something you may not even want: my virginity."

"I take the nectar of the Gods... from the belly of a goddess!"

"[About a belly dancer] Touch it... those are the muscles that drive men mad!"

"Once in a great while, a film comes along that is as provocative and controversial as the people who make it."

"The real future of Bolero is in home cassette rentals, where your fast forward and instant replay controls will supply the editing job the movie so desperately needs."

"The Hottest Erotic Film Of The Century"

"An Adventure in Ecstasy"

"An adventure in eXtasy [sic]"

"Bo Derek as Ayre "Mac" McGillvary"

"George Kennedy as Cotton"

"Andrea Occhipinti as Angel Sacristan"

"Ana Obregón as Catalina"

"Olivia d'Abo as Paloma"

"Greg Bensen as Sheik"

"Ian Cochrane as Robert Stewart"

"Mirta Miller as Evita"

"You come around a corner, away from the noise of the opening. There is only one exhibit. She stands in the spotlight, with her back to you: a sweep of pale hair on paler skin, a column of emerald silk that ends in a pool at her feet. She might be the model in a perfume ad; the trophy wife at a formal gathering; one of the guests at this very opening, standing on an empty pedestal in some ironic act of artistic deconstruction -- You hesitate, about to turn away. Her hand balls into a fist. "They told me you were coming.""

"Unlit, except for the single spotlight; unfurnished, except for the defining swath of black velvet. And a placard on a little stand. On the pedestal is Galatea."

"She is facing away from you. You cannot see her face, only her hair, and the line of her shoulder. It's hard to know what she's looking at -- the velvet backdrop, if she has her eyes open, but there's not much to see in that. Mostly, it is obvious, she is not looking at you."

"[in-game description of Galatea on placard] White Thasos marble. Non-commissioned work by the late Pygmalion of Cyprus. (The artist has since committed suicide.) Originally not an animate. The waking of this piece from its natural state remains unexplained."

"There's almost always a very unpleasant taste to animate skin. Kind of oily and putrescent. One or two experiences have taught you better than to experiment."

"[after inputting “taste curtain”] An odd idea indeed."

"[after inputting “touch breasts”] She might object to that."

"The fabric shifts, smooth and shining, under your hand. But then the warmth of her body reaches you through it, and you draw away instinctively as though scalded."

""Do you remember being carved?" you ask. You become aware of her breathing -- the slight expansion of her ribs, the soft exhalation -- natural, and yet somehow studied. "Better, I dare say, than you remember being born," she replies, her voice low and mocking."

"How could it have been painful to be carved? He wasn't cutting into you -- just around you." Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "The stone beyond the boundary of oneself is numb, but there always comes a time when the chisel or the point reaches down to where feeling begins, and strikes. Likewise the drill -- and being polished left all my skin burning and itching for days.""

"What was it like, waking up?" you ask. She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "It was night. I had been able to hear, and see, for a long time -- it was the talking, or the pain of being carved, that made me aware, I think. "But one night-- he slept in a corner of the studio-- I heard him screaming in his sleep. More loudly than usual. And I forgot that I couldn't move, and I just stepped down and woke him." She gains confidence as you do not interrupt. "At the time he seemed glad to have me there, to listen to him -- though I think he thought that I was only another dream. It was only afterward that it became strange.""

"Even as she says it, for a moment, a million tiny crystals sparkle in her skin. (An unusual and evocative effect; you haven't seen stone effects in skin since VanItallie's gargoyle series, about ten years ago. But then, the Grotesque school is pretty well dead at this point.)"

"What are you really?" you demand, troubled by the memory of the shifting of her shape, the qualities of stone that come and go at her will. "I'm not dangerous to you." She gives you a look that seems almost pitying. "Except perhaps to your sanity. But you seem hardy enough.""

"With a laugh like that of a child being let outside, she turns -- to wood, the color and style of a product of Old Kingdom Egypt. To glass, faceted, her hair scattering the downshot light to a thousand tiny points. To a sculpture of sand, to a pillar of salt, to flowing water, to flame."

"And finally her substance has fled entirely, and she is only a shadow, passing around you in a cool whisper. "I am what you think I am; I am what your treatment makes of me.""

"What do you know about life?" you ask her. (General questions: you can almost always find ones that haven't been anticipated.) "Nothing," she says, "except what I saw of his; and that seldom made any sense to me. He told me that people are born, and that they die, and that there are stages in between-- childhood, adolescence... I asked him why he didn't carve me as a child so that I could grow up." There's a pregnant pause. "I never heard him laugh so hard as when I asked him that. And he said that I certainly had the brain of a child.""

"[after inputting “think about animates” (the term for artificial intelligence artworks in-universe)] Seems these days that you don't think of anything else. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a conversation with a real person, you find yourself mentally critiquing their dialogue design, or wishing that someone had taken a little more care with skin tone. A little twisted maybe; but the study of animate design has actually led to a new understanding of how conversational pragmatics work: you only realize how many rules govern an interaction when you see them violated."

"[discussing death] Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "Mine? Or yours?" Before you can answer, she lifts one shoulder in a delicate shrug. "It doesn't matter which you mean, since I know nothing about either. You will go your way when the time comes; and I-- Who can die who is not alive?""

"[Thinking about Galatea] A bit of an enigma, really. A complex piece by someone you've never heard of. Which suggests a pseudonym or perhaps a hoax, except of course that she doesn't remind you of the work of anyone in particular. There are superficial resemblances here and there. On the whole, though, she's unique."

"You would have expected something feminine -- flowers probably, or some low predatory scent -- but she smells like brine and the cold ocean."

"I love the ocean," she says, "because it is the first thing beyond myself and him that seemed alive. I could see it through the windows of the studio when he was carving me, and I thought, by the way the waves rose and fell, that it breathed, as we did."

"[asking about sex] The question startles even you, the moment you've uttered it. She turns to face you, in a rustle of resettling skirts. "If you mean, did my artist sleep with me-- no, he didn't." No. He wouldn't have. Just look at her: she's beautiful in a crystalline way, but the more you look at particulars, the more they disturb. No one is so sleek, so unforgiving. The proportions are subtly wrong, too -- the size of the head, the shape and width of the mouth... That's it, then. You could stay and question her, and maybe find out more -- if she knows more -- about the tortured persona of the artist. But you're bored with sexual angst. It's one of those topics that everyone uses and no one has anything interesting to say about."

"You put a hand on her back, between the shoulderblades, to feel her breath rising and falling, and the faint motion of implied muscle. When you take the hand away, however, she shivers."

"Wouldn't you like to try eating sometime?" She shifts, so that she is now standing in profile to you, facing the blank wall. "I don't know," she says slowly. "I'm afraid it would make me dependent; that if I began--" "You'd be mortal like the rest of us," you finish. "That I'd feel pain more deeply," she corrects. "That I wouldn't be able to escape; that it would all be more, and worse. I saw how he suffered. Who could blame me for not wanting the same?""

"[Galatea describes being polished] "If he hadn't talked to me while it was going on I think I would have gone mad. That's when I learned the most from him. It was more effort working with the point, or the chisel. I don't know if you know this, but it takes a lot of strength to hammer marble, and even more if it's unusually hard marble. But the polishing left him with more breath, to talk...""

"When did you learn to think?" you ask. "When did you?" she retorts. "Did you notice?"

"She touches the end of one strand self-consciously, as though surprised to find it there; then shrugs. "It is just like anyone else's," she says. "I have to wash it every day, and brush it, and that, I can tell you, is not much fun. It's very fine -- see" -- and she loops a bit around her finger, and lets it go -- "and it ties itself in knots when I'm asleep.""

"She holds up one hand and flexes the fingers experimentally. "The movement," she adds with a twist of humor, "was not courtesy of his work. And I must say that I'm glad I didn't have to endure the individual manufacture of muscle and bone -- or whatever it is that I have in place of it.""

"You're not sure what to think [of her]. She looks like an animate -- mostly; she acts like one -- sometimes; she's in an animate exhibit in one of the best reputed galleries in the country. She's also an advanced piece, if she's a piece at all, by an artist (one artist, not a workshop or team) of whom you have never heard before. And you've heard of everyone."