Gene Doucette

Some new words from Adam the Immortal

As you all know, Hellenic Immortal, the second book in the Immortal series, is going to be released on April 5th, 2012.  I’ve already shared some choice words of wisdom from Adam from the first book.  Below are a few from the new novel.  Enjoy!

…One of the kicks I get out of cards and dice is that both were once used for telling the future, so the idea of employing them in games of chance just cracks me up.  Every time I crap out at the table I’m thinking not only did I lose my money, I also just foretold a drought for my village.

I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what.  For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.

We spotted the Parthenon in the distance… [which] made me feel better until the moonlight broke from the clouds and I saw how crumbled it was.  I had outlasted stone, and if that’s not a humbling discovery I don’t know what is.

It’s easy to see how the werewolf mythos ended up conflated with the supposed power of moonlight…  I always thought it was terribly inconvenient.  I mean, if you’re going to be a monster, wouldn’t you rather be one during the new moon?

Pretending to be a god is almost always a really bad idea, and I absolutely do not recommend it.

It took me a few minutes longer than it should have to get back into the room thanks to the electronic key card, which I’m adding to the long list of modern improvements I don’t care for.  I just can’t get the hang of them.  And by the time I do the world will probably have moved on to something even more annoying.  On the positive side we seem to be getting closer to “open sesame” actually working, so I have that to look forward to.

Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record.  Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important.  But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.

When you find out the government of a particular nation is actively searching for you, it’s almost always in your best interest to get out of that nation as quickly as possible.

I realized how very much I missed being able to sit down opposite another human and compare experiences.  Long periods of isolation from the tribe of Man always got me feeling this way eventually, to the extent that even the most mundane of long-ago conversations began to take on a certain romantic quality in hindsight.  And when you’re looking back longingly at a centuries-old discussion on the subject of who farted, it’s time to go find someone to talk to.

The first time I saw an automobile it nearly ran me over, and that’s pretty much colored how I’ve felt about them since.

I do not, as a rule, get involved in family politics.  It’s almost always messy, generally revolves around distant slights I don’t have a hope of understanding, and all parties tend to be ridiculously unreasonable.  Plus, depending on the family, it can get you killed.

The Athenians defeated the Trojans, the Persians defeated the Athenians, the Persians defeated Spartans, the Athenians and the Spartans defeated the Persians, the Spartans defeated the Athenians, the Thebans defeated the Spartans, and the Macedonians defeated everybody.  So you can understand why I didn’t go out of my way to establish a firm residence anywhere in the Greek sphere; sometimes I was afraid to even sit down.