21
" A hundred years or more, she's bent her crown
in storm, in sun, in moonsplashed midnight breeze.
surviving all the random vagaries
of this harsh world. A dense - twigged veil drifts down
from crown along her trunk - mourning slow wood
that rustles tattered, in a hint of wind
this January dusk, cloudy, purpling
the ground with sudden shadows.
How she broods -
you speculate - on dark surprise and loss,
alone these many years, despondent, bent,
her bolt-cracked mate transformed to splinters, moss.
Though not alone, you feel the sadness of a
twilight breeze. There's never enough love;
the widow nods to you. Her branches moan. "
― Lauren Lipton
24
" Oh heaven and hell, stop with the tears. Given the day Sarah had just had, the tears were logical. But watching her face crumple, hearing the gut-deep harsh sobs, filled Rukh with an irrational need to pull her into his arms, wrap her in a hug.
As soon as the urge had gelled into conscious thought, his essence hardened into visibility and his arms slid up around her shivering, wet body.
Sarah’s eyes popped open and she staggered back with a yell.
His arms tightened around her, steadying her, keeping her close. Well, shit. At least, she’d stopped
crying.
Fear-bright green eyes stared at him instead.
Given he was an assassin, sent to kill her, her response was natural, even intelligent. Yet, bitterness churned in his gut at the thought of her fearing him.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”
“Am I hallucinating?” Her question came out as a croak.
“Yes, yes you are.” That seemed a much better answer than the truth.
She pinned him with her dark, direct gaze. “You’re just a figment of my imagination. A fantasy?”
“Yes.” He didn’t dare move.
“Then why are you still wearing clothes? "
― Mina Khan
27
" Draco, do it, or stand aside so one of us -" screeched the woman, but at that precise moment the door to the ramparts burst open once more and there stood Snape, his wand clutched in his hand as his black eyes swept the scene, from Dumbledore slumped against the wall, to the four Death Eaters, including the enraged werewolf, and Malfoy." We've got a problem, Snape," said the lumpy Amycus, whose eyes and wand were fixed alike upon Dumbledore, " the boy doesn't seem able -" But somebody else had spoken Snape's name, quite softly." Severus ..." The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape said nothing, but walked forwards and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face." Severus ... please ..." Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. " Avada Kedavra! "
28
" Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. "
― Philip Pullman , The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)
33
" You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. "
― Mary Oliver
37
" Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries—Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Café Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Café Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own. "
― Stefan Zweig , The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig
