1
" Who're you going with, then?" said Ron." Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment." What?" said Ron, taken aback. " You've already asked her?" " Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, " Oi! Angelina!" Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him." What?" She called back." Want to come to the ball with me?" Angelina gave Fred a sort of appraising look." All right, then," she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face." There you go," said Fred to Harry and Ron, " piece of cake. "
6
" How I wish I was like the water,
Flowing so freely with every drop
Let my every emotion wonder,
No need to start, nor even stop
How I wish I was like the fire,
Burning with every flame up
Leaving a trace of hot desire
As a Phoenix raises its' wings up
How I wish I was like the earth,
Raising each flower from the ground
Seeing the beauty of death and birth
And then returning to the ground
How I wish I was like the wind,
Hearing each whisper, sound and thought
A lonesome and wandering little wind,
Shattering all that has been sought
Oh, how I wish I was where you are,
Not separated by empty space, so far
It seems like we're galaxies apart,
But we find hope within our heart
And how I wish I was all of the above,
So I can come below and yet forget,
The beauty of angels which come down like a dove
And demons who love with no regret. "
― Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache
8
" Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no. "
― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)
12
" Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line.
There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now. "
― Christopher Hitchens , Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
13
" The light changed slightly. Mari looked up and over at one wall. There was now a narrow, roughly door-shaped hole in it. Standing in the hole was Mage Alain. Mari stood up, realizing that her mouth was hanging open. That wall was solid. I felt it. There wasn't any opening. She watched as the Mage took two shaky steps into the cell, then paused, some of the strain leaving his face. She blinked, wondering what she had just seen, as the hole in the wall vanished as if it had never been. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. ...Mari took a long slow breath. 'They use smoke and mirrors and other 'magic' to make commons think they can create temporary holes in walls and things like that. It's all nonsense.' " Mages actually can make real holes in walls." " No." Her head hurting with increased intensity, Mari glowered at the Mage. " You didn't make a hole in the wall?" " I made the illusion of a hole in the illusion of the wall." Mari looked at Mage Alain for what felt like a long time, trying to detect any sign of mockery or lying. But he seemed perfectly sincere. And unless she had completely lost her mind, he had just walked through that solid wall. ..." We can get out the same way that you got in?" Mari asked. " Through imaginary holes in the imaginary wall?" She wondered how her guild would feel about seeing that in her report. Actually, she didn't have to wonder, but she wasn't about to turn down a chance at escape. The Mage took a deep breath and swayed on his feet. " No." " No?" " Unfortunately—" Alain collapsed into a seated position on the cot next to her—" the effort of finding you has exhausted me. There were several walls to get through. I can do no more for some time. I am probably incapable of any major effort until morning." He shook his head. " I did not plan this well. Maybe the elders are right and seventeen is simply too young to be a Mage." Mari stared at him. " Are you telling me that you came to rescue me, following a metaphorical thread through imaginary holes, but now that you're in the same cell with me you can't get us out?" " Yes, that is correct. This one erred." " That one sure did. Now instead of one of us being stuck in here, we're both stuck in here." The Mage gave her a look which actually betrayed a trace of irritation. He must have really been exhausted for such a feeling to show. " I do not have much experience with rescues. Are you always so difficult? "
15
" Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It *is*--is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.
To be nothing in the self-effacement of humility, yet, for the sake of the task, to embody its whole weight and importance in your earing, as the one who has been called to undertake it. To give to people, works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute, and to take, simply and freely, what belongs to it by reason of its identity. Praise and blame, the winds of success and adversity, blow over such a life without leaving a trace or upsetting its balance. "
― Dag Hammarskjöld , Markings
18
" On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly... "
― Rabih Alameddine , The Angel of History
19
" Somebody said it couldn't be done.But he with a chuckle replied,That maybe it couldn't, but he would be oneWho wouldn't say so 'till he'd tried.So he buckled right in with a trace of a grinOn his face. If he worried, he hid it.He started to sing as he tackled the thingThat couldn't be done. And he did.Somebody scoffed, " Oh, you'll never do thatAt least no one ever has done it." But he took off his coat, and he took off his hat,And the first thing we know, he'd begun it.With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,Without any doubting or " quit-it" .He started to sing as he tackled the thingThat couldn't done. And he did it.There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done.There are thousands to prophesy failure.There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,The dangers that wait to assail youBut just buckle in, with a bit of a grin;Just take off your coat and go to it.Just start in to sing as yout tackle the thingThat cannot be done--and you'll do it! "
