2
" Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, " Wait. Wait." I was already waiting. What else was there to do?" Here you are," he said. " Look! What's this?" At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. " The death of the socialist dream," he said.He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. The moment had passed. Goodbye to all that.Easy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn't I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium - if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more - and you have to admit that I was right. And so was Benjamin's brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that, he was saying. He'd worked it out already. He knew what the future held in store. "
3
" Leo and the Notmuch, the five-year old Leo Loses his best friend (is death for children like moving away?). For a whole summer he sits in his room and makes up stories. When his mother knocks and asks what he’s doing in his room, he answers: not much. Does his miss his friend? Not much, always: not much. Leo’s stories are the Notmuch (what kind of an idea is a Notmuch? It’s not nothing, at least).
Leo and fips turned the world into a fun and exciting place. They stayed together through thick and thin. Leo is despondent without Fips, he hides away in his room. His mother gets worried and asks how he’s doing and what he’s up to in there. Not much, answers Leo, not much. He lies on the bed and grieves for Fips (a childlike depression). Then Leo begins to create a friend in his mind, a cheeky, brave, and honest friend like Fips. Leo dubs this “good monster” the notmuch (a childlike mania). Now the two of them play, they’re cheeky and brave together, Leo now answers his mother: Notmuch. The notmuch is half memory of Fips, the other half is imagination, the two halves together enable Leo to overcome grief. "
― Thomas Pletzinger
6
" Hey, aren’t you that girl from the web?” the new one asked, bending to suck my earing between his teeth.
I pulled my head away. “You got the wrong girl.”
Mr. Hawaii pulled back to take a better look at me. “No, I think you might be.” To my total bewilderment, he spun me around.
“Hey! What are you—?”
“Hey, it is you!” he yelled excitedly, drawing the attention of the crowd. “Hey, everyone, it’s Cheeky Galore! "
― Brandi Salazar , Addicted to Magic (Addicted, #1)
11
" Don’t get smart - you two are in a heap of trouble!” snarled Anderson. “Names!”
“Names?” repeated the long-haired driver. “Er — well, let’s see. There’s Wilberforce . . . Bathsheba . . . Elvendork . . .”
“And what’s nice about that one is, you can use it for a boy or a girl,” said the boy in glasses.
“Oh, our names, did you mean?” asked the first, as Anderson spluttered with rage. “You should’ve said! This here is James Potter, and I’m Sirius Black!”
“Things’ll be seriously black for you in a minute, you cheeky little — "
― J.K. Rowling , Harry Potter: The Prequel (Harry Potter, #0.5)