Diamonds In The Shadow Quotes

Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessings few, But dreams tonight will shelter you. Let the vampire's creaking wing Hide the stars while banshees sing; Let the ghouls gorge all night long; Dreams will keep you safe and strong. Skeletons with poison teeth, Risen from the world beneath, Ogre, troll, and loup-garou, Bloody wraith who looks like you, Shadow on the window shade, Harpies in a midnight raid, Goblins seeking tender prey, Dreams will chase them all away. Dreams are like a magic cloak Woven by the fairy folk, Covering from top to toe, Keeping you from winds and woe. And should the Angel come this night To fetch your soul away from light, Cross yourself, and face the wall: Dreams will help you not at all.

The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.

As if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty." Diamonds might be blinding in their beauty, but they were also the hardest and sharpest gems in the world. They could cut you or grind you down, smash and slice you apart. Malcolm, deranged with love, had not thought of that. But Julian could think of nothing else.

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

If I should see your eyes again, I know how far their look would go -- Back to a morning in the park With sapphire shadows on the snow. Or back to oak trees in the spring When you unloosed my hair and kissed The head that lay against your knees In the leaf shadow's amethyst. And still another shining place We would remember -- how the dun Wild mountain held us on its crest One diamond morning white with sun. But I will turn my eyes from you As women turn to put away The jewels they have worn at night And cannot wear in sober day.

The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, ready to surround her, to lift her up, to carry her away with only Ariel’s silk-clad arms wrapped about her to keep her from falling. Spirare, they whispered to her like an incantation. Breathe us in. Bertie didn’t mean to, but she inhaled, and everything inside her was a spring morning, a rose opening its petals to the sun, the light coming through the wavering glass of an old, diamond-paned window. Tendrils of wind reached for Bertie with a coaxing hand. Release him, and he will love you.

Somewhere behind me, Zia yelled, "Hippo!" Which I thought was a little late. She stumbled toward me over the rocking deck, the tip of her staff on fire. Our ghostly pal Setne floated behind her, grinning with delight. "There is it!" Setne shook his diamond pink rings. "Told ya Apophis would send a monster to kill you." "You're so smart!" I shouted. "Now, how do we stop it?

Each time we bow to the feet of anything we find riveting, the mind rises to be surprised with new crowning diamonds of creativity.

As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind- of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which cloud forever and shadows form, dreams persisted; and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if you questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumph, happiness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extra ordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand which would render the possessor secure. Moreover softened and acquiescent, the spring with their bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloud about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and fights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.

The night stayed outside. She was surprised. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Instead, blue things flew in, pieces of glass or tin, or necklaces of blue diamond, perhaps. The air was the blue of a pool when there are shadows, when clouds cross the turquoise surface, when you suspect something contagious is leaking, something camouflaged and disrupted. There is only this infected blue enormity, elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it's never going to forget.

...As if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty... Diamonds might be blinding in their beauty, but they were also the hardest and sharpest gems in the world. They could cut you or grind you down, smash and slice you apart. Malcolm, deranged with love, had not thought of that. But Julian could think of nothing else.

A true diamond never over shadows... it's the brilliance of the subtle shine that's the most attractive.

His blue eyes brightened with a smile. 'I did.' He looked over his shoulder, as if making sure her mom wasn't looking. The he pulled her against him and kissed her. A soft kiss. 'I got you something,' He whispered, his lips breathing words against hers. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring. A gold ring with a large diamond. A beautiful, teardrop-shaped diamond that looked like an engagement ring. Kylie's breath caught. 'It was my grandmother's ring. In her letter she wrote you should have it. And before you start panicking, let me say that I know maybe we're too young to call it an engagement, That's why I got you this too.' He pulled out a gold chain 'I want you to wear it around your neck. Call it a promise- A promise that when you do slip a ring on that finger...' He ran his hand down to her left hand. 'That it'll be my ring.' Emotion rose in her chest 'You don't have to give me anything for me to give you that promise.

Morning Song A diamond of a morning Waked me an hour too soon; Dawn had taken in the stars And left the faint white moon. O white moon, you are lonely, It is the same with me, But we have the world to roam over, Only the lonely are free.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. —Oscar Wilde

It’s just a two-man con,” said Shadow. “Like the bishop and the diamond necklace and the cop. Like the guy with the fiddle, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle, and the poor sap in between them who pays for the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game.

I watched the shadow of our plane hastening below us across hedges and fences, rows of poplars and canals … Nowhere, however, was a single human being to be seen. No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding. One sees the places where they live and the roads that link them, one sees the smoke rising from their houses and factories, one sees the vehicles in which they sit, but one sees not the people themselves. And yet they are present everywhere upon the face of the earth, extending their dominion by the hour, moving around the honeycombs of towering buildings and tied into networks of a complexity that goes far beyond the power of any one individual to imagine, from the thousands of hoists and winches that once worked the South African diamond mines to the floors of today's stock and commodity exchanges, through which the global tides of information flow without cease. If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end, I thought, as we crossed the coastline and flew out over the jelly-green sea.

But I see you're not standing in a bleedin' shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin' shape, you're silhouetted against the bleedin' light and your sabre's shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep's bleedin' ear'ole! Explain!" "It's because of the one C, sarge!" said Polly, still staring straight ahead. "And that is?" "Colour, sarge! I'm wearing bleedin' red and white in a bleedin' grey forest, sarge!

Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do. A row of shining hubcaps on sticks appeared in the front yard of the Burkes’ house. A wedding present from the bride’s father. For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat’s blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.

The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream.

Sometimes, someone you have known all your life becomes no longer familiar to you, but strange in a marvelous way, as if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty. -Malcom Fade, Lord of Shadows

The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a grey taffeta frock with a very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her old diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women, Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful - more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women - and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men, is like a righteous man working at his good deeds even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward.

Pete slept too, his chin resting on his chest. He dreamed as well. A diamond turned on his forehead. A tree. He was a landscape. He was covered with trees. He was the Yaak. He was Glacier. He was all the tremendous valleys of western Montana, cloud shadows grazing over him. Storm fronts broke against his nose. He was sparsely populated. He was a city. He teemed with highways and lights. He dreamed he had a sister, a beautiful girl, and in the dream he reasoned out that the girl was Rachel and what he was actually dreaming was a spirit inside of his, a sibling she’d never had, a son. He dreamed that we all contain so many masses and that people are simply potentialities, instances, cases. That all of life can be understood as casework. That DFS was a kind of priesthood.

Just when I despaired -- she was there, filling me as a melody fills a cottage. I was with her, running beside the Acis when we were a child. I knew the ancient villa moated by a dark lake, the view through the dusty windows of the belvedere, and the secret space in the odd angle between two rooms where we sat at noon to read by candlelight. I knew the life of the Autarch's court, where poison waited in a diamond cup. I learned what it was for one who had never seen a cell or felt a whip to be a prisoner of the torturers, what dying meant, and death. I learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at last fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories merely -- memories I had possessed in plenty before. I held her poor, cold hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of an apprentice, nor the fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters.

That autumn, I kept coming back to Hopper’s images, drawn to them as if they were blueprints and I was a prisoner; as if they contained some vital clue about my state. Though I went with my eyes over dozens of rooms, I always returned to the same place: to the New York diner of Nighthawks, a painting that Joyce Carol Oates once described as “our most poignant, ceaselessly replicated romantic image of American loneliness”... Green shadows were falling in spikes and diamonds on the sidewalk. There is no colour in existence that so powerfully communicates urban alienation, the atomisation of human beings inside the edifices they create, as this noxious pallid green, which only came into being with the advent of electricity, and which is inextricably associated with the nocturnal city, the city of glass towers, of empty illuminated offices and neon signs.

In the sky the stars look like the crushed dust of jewels—powdered ruby and sapphire and diamond.

Those historical inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies.

It’s not funny,” I protested, but found myself laughing anyway. It was Lyonya’s gift, I’d already come to realize—he could bring laughter like a stray thread of sunshine to brighten even the most shadowed room.

A moon of unsurpassable brilliance flooded the silent landscape with a cruel glare of greenish light, which traced sharp inky shadows of the trees on the rounded white folds. The snow crystals caught and reflected the moonlight upon a myriad facets until I appeared to be walking in a world of sparkling diamonds. The frightful stillness of the woodland at midnight was almost startling – everything seemed to be frost-bound and nerveless. Even the icy air seemed frozen into immobility. The crisp crunch of my footfall appeared to be an unpardonable intrusion, while the scars they made upon the smooth field of scintillating white seemed a positive sacrilege.

No doubt, the flakes of snow falling over him carried ashen nuclei. John tried to concentrate on those tiny flecks of carbon at the center of each snowflake. He tried to think of their elemental futures. Perhaps a hundred thousand years from now they would become tiny diamonds.

I have a gift for you.” “Is it the firebird?” “Was that what you wanted? Should have told me sooner.” He reached into his pocket and placed something atop the wall. Light glinted off an emerald ring. The lush green stone at its center was bigger than my thumbnail and surrounded by stars of tiny diamonds. “Understatement is overrated,” I said on a shaky breath. “I love it when you quote me.” Nikolai tapped the ring. “Console yourself knowing that, should you ever punch me while wearing it, you’ll probably take my eye out. And I’d very much like you to. Wear it, that is. Not punch me.” “Where did you get this thing?” “My mother gave it to me before she left. It’s the Lantsov emerald. She was wearing it at my birthday dinner the night we were attacked. Curiously enough, that was not the worst birthday I’ve had.” “No?” “When I was ten, my parents hired a clown.

MY DREAMS TOOK me many places: sometimes back to a windswept firebase on the top of an orange hill gouged with shell holes; a soft, mist-streaked morning with ducks rising against a pink sun while my father and I crouched in the blind and waited for that heart-beating moment when their shadows would race across the cattails and reeds toward us; a lighted American Legion baseball diamond, where at age seventeen I pitched a perfect game against a team from Abbeville and a beautiful woman I didn’t know, perhaps ten years my senior, kissed me so hard on the mouth that my ears rang.

While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows.

And because of Him, we get to be part of that Light too. The matchwood—lit by His fire, touched to the candle’s wick. We’re how His light is carried on. We’re what pierced the darkness. They were the immortal diamond…They didn’t have to fight them. They could just hold the light. The peace buoyed her…

That’s all.” Kostia blew out a long breath. “I’m just—I’m not waving you off to war without telling you I love you.” I was shivering with cold and something else. My mouth burned. I reached out, tangling my hand in his shirt again, but unable—for the first time in our partnership—to look my shadow in the eye. “I feel it, too,” I heard myself say, so quietly. “Maybe I’ve felt it for a long time. But I’m still . . . mourning my dead.” All my dead, not just Lyonya. Still fighting my way free. Kostia’s fingers folded over mine. “So am I.” He released my hand, took the canoe by its prow, and began towing it back toward shore.

The shadow of your cheekbones Amidst the moonless sky The constellations shape your face The stars, your contoured lines Galactic eyes stare into mine Entranced, I trace your face Lost inside the orbit Of star-crossed, twisted fate Outlined in the exosphere The diamond studded abyss Your stellar silhouette Has left my soul eclipsed.

Meridian First daylight on the bittersweet-hung sleeping porch at high summer; dew all over the lawn, sowing diamond- point-highlighted shadows; the hired man's shadow revolving along the walk, a flash of milkpails passing; no threat in sight, no hint anywhere in the universe, of that apathy at the meridian, the noon of absolute boredom; flies crooning black lullabies in the kitchen, milk-soured crocks, cream separator still unwashed; what is there to life but chores and more chores, dishwater, fatigue, unwanted children; nothing to stir the longueur of afternoon except possibly thunderheads; climbing, livid, turreted alabaster lit up from within by splendor and terror -- forded lightening's split-second disaster.

The following morning, after those goals were met, Marcus and I were back on the road, off to the Potato State. “Gem State,” Marcus corrected when he heard me call it that on our drive. “What?” “Idaho’s the Gem State, not the Potato State.” “Are you sure?” I asked, making no attempt to hide my skepticism. “I hear about Idaho potatoes all the time. No one’s ever like, ‘Wow, my engagement ring has a rare Idaho diamond in it.’” A smile played on his lips as he kept his eyes on the road. “Pretty sure,” he said. I wasn’t masochistic enough to argue random trivia with a former Alchemist, but when we crossed the border into Idaho and started seeing license plates that said FAMOUS POTATOES, I felt pretty confident about who was in the right on this topic.

Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o’er the dim weeping dawn As to Josie’s side I returned at last, And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov’d best Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast! While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years Seem’d mingling their voices with the moaning flood: Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith, My true love’s shadow lamenting stood. But the sudden sun kiss’d the cold, cruel mist Into dancing show’rs of diamond dew, And the dark flowing stream laugh’d back to his beam, And the lark soared aloft in the blue: While no phantom of night but a form of delight Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy, And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.

Everyone fails, Lyudmila. I’ve failed. My husband has failed—you think all his New Deal proposals were dazzling successes? He has proposed initiatives that have fallen flat; he has espoused positions for which he has rightly been condemned; he has hosts of enemies who would happily see him dead.” A shadow crossed her face at that. “He has failed at more than most men ever try … but better that than not to try at all.

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

In seconds, the room flooded with wide-eyed girls wanting to meet the artist of the butterfly stories. Stories about healing and redemption. Love and friendship. Stories about shifting shadows and an armory full of color to drive the darkness away. "Emerald Dawn rises early before her sisters wake. With her smile, she charms the sun and chases clouds away. Diamonds hide among the silvery dew. Rubies shimmer in the roses. And she tiptoes through the castle garden to find their hiding spaces.

Her dream began with winter darkness. Out of this darkness came a great hand, fisted. It was a man's hand, powerful and hollowed by shadows in the wells between the bones and tendons. The fist opened and in the long plain of the palm lay three small pieces of coal. Slowly the hand closed, causing within the fist a tremendous pressure. The pressure began to generate a white heat and still it increased. There was a sense of weighing, crushing time. She seemed to feel the suffering of the coal with her own body, almost beyond the point of being borne. At last she cried out to the hand, Stop it! Will you never end it! Even a stone cannot bear this limit...even a stone...! After what seemed like too long a time for anything molecular to endure, the torments in the fist relaxed. The fist turned slowly and very slowly opened. Diamonds, three of them. Three clear and brilliant diamonds, shot with light, lay in the good palm. A deep voice called to her, Deborah! and then gently, Deborah this will be you.

some parts of the world developed literate industrial societies with metal tools, other parts developed only nonliterate farming societies, and still others retained societies of hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Those historical inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies. While those differences constitute the most basic fact of world history, the reasons for them remain uncertain and controversial. This puzzling question of their origins was posed to me 25 years ago in a simple, personal form.

He had panicked. Tessier cursed his own stupidity. He should have remained in the column where he would have been protected. Instead, he saw an enemy coming for him like a revenant rising from a dark tomb, and had run first instead of thinking. Except this was no longer a French stronghold. The forts had all been captured and surrendered and the glorious revolutionary soldiers had been defeated. If the supply ships had made it through the blockade, Vaubois might still have been able to defend the city, but with no food, limited ammunition and disease rampant, defeat was inevitable. Tessier remembered the gut-wrenching escape from Fort Dominance where villagers spat at him and threw rocks. One man had brought out a pistol and the ball had slapped the air as it passed his face. Another man had chased him with an ancient boar spear and Tessier, exhausted from the fight, had jumped into the water. He had nearly drowned in that cold grey sea, only just managing to cling to a rock whilst the enemy searched the shoreline. The British warship was anchored outside the village, and although Tessier could see men on-board, no one had spotted him. Hours passed by. Then, when he considered it was clear, he swam ashore to hide in the malodorous marshland outside Mġarr. His body shivered violently and his skin was blue and wrinkled like withered fruit, but in the night-dark light he lived. He had crept to a fishing boat, donned a salt-stained boat cloak and rowed out to Malta's monochrome coastline. He had somehow managed to escape capture by abandoning the boat to swim into the harbour. From there it had been easy to climb the city walls and to safety. He had written his account of the marines ambush, the fort’s surrender and his opinion of Chasse, to Vaubois. Tessier wanted Gamble cashiered and Vaubois promised to take his complaint to the senior British officer when he was in a position to. Weeks went past. Months. A burning hunger for revenge changed to a desire for provisions. And until today, Tessier reflected that he would never see Gamble again. Sunlight twinkled on the water, dazzling like a million diamonds scattered across its surface. Tessier loaded his pistol in the shadows where the air was still and cool. He had two of them, a knife and a sword, and, although starving and crippled with stomach cramps, he would fight as he had always done so: with everything he had.

I took a deep breath. I had to be careful. No heat. Just light. I wiped my damp palms on my coat and spread my arms. Almost before I’d formed the call, the light was rushing toward me. It came from every direction, from a million stars, from a sun still hidden below the horizon. It came with relentless speed and furious intent. “Oh, Saints,” I had time to whisper. Then the light was blazing through me and the night came apart. The sky exploded into brilliant gold. The surface of the water glittered like a massive diamond, reflecting piercing white shards of sunlight. Despite my best intentions, the air shimmered with heat. I closed my eyes against the brightness, trying to focus, to regain control. I heard Baghra’s harsh voice in my head, demanding that I trust my power: It isn’t an animal that shies away from you or chooses whether or not to come when you call it. But this was like nothing I’d felt before.

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp. The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes?

As the pair of them kept talking, Rhage sucked the white stick clean and found himself sizing up the Shadow. Cutting into the convo, he demanded, “Why don’t you come to Last Meal anymore.” V’s diamond-hard glare swung around. “My brother, focus.” “No, I’m serious.” He propped his hip on the black wall. “What’s up, Trez. I mean, our food not good enough for you?” Cue the throat clearing on the Shadow’s side. “Oh, no, yeah, I’m just … busy, you know. Opening this…” “And when was the last time you fed? You look like shit.” Vishous threw up his hands. “Hollywood, will you get in the game—” “You know, I used Selena tonight and her blood is amazing—” It all happened so fast. One minute V was jawing at him while he was bringing up the very salient point that the Shadow needed to take a vein. The next, Trez’s racket-size palm was locked on his neck, cutting off all his air supply. While the guy bared his teeth and snarled like Rhage was the enemy. In the blink of an eye, and in spite of that nasty shoulder wound, Vishous counter-attacked the Shadow, tackling him in a total body slam as Rhage grabbed at that thick wrist to pull the grip free. Incredibly, it got them nowhere.

And my eyes—my beautiful, precious eyes—were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after. In that single exchange with that young man, I was speaking the personal language of my people. It was the briefest intimacy, but it captured much of the beauty of my black world—the ease between your mother and me, the miracle at The Mecca, the way I feel myself disappear on the streets of Harlem. To call that feeling racial is to hand over all those diamonds, fashioned by our ancestors, to the plunderer. We made that feeling, though it was forged in the shadow of the murdered, the raped, the disembodied, we made it all the same. This is the beautiful thing that I have seen with my own eyes, and I think I needed this vantage point before I could journey out. I think I needed to know that I was from somewhere, that my home was as beautiful as any other.

What use is knowing anything if no one is around to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps to double our shadows. I love my body more than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire, and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm of hungry ghosts orbiting my body—even now, I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are arranging their plans like worms preparing to rise through the soil. They are ready to die with their kind, dry and stiff above the wet earth.

The Master Hand looked at the jewel that glittered on Ged's palm, bright as the prize of a dragon's hoard. The old Master murmured one word, "Tolk," and there lay the pebble, no jewel but a rough grey bit of rock. The Master took it and held it out on his own hand. "This is a rock; tolk in the True Speech," he said, looking mildly up at Ged now. "A bit of the stone of which Roke Isle is made, a little bit of the dry land on which men live. It is itself. It is part of the world. By the Illusion-Change you can make it look like a diamond – or a flower or a fly or an eye or a flame – " The rock flickered from shape to shape as he named them, and returned to rock. "But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow..." He looked down at the pebble again. "A rock is a good thing, too, you know," he said, speaking less gravely. "If the Isles of Eartbsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.

The horoscope loomed in my thoughts. Perhaps it had been right all this time. A marriage that partnered me with death. My wedding, sham though it was, would bring more than just my end. I breathed deeply and a calm spiraled through me. This was my final taste: a helix of air, smacking of burnt things and bright leaves. I pulled the vial from my bangles, fingers shaking. This was my last sight: purling fire and windows that soared out of reach. I raised the vial to my lips. My chest was tight, silk clinging damply to my back, my legs. This was my last sound: the cadence of a heart still beating. “May Gauri live a long life,” I mouthed. The poison trickled thickly from the rim and I tilted my head back, eyes on the verge of shutting-- And then: a shatter. My eyes opened to empty hands clutching nothing. Spilled poison seeped into the rug and shards of glass glinted on the floor, but all of that was obscured by the shadow of a stranger. “There’s no need for that,” said the stranger. He wiped his hands on the front of his charcoal kurta, his face partially obscured by a sable hood studded with small diamonds. All I could see was his tapered jaw, the serpentine curve of his smile and the straight bridge of his nose. Like the suitors, he wore a garland of red flowers. And yet, all of that I could have forgotten. Except his voice… It drilled through the gloaming of my thoughts, pulled at me in the same way the mysterious intruder’s voice had tugged. But where the woman’s voice brought fury, this was different. The hollow inside me shifted, humming a reply in melted song. I could have been verse made flesh or compressed moonlight. Anything other than who I was now. A second passed before I spoke. By then, the stranger’s lips had bent into a grin. “Who are you?” “One of your suitors,” he said, not missing a beat. He adjusted his garland. I backed away, body tensing. I had never seen him before. I knew that with utmost certainty. Did he mean to harm me? “That’s not an answer.” “And that wasn’t a thank you,” he said.

I continued my explorations in a cobbled yard overlooked by broken doors and cracked windows. Pushing open a swollen door into a storeroom, I found a stream running across paving stones and a carpet of slippery green moss. My explorations took me beneath a gateway surmounted by a clock face, standing with hands fixed permanently at eleven o'clock. Beyond stood derelict stables; then the park opened up in an undulating vista, reaching all the way to a swathe of deep forest on the horizon. In the distance was the twinkle of the river that I realized must border my own land at Whitelow. The grass was knee-high and speckled with late buttercups, but I was transported by that first sight of the Delafosse estate. In its situation alone, the Croxons had chosen our new home well. I dreamed for a moment of myself and Michael making a great fortune, and no longer renting Delafosse Hall but owning every inch of it, my inheritance spinning gold from cotton. Turning back to view the Hall I took a sharp breath; it was as massive and ancient as a child's dream of a castle, the bulk of its walls carpeted in greenery, the diamond-leaded windows sparkling in picturesque stone mullions. True, the barley-twist chimneys leaned askew, and the roofs sagged beneath the weight of years, but the shell of it was magnificent. It cast a strange possessive mood upon me. I remembered Michael's irritation at the house the previous night, and his eagerness to leave. Somehow I had to entice Michael into this shared dream of a happy life here, beside me. Determined to explore the park, I followed the nearest path. After walking through a deep wood for a good while I emerged into the sunlight by a round hill surmounted by a two-story tower. A hunting lodge, Mrs. Croxon had called it, but I thought it more a folly. It had a fantastical quality, with four miniature turrets, each topped with a verdigris-tarnished dome. Above the doorway stood a sundial drawn upon a disc representing a blazing sun. It was embellished with a script I thought might be Latin: FERREA VIRGA EST, UMBRATILIS MOTUS. I wondered whether Michael might know the meaning, or Anne's husband perhaps. As for the sundial's accuracy, the morning light was too weak to cast a line of shadow.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Some people are born beautiful. Obviously, not that many or cosmetics wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry and Toni Diamond wouldn’t be giving her rahrah speech to the new sales recruits for Lady Bianca cosmetics. “I believe in the power of Lady Bianca makeup, to transform, to inspire, to bring out a new woman,” she told the

From above, they would have looked like a chain of four diamonds strung out along the road, points aligned with one another so that the faces of the squares could shoot without risking friendly fire.

arms, her black African arms, with

February 19 MORNING “Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” — Ezekiel 36:37 PRAYER is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarcely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. You have found this true in your own personal experience. God has given you many an unsolicited favour, but still great prayer has always been the prelude of great mercy with you. When you first found peace through the blood of the cross, you had been praying much, and earnestly interceding with God that He would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. When at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your prayers. When you have had great deliverances out of sore troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, “I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Prayer is always the preface to blessing. It goes before the blessing as the blessing’s shadow. When the sunlight of God’s mercies rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. Or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, He Himself shines behind them, and He casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are much in prayer, our pleadings are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly. “Prayer makes the darken’d cloud withdraw; Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw; Gives exercise to faith and love; Brings every blessing from above.

choosing a gown of a dark blue-gray so soft that in the shadow it looked almost indigo. The line of the neck and the sweep of the skirt were both very flattering, and cut in the fashion of the moment. Deliberately she wore no jewelry, except very small diamond drop earrings. Her shining silver hair was ornament enough.

suburb of Dallas. They felt the same according to the enthusiastic applause that greeted her. “I believe in the right of every woman to look her best.” While Toni paused to sip water, another tsunami

On all the roads we traversed between Yozgat and Kayseri, about 80 per cent of the Muslims we encountered (there were no Christians left in these parts) were wearing European clothes, bearing on their persons proof of the crimes they had committed. Indeed, it was an absurd sight: overcoats, frock coats, jackets—various men’s and women’s European garments of the finest materials—on villagers who were also wearing sandals and traditional baggy pants [shalvars]. Barefoot Turkish peasant boys wore formal clothes; men sported gold chains and watches. It was reported that the women had confiscated many pieces of diamond jewelry, but [as they were sequestered] we had no way of encountering them.34

Together they needed to figure out how to find the real killer who carried out the hit, clear Dea's name, and shove Diamond Tommy back into the shadows.

We've assembled a group of people, your team, people who love you and pray for you. Take a look around the circle. These people represent thousands of words spent in prayer before the throne of God, begging for your safe return to the fold, begging for your peace, your faith, your heart.

...an unlikely group pieced together these past few weeks from parties and family references, friend-of-friend happenstance, and (in one case, just now being introduced) sheer, scarcely tolerable intrusiveness-five people who, in normal life back home, would have been satisfied never to have known one another. Five young expatriates hunch around an undersized cafe table: a moment of total insignificance, and not without a powerful whiff of cliche. Unless you were one of them. Then this meaningless, overdrawn moment may (then or later) seem to be somehow the summation of both an era and your own youth, your undeniably defining afternoon (though you can hardly say that aloud without making a joke of it). Somehow this one game of Sincerity becomes the distilled recollection of a much longer series of events. It persistantly rises to the surface of your memory-that afternoon when you fell in love with a person or a place or a mood, when you savored the power of fooling everyone, when you discovered some great truth about the world, when (like a baby duck glimpsing your quacking mother's waddling rear for the first time) an indelible brand was seared into your heart, which is, of course, a finate space with limited room for searing. Despite its insignificance, there was this moment, this hour or two, this spring afternoon blurring into evening on a cafe patio in a Central European capital in the opening weeks of its post-Communist era. The glasses of liqueur. The diamond dapples of light between oval, leaf-shaped shadows, like optical illusions. The trellised curve of the cast-iron fence seperating the patio from its surrounding city square. The uncomfortable chair. Someday this too will represent someone's receding, cruelly unattainable golden age. (4-5)

Golden Egg Pets · Golden Dragon · Golden Griffin · Golden Unicorn Diamond Egg Pets · Diamond Dragon · Diamond Griffin · Diamond Unicorn Common Pets · Bandicoot (Aussie Egg) · Buffalo (Cracked Egg or Pet Egg) · Cat (Starter Egg, Cracked Egg, or Pet Egg) · Chicken (Farm Egg) · Dog (Starter Egg, Cracked Egg, or Pet Egg) · Otter (Cracked Egg or Pet Egg) · Robin (Christmas Egg) Uncommon Pets · Black Panther (Jungle Egg) · Blue Dog (Blue Egg) · Capybara (Jungle Egg) · Chocolate Labrador (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Dingo (Aussie Egg) · Drake (Farm Egg) · Fennec Fox (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Meerkat (Safari Egg) · Pink Cat (Pink Egg) · Puma (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Silly Duck (Farm Egg) · Snow Cat (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Wild Boar (Safari Egg) · Wolf (Christmas Egg) Rare Pets · Australian Kelpie (Aussie Egg) · Beaver (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Brown Bear (Jungle Egg) · Bunny (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Cow (Farm Egg) · Elephant (Safari Egg) · Elf Shrew (Christmas Event: 23,000 Gingerbread) · Emu (Aussie Egg) · Hyena (Safari Egg) · Pig (Farm Egg) · Polar Bear (Christmas Egg) · Rabbit (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Rat (Lunar New Year Event 2020 - Rat Box - 14 in 15 Chance) · Reindeer (Christmas Egg) · Rhino (Jungle Egg) · Snow Puma (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Swan (Christmas Egg) Ultra-Rare Pets · Arctic Fox (Christmas Egg) · Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 35 in 40 Chance) · Crocodile (Jungle Egg) · Elf Hedgehog (Christmas Event: eighty,500 Gingerbread) · Flamingo (Safari Egg) · Frog (Aussie Egg) · Horse (Pet Shop: 300 Robux) · Koala (Aussie Egg) · Lion (Safari Egg) · Llama (Farm Egg) · Panda (Lunar New Year Event - Game Pass: 249 Robux) · Penguin (Throw a Golden Goldfish (225 Robux) to a Penguin on the Ice Cream Parlor) · Platypus (Jungle Egg) · Red Panda (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Santa Dog (Christmas Event: 250 Robux) · Shiba Inu (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Sloth (Pet Shop: 199 Robux) · Turkey (Farm Egg) · Zombie Buffalo (Halloween Event) Legendary Pets · Arctic Reindeer (Christmas Egg) · Bat Dragon (Halloween Event 2019: a hundred and eighty,000 Candies) · Crow (Farm Egg) · Dragon (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Evil Unicorn (Halloween Event 2019: 108,000 Candies) · Frost Dragon (Christmas Event 2019: 1,000 Robux) · Giraffe (Safari Egg) · Golden Penguin (Throw a Golden Goldfish (225 Robux) to a Penguin at the Ice Cream Parlor) · Golden Rat (Lunar New Year Event 2020 - Rat Box - 1 in 15 Chance) · Griffin (Gamepass or six hundred Robux) · Kangaroo (Aussie Egg) · King Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 4 in 40 Chance) · Owl (Farm Egg) · Parrot (Jungle Egg) · Queen Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 1 in 40 Chance) · Shadow Dragon (Halloween Event 2019: 1,000 Robux) · Turtle (Aussie Egg) · Unicorn (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg)

How Buddhism Entered the World Like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. This is how to contemplate all phenomena. – The Buddha, Diamond Sutra It’s hard to project ourselves back two and a half thousand years into another time, another age, another continent, another country, another economy, another political structure, another social system, and a whole other worldview, and try to intuit the innermost thoughts of a spiritual innovator like the Buddha. However, if we can understand a little better what he experienced and how his contemporaries understood his instructions, we can better know how his teachings relate to us. So before we get to some of the insights, let me share with you some of his story.

believe that is the secret gift of Paris and the real reason it casts such a spell on people all over the world. It demands that you recognize and insist on the most beautiful version of life, inside and out. Like polishing a diamond, living in Paris casts off the shadow and forces your true light to shine. And the process hurts.

well. I believe that is the secret gift of Paris and the real reason it casts such a spell on people all over the world. It demands that you recognize and insist on the most beautiful version of life, inside and out. Like polishing a diamond, living in Paris casts off the shadow and forces your true light to shine. And the process hurts. Marion became a steady companion and grounding force as I settled ever more fully into my life here. She also jump-started me into consciously calling in the kinds of people I really wanted to meet. I began to pray for new and uplifting people to show up, and my prayers started being answered. Soon after Lilou introduced me to Marion, I met a great guy named David Brower. A fellow American who had moved to Paris in his early 20s and had

Aida sighed at her melancholy thoughts and tipped her head back to look at the sky stained with brilliant purples and blues tinged with vicious red. Cheery gold limned the low-hanging clouds with stars beginning to peek out from their hiding. Night would fall fast here in the mountain’s shadow, though less so than when they traveled at its feet. Squinting up at the vast expanse, she tried to pick out the stars she might recognize. Uncertain if they had names as so many things seemed to in this frightening world, she looked only for the brightest among them.The wind picked up, riffling through her hair and sending it into a tangled banner behind her as she continued to look up at the sky. Smiling as a break in the trees gave her an unimpeded view of the deep indigo scattered with diamonds. A few hours yet, and it would look just like her eyes. Midnight black with twinkling blue. The only of their kind that she knew of.

The love of my life sits upstairs in a hospital room fighting for his life and I will be there every step of the way, fighting right along with him. My family grew tenfold today when the guys from Maiden Voyage entered Joey’s room. Diamond, Mickey, myself and even Joey will never be able to thank them enough for all they’ve done for us.” By then, my cries were so profuse I could hardly utter a word.

Later in the day, Holly frowned at her reflection in the mirror. “This can’t be right!” Holly muttered to herself. She looked like a cross between a panda bear and a raccoon. She had tried to apply a more advanced version of makeup than she was used to, and it was not going well. “Smokey eye, my foot! I look like I have two black eyes.” She had not done the proper shading with her eye shadow, and now her large green eyes were encased with a deep black color that spanned her entire eyelid. “Maybe I should try a different one,” Holly mused aloud. She sat in William’s bedroom at his dresser. She already had on her pretty crushed velvet black dress and a small heart-shaped diamond pendant. It had been William’s birthday gift to her last year. “Let me re-read this article again to see if I can make sense of these instructions.” Holly read her magazine article out loud. “Which Greek Goddess are you? Athena, Venus, or Aphrodite? Check out our makeup tips below to turn heads at your next event!” “Hmmmm, that sounds soooooo good, if only I was better at applying makeup.” She had decided to try their Aphrodite look and had been trying to apply the eyeliner to give her a smoky eye effect. Holly had to wash her face four times already and start over because each time was worse than the last. “Concentrate, Holly, or you’ll be late for the gala. This is your last chance; it’s do or die time!” she warned her reflection in the mirror. “So, it says to put the light grey eyeshadow on the inner one-third of my eyelids. Hmmm, maybe that’s the problem. I don’t know where the inner third is.” She got an idea and went to William’s desk. Looking around, she found a ruler. “Ah-ha! Eureka, I got it!” She went back to her position at his dresser and closed her eyes for a quick, small prayer, then held the ruler up to measure her eye. “Ah-ha! Twenty-one millimeters. So, that means the inner one-third of my eye must be from my nose out seven millimeters . . . right about HERE!” Holly expertly applied the light grey eye shadow to the inner third of her eyelids. “What a big improvement already! Wow! I’m not a panda bear anymore! Ok, one-third down, two-thirds to go . . . I can do this!” Reading further, she said, “Ok, now apply the dark grey eye shadow to the next third of your eye, finishing with the dark brown eye shadow on the outer third of your eyelid.” Holly expertly followed the instructions and sat back in her chair, stunned. She looked beautiful! She had achieved the desired effect, and now her green eyes were enhanced to perfection. “Wow, wow, wow!” Holly felt encouraged to keep going. She read the next instructions. “‘Now, apply blush to your face with an emphasis on contouring your cheekbones.’” “‘Contouring my cheekbones? Who do they think I am, Rembrandt?” Holly said with a groan. Holly gingerly picked up her blush container as if it were about to bite her. She decided another quick prayer wouldn’t go amiss. With a deep breath she muttered, “Ok, I’m going in!” She glanced nervously at the picture in the magazine and tried her hardest to follow it along her cheekbones. “That turned out pretty good!” Holly turned her face this way and that, examining it. It may not have been exactly as in the picture, but the blush now accentuated her beautiful high cheekbones. “Whew! Only the lip left, thank goodness! You got this, Holly!” She encouraged her reflection in the mirror.

Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien; he built a boat of timber felled in Nimbrethil to journey in; her sails he wove of silver fair, of silver were her lanterns made, her prow was fashioned like a swan, and light upon her banners laid. In panoply of ancient kings, in chainéd rings he armoured him; his shining shield was scored with runes to ward all wounds and harm from him; his bow was made of dragon-horn, his arrows shorn of ebony; of silver was his habergeon, his scabbard of chalcedony; his sword of steel was valiant, of adamant his helmet tall, an eagle-plume upon his crest, upon his breast an emerald. Beneath the Moon and under star he wandered far from northern strands, bewildered on enchanted ways beyond the days of mortal lands. From gnashing of the Narrow Ice where shadow lies on frozen hills, from nether heats and burning waste he turned in haste, and roving still on starless waters far astray at last he came to Night of Naught, and passed, and never sight he saw of shining shore nor light he sought. The winds of wrath came driving him, and blindly in the foam he fled from west to east and errandless, unheralded he homeward sped. There flying Elwing came to him, and flame was in the darkness lit; more bright than light of diamond the fire upon her carcanet. The Silmaril she bound on him and crowned him with the living light and dauntless then with burning brow he turned his prow; and in the night from Otherworld beyond the Sea there strong and free a storm arose, a wind of power in Tarmenel; by paths that seldom mortal goes his boat it bore with biting breath as might of death across the grey and long forsaken seas distressed; from east to west he passed away.

Ah, here we are, this is your universe. Very bijou, I always think. A sort of universette . . .” Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything. A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself. From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets

Is that all you’re taking?” I shrugged. “I should hope that as my fake boyfriend, you’ll be providing me with all the stuff I need for a comfortable stay.” He bit back a smile. “Ah, diamonds and pearls.” “Nope. Blood bags and burgers. I’m pretty low maintenance.” “Just the kind of woman I like.” “Lazy.” “Not when it counts,” he drawled. “And when would that be?” “In the bedroom.” “Just the bedroom? How uninventive.

At all these studies Ged was apt, and within a month was bettering lads who had been a year at Roke before him. Especially the tricks of illusion came to him so easily that it seemed he had been born knowing them and needed only to be reminded. The Master Hand was a gentle and lighthearted old man, who had endless delight in the wit and beauty of the crafts he taught; Ged soon felt no awe of him, but asked him for this spell and that spell, and always the Master smiled and showed him what he wanted. But one day, having it in mind to put Jasper to shame at last, Ged said to the Master Hand in the Court of Seeming, 'Sir, all these charms are much the same; knowing one, you know them all. And as soon as the spell-weaving ceases, the illusion vanishes. Now if I make a pebble into a diamond-' and he did so with a word and a flick of his wrist 'what must I do to make that diamond remain diamond? How is the changing-spell locked, and made to last?' The Master Hand looked at the jewel that glittered on Ged's palm, bright as the prize of a dragon's hoard. The old Master murmured one word, 'Tolk,' and there lay the pebble, no jewel but a rough grey bit of rock. The Master took it and held it out on his own hand. 'This is a rock; tolk in the True Speech,' he said, looking mildly up at Ged now. 'A bit of the stone of which Roke Isle is made, a little bit of the dry land on which men live. It is itself. It is part of the world. By the Illusion-Change you can make it look like a diamond -or a flower or a fly or an eye or a flame-' The rock flickered from shape to shape as he named them, and returned to rock. 'But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow...' He looked down at the pebble again. 'A rock is a good thing, too, you know,' he said, speaking less gravely. 'If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.' He smiled, but Ged left dissatisfied.

Malcom's words echoed in his head. As if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty. Diamonds might be blinding in their beauty, but they were also the hardest and sharpest gems in the world. They could cut you or grind you down, smash and slice you apart. Malcolm, deranged with love, had not thought of that. But Julian could think of nothing else.

And Mark was lost; he was falling through dark skies, silvered with the diamond dust of stars.

After more than thirty years of traveling to Oahu, I no longer gasp when I see the wafting palm trees out the plane window or feel quite as awed by the sight of Diamond Head, the volcanic mountain that sits like a massive green bulwark southeast of Waikiki. What I feel now is the exhilaration of familiarity. I am oriented to this place in ways I’d never have imagined for myself as a kid. Though I remain just a visitor, I do know this one island very well, just as I know this one man who introduced me to it, through our regular and committed returns. I feel like I know every bend in the highway that leads from the airport to the North Shore. I know where to go for excellent shave ice and Korean barbecue. I can recognize the scent of plumeria in the air and take delight in the underwater shadow of a manta ray flapping its way through shallow water. I’m well-acquainted with the quiet waters of Hanauma Bay, where we first showed our toddlers how to swim, and the windy sea cliffs at Lanai Lookout, where my husband goes to remember his beloved mother and grandmother, whose ashes he scattered there. A couple of years ago, to celebrate our wedding anniversary, Barack and I made a special trip to Honolulu, and he surprised me with a celebratory dinner out on the town. He’d rented a private space on the rooftop terrace of a hotel by the ocean and hired a small band to play.

The kingdom of Winter is a diamond-crusted study of beautiful cruelties, lovely and inimically dangerous, for each alluring facet contains a hidden weapon or terror. It’s brutally cold—we ice where we stand—so I adjust our body temperatures by erecting a slice of warmer climate around us, and ice sloughs off us in great, melting sheets.

Rohan's smile was a flash of white in the shadowed interior of the carriage. He left the vehicle and dissolved into the night as if he were part of it, blending seamlessly except for the ebony glimmer of his hair and the sparkle of the diamond at his ear.

Marcus had a natural arrogant air to him, thanks to his striking facial features, with his slim nose, square cut jawline and high cheekbones. He also had high arched brows with one that always seemed to be raised as if he was judging every single action you made. But those elongated red diamond shapes that ran through his eyes and curved slightly an inch above his brows reminded me of horns. The opposite ends were drawn down in long points that reached his jaw until they were nothing but a thin line. A set that mirrored the same triangular design starting from under his bottom lip. This thin red line continued all the way down his chin until it disappeared under the shadows of his long neck before it dipped under a crimson red cravat. A colour that matched his unusual hair, with its strands that were twisted back from his face into sections with the ends pointed with little bells attached. All of which adding to the theatrics that rest of his outfit provided. Piercing dark blue eyes studied me as I approached.

Beautiful, splendid, and magnificent do not justify my description. Magical beams of light, emanating from New Jerusalem, shone in every direction. They poked their shining fingers of living light into places were shadows can never darken. The cubical city was bright with intense colors. Its hues were more than the colors of a springtime rainbow. The colors were not those of an Earth rainbow. Impossible colors dazzled. Colors I have never seen. These new colors were indescribable! The city sparkled as an excellent cut diamond. Like the fire of a diamond, its internal and external colors of light scattered its light in all directions.

An open enemy is better than a false friend. —Greek proverb

Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. —Cindy Crawford

Knowledge of your True Self gradually places your life in a big and ever bigger frame. Then the small stuff can no longer hurt you or define you for the long term. Therapy is not equipped to call the small stuff into question—things like ever higher pay, more vacation days, not being noticed, taking offense. That is the job of religion, the ultimate clearinghouse, and why spiritual direction is a different discipline than therapeutic counseling is. You can do both, as I do. Good spiritual direction will highly simplify and clarify your therapy, and good therapy will ground any spiritual direction in honesty and necessary shadow boxing. Good therapy will allow you to cope with greater serenity and efficiency because you will learn how to do your human job well and with personal satisfaction. True spiritual direction can link that human job with your divine job without dismissing the human job in the least.

Jared never prayed, because the idea of a loving God seemed out of sync with the facts of the world.

In a civil war,” he said gently, “people forget that they are people. Next they forget anyone else is a person. They forget how to be kind. They learn to hurt. In our wars, they might execute you, but usually they chop hands off, so that you suffer before you die. If you live, you are helpless and must depend on others.

Easy.” She heard him laugh softly. “My fault. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.” “You’re right,” she said, her sense of humor tentatively reasserting itself. “I should give you a set-down . . . slap you or something . . . what is the usual response from ladies you’ve taken liberties with?” “They encourage me to do it again?” Harry suggested in such a helpful manner that Poppy couldn’t help smiling. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to encourage you.” They faced each other in darkness relieved only by the slivers of light shed by upper-floor windows. How capricious life was, Poppy thought. She should have been dancing with Michael tonight. But now she was Michael’s castoff, and she was standing outside the ballroom, in the shadows with a stranger. Interesting, that she could be so in love with one man and yet find another so compelling. But Harry Rutledge was one of the most fascinating people she had ever met, with so many layers of charm and drive and ruthlessness that she couldn’t fathom what kind of man he really was. She wondered what he was like in his private moments. She was almost sorry she would never find out. “Give me a penance,” Harry urged. “I’ll do whatever you ask.” As their gazes caught and held in the shadows, Poppy realized that he actually meant it. “How large a penance?” she asked. Harry tilted his head a little, studying her intently. “Ask for anything.” “What if I wanted a castle?” “Done,” he said promptly. “Actually, I don’t want a castle. Too drafty. What about a diamond tiara?” “Certainly. A modest one suitable for daytime wear, or something more elaborate?” Poppy began to smile, when a few minutes earlier she had thought she would never smile again. She felt a surge of liking and gratitude. She couldn’t think of anyone else who would have been able to console her in these circumstances. But the smile turned bittersweet as she looked up at him once more. “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m afraid no one can give me the one thing I truly want.

He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast’s empty eye sockets had watched him go. There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half. The most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than mastiff’s skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had not lived very long. From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen

Sometimes, Malcom had written, someone you have known all your life becomes no longer familiar to you, but strange in a marvellous way, as if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is not made of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty.

I did it. I’d just faced down one of the monsters hiding at the back of my closet. And I won. There’s no way to describe how that felt. It was like I’d been living in the chilly shadow of my past for the past two years and now all of the sudden a chink of light was slicing across my face, warm and wonderful.

Her dream began with winter darkness. Out of this darkness came a great hand, fisted. It was a man's hand, powerful and hollowed by shadows in the wells between the bones and tendons. The fist opened and in the long plain of the palm lay three small pieces of coal. Slowly the hand closed, causing within the fist a tremendous pressure. The pressure began to generate a white heat and still it increased. There was a sense of weighing, crushing time. She seemed to feel the suffering of the coal with her own body, almost beyond the point of being borne. At last she cried out to the hand, <> After what seemed like too long a time for anything molecular to endure, the torments in the fist relaxed. The fist turned slowly and very slowly opened. Diamonds, three of them. Three clear and brilliant diamonds, shot with light, lay in the good palm. A deep voice called to her, <> and then gently, <>

Grit and glamour, Bruises and champagne, There’s nothing to enamour, About the poison in our veins. Land and riches, Money and gold, Freshly repaired with stitches, And now already sold. Wealth can bring you terrible things. And what weighs you down, isn’t all diamond rings. Shadowed and rough, Lost and without love, A hard life makes you tough, There’s no room for a white dove. Cheap and broken, Shattered and slain, Although it remains unspoken, Both understand the other’s pain.

It was simply that she shone like a flame, a flawless diamond breathing living fire among so many dead lumps of coal.