Marion Zimmer Bradley

“ His whole body shook. "I could be God, and I'm playing with burning carpets! Fran—oh, Fran, it's too much for me! I'm not God, I don't want it, I'm too small for it—I wish it was only a dream and now I could really wake up and find it never happened—oh, Fran, Fran, tell me what I am, tell me what to do!"
Aware only of pain and terror, he felt his face wet and did not even know he was sobbing.
"You're Max, Max," Fran wept, "You're Max, and I love you—"
Again the touch calmed him. ”

“ He caught her in his arms as she fell, straining her close. The physical contact of their bodies brought him back to the level of reality again, to a complete realization of Fran's plight. He tried to make his grip as firm, as reassuring as he could—to bring her back to a world in which men were not, one minute, cloaked in streaming flame, and the next minute alive and human and—
"Max!" She straightened, "You don't have any clothes on!"
"I know. I lose more pajamas that way," he said, lightly, keeping his voice casual. "Sit down, Fran, and I'll put on a pair of pants, at least." ”

“ He looked at Fran, into her, through her, beyond her.
He saw; not the immobilized figure of a frightened woman, her body helpless beneath his own on the sofa. In fact, he saw not even the sofa.
He saw; beyond the immediacy of the fields of motion contained in finite space as his body, he comprehended other patterns of sub-atomic flux. ”

“ But above it he found an area of disorder. Complexity, confusion, patterns and sub-patterns of a structure so immensely varied and subtly differentiated as to be nearly incomprehensible. The motion! Movement! Life!
It offended him. It was vulgar, teeming, unruly, impossible! He began to reach out to it....
"MAX!"
A body had flung itself at him, kicking, scratching, screaming. He was toppled back and suddenly lying on the floor, back in the narrow confines of a single body again. His head rang and her words were slowly becoming words again. ”

“ It was a very strange kind of dream—you know how sometimes you have dreams about flying? Like, you're running along on the ground, and sometimes you can jump, and pull your feet into the air, and then you paddle yourself along with your hands—? ”

“ He drew himself upright, his hands clasped, tensing, searching for words. "Like—like ice and water and steam are all the same thing, only we see them differently. We just see different aspects of the same thing, and it's all the same, all this—motion. And I could control it! I could control everything!"
"Max—"
"Yes, I know. It's frightening. I'm still afraid, and I think I've been afraid ever since I woke up from that dream. I'm afraid to really try anything—oh, thank God you came, Fran! Thank God! ”

“ Easy, for God's sake, easy, the girl's on the ragged edge of hysterics. Take the light touch.
"Afraid of me? Now that I'm fully clothed again and didn't even attempt felonious rape?"
"Don't laugh," she said, finding her voice. "I know what you're trying to do. But—don't. And don't tell me that I didn't see—what I saw." Her eyes moved quickly, a little rabbit movement, to the charred carpet, and away again.
"Fran." He seated himself beside her and took her face in his hands. "I'm not denying anything. ”

“ I'm not a—a nuclear physicist, but it sounds as if you were trying to put the theory of atoms and force-fields into one word. Like—matter not being solid but just little bits of loose energy whirling around and building up into atoms and the atoms into molecules. ”