They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!' Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark.

When you spend your life taking care of mudmen, you can't help getting a little dirty yourself.

He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.

Brightlord Adolin insisted. So long as you were in here, he wouldn't leave. We tried to stop him, but the man’s a prince. We can’t storming make him do anything, not even leave. He locked himself away in the cell and we just had to live with it.

For the average person leading an ordinary life, fame holds an hypnotic attraction. Many would sooner perish than exist in anonymity. But for the unlucky few who've had notoriety forced upon them, infamy can be a sentence more damning than any prison term.

The next morning he drove the stranger’s car half way to the Registry of Motor Vehicles before he realized he could not apply for a driver’s license. He suddenly realized he had left his name at the prison.

Um, h-h-hi,” Sophie stammered, closing the door behind her. Meeting her gaze were crystal eyes like blue shards of glass.

I also become the local computer nerd. The administration brings me in to fix all the computers, I create viruses to invade at a specific day and time. They call me in, and I eradicate my own virus, only to plant another one to go into effect a couple months later. They ask me why I can't just fix the computers once and for all. I tell them to quit going to porn sites and it will stay fixed. That shuts them up every time.

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on 'society's' jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker — would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime.

I've made enough jokes about Iran's leadership that I'm sure if I showed up that I would get a nice escort - to the main prison - and then I could do a show there.