23
" He stared down at her for a moment, wanting to heal every
cut on her soft skin. But he couldn’t, not yet. He needed to get her,
and her car, far from this place so neither he nor Kate would be
implicated in any way with the gruesome murder site.
It also meant he would have to drive.
In all his years, he had never driven an automobile. The closest he
had come was watching various assistants through the years as they
chauffeured him. He wasn’t sure he could even remember how to
start the car, but right now he had no choice.
Grudgingly, he got into the driver’s seat, and finding the lever
underneath, he pushed it back so he sat comfortably behind the
wheel. After trying three different keys, he found one that slipped into
the ignition.
From what he had seen over the past hundred years, driving was
not a complex operation, and he was an immortal with reflexes far
more keen than a human man.
How difficult could it be?
He turned the key and nearly jerked the wheel off the steering
column when the car surprised him by lurching forward. The car went
silent. The engine wasn’t running. What was he doing wrong?
He stared at the gearshift, wondering if he should move it. His
frustration reared up, but his agitation would not make the car drive
itself. He had to keep a cool head.
Not knowing what else to try, he pushed one of the pedals at his
feet to the floor and turned the key again. This time the car didn’t
move, and it roared to life. Grasping the gearshift, he jammed it into
the first position and glanced over at Kate.
Why couldn’t she have owned a car with an automatic
transmission?
Shaking his head, he put some pressure on the gas pedal and
slowly released the clutch. Thankfully the car rolled a few feet, but
without warning it jumped forward. He pressed the clutch back to the
floor before the engine lost power again.
Calisto slammed his hand against the wheel, muttering under his
breath in Spanish. At this rate it would take him all night to drive her
home.
The faded yellow convertible pitched forward again, threatening
to stall as he continued out of the parking lot, thankful it was late. The
streets were fairly empty. At least he wouldn’t get into an accident
with another car. Her car staggered ahead, lurching each time he
tried to release the clutch, bouncing and jostling them both until Kate
finally stirred and woke up.
§
“Are we out of gas or something?”
Calisto watched her with a tight smile. “Not exactly.”
Kate winced in pain when she laughed. “You can’t drive a stickshift,
can you?”
“Does it show?” Calisto pulled over, finally allowing the engine to
stall.
She nodded her head slowly to avoid more pain. “Just a little.
What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember being mugged. And I remember seeing you, but
everything after that is blank.” She watched his eyes as Calisto
reached over to brush her hair back from her face, and his touch sent
shivers through her body. This wasn’t how she had hoped she would
run into him, but she learned a long time ago fate didn’t always work
out the way you expected. "
― Lisa Kessler , Night Walker (Night, #1)
26
" Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time, exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. (" Horror: A True Tale" ) "
27
" When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus – born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death – I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about “winning the world.” His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life. He had nothing in the world and everything in God and the Spirit. "
― , The Jesus Style
28
" In the final analysis, what is it that we call popular, democratic power? Beyond the expressed will of the people, as it is supposedly formulated, there is no appeal; here we meet the absolute, the universal, the indivisible, and the immovable. There is nothing a priori, nothing anterior to democratic power; no ideas of truth, no notions of good or bad, can bind the Popular Will. This 'will' is free in the sense that it stands above all notions of value. It is egalitarian because it is reared on arithmetic equality..It is not open to any appeal, it listens to no demand for grace, no plea for compassion. Like the Sphinx, the Popular Will is immovable in its enigmatic silence. "
― Tage Lindbom , The Myth of Democracy
33
" Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog. Gentlemen of the jury: A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death. "
34
" They were worried about keeping military families strong. They were worried about the stress and strain of prolonged military service and how it would affect our military readiness the next time a Hitler-wannabe reared his ugly head. As they made a list of pros and cons for sending families overseas, they never imagined that DOD schools would be the best possible solution to nearly every problem they could envision. The most unpredictable phenomena occurred. The DOD literally created a culture of kids whose life experiences were so rich, yet so different from where they’d come from, that as they grew in years the people they most related to, the people they most wanted to be around, were other military kids who had the same shared experience. Military kids became military members—and they’ve kept us strong, our families, armed forces, our country, all of us. "
― Tucker Elliot , You Look Like A Teacher (Volume II)
