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1 " The Everlasting Staircase" Jeffrey McDanielWhen the call came, saying twenty-four hours to live,my first thought was: can't she postpone her exitfrom this planet for a week? I've got places to do,people to be. Then grief hit between the ribs,said disappear or reappear more fully. so I boardeda red eyeball and shot across America,hoping the nurses had enough quarters to keepthe jukebox of Grandma's heart playing. She grew uppoor in Appalachia. And while world war IIfunctioned like Prozac for the Great Depression,she believed poverty was a double feature,that the comfort of her adult years was merelyan intermission, that hunger would hobble back,hurl its prosthetic leg through her window,so she clipped, clipped, clipped -- became the JacquesCousteau of the bargain bin, her wetsuitstuffed with coupons. And now --pupils fixed, chindangling like the boots of a hanged man --I press my ear to her lampshade-thin chestand listen to that little soldier march toward whateverplateau, or simply exhaust his arsenal of beats.I hate when people ask if she even knew I was there.The point is I knew, holding the one-sidedconversation of her hand. Once I believed the heartwas like a bar of soap -- the more you use it,the smaller it gets; care too much and it'll snap offin your grasp. But when Grandma's last breathwaltzed from that room, my heart openedwide like a parachute, and I realized she didn't die.She simply found a silence she could call her own. "
2 " I put on the boots and kicked some monster ass. "
― Jim Butcher , Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, #4)
3 " I’m not attached to anything.I’m attached to what it feels it's my duty, to do my duty.I think that I will die with the boots on. "
― Fidel Castro
4 " Aside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young psychopaths. "
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
5 " Then the prophetess said to the witcher: " I shall give you this advice: wear boots made of iron, takein hand a staff of steel. Then walk until the end of the world. Help yourself with your staff to break the land before you and wet it with your tears. Go through fire and water, do not stop along the way,do not look behind you. And when the boots are worn, when your staff is blunt, once the wind and the heat has dried your eyes so that your tears no longer flow, then at the end of the world you mayfind what you are looking for and what you love...The witcher went through fire and water, he did not look back. He did not take iron boots or a staffof steel. He took only his sword. He did not listen to the words of prophets. And he did well because she was a bad prophet. "
6 " As long as you know 'to let' means to rent and not a place to pee, you’re all set to travel in the UK. The lifts and the boots and everything else don’t really matter. "
― Tucker Elliot , The Rainy Season
7 " What did you see when you died?" He has that tenative half smile, like he's almost embarrassed by what he's saying. " Because I'm guessing it wasn't the Sea of Tranquility." And when I look at him, I'm not so sure it wasn't.“Where did you go?" His voice drops just slightly and loses even the suggestion of a smile.He's watching me like he's not sure he's allowed to ask the question, and he's not even sure he wants the answer. I can almost see his grandfather's words and Josh's doubts about them swimming in his head. On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if the my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.I don't say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at his face before I give him my last secret.And then I tell him." Your garage. "
8 " But then, staring at the label on one crate, which readSWORD-CANE-DLUBECK SHOE TREE-HORASUITS (3)-HORAASSORTED HANDKERCHIEFS (6)-HORAJosef felt a bloom of dread in his belly, and all at once he was certain that it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved. Orderly or chaotic, well inventoried and civil or jumbled and squabbling, the Jews of Prague were dust on the boots of the Germans, to be whisked off with an indiscriminate broom. Stoicism and an eye for detail would avail them nothing. In later years, when he remembered this moment, Josef would be tempted to think that he had suffered a premonition, looking at those mucilage-caked labels, of the horror to come. At the time it was a simpler matter. The hair stood up on the back of his neck with a prickling discharge of ions. His heart pulsed in the hollow of his throat as if someone had pressed there with a thumb. And he felt, for an instant, that he was admiring the penmanship of someone who had died. "
― Michael Chabon , The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
9 " Steven Gerrard was someone I looked up to massively. I'd always try to copy him, right down to the boots he was wearing. It was his attitude on the pitch that stood out - you could really see how much he hated losing. "
10 " There are one or two very good women military historians who use imagination, great study and research; they can put themselves in the boots of the soldier. "
